Weekend Overview

What a weekend this has been...

I did ride Cool late Friday night after the horse show. E happened  to be at the barn as well so she hacked Emmy for me, which turned out to be a really good thing, because I didn't even leave the barn until midnight as it was. Cool was really good again, although he was much more tired after burning up all his energy the day before and so out lead changes were not clean in either direction. I went back to doing simple changes with him after blowing completely through the left/right lead change. The only thing that I can really think of is that he was either a) a little sore from the day before or b) just not as fresh and since he's really lazy by nature, he needs to be really fresh to get the changes right now. I know that Johnny was the same way when we first started with the right lead canter, he had to be really fresh in order to even pick it up. That's alright though, at least I know that there ARE lead changes somewhere in there! Cool was however, very sound to ride so that was good! I left his bandages off Friday night and told my friend N (who was going to take care of them sat/sun) to check his legs for swelling. She texted me Saturday morning that his legs looked good and I stopped at the barn briefly on my way home Saturday night to check them myself also. They did look good and tight. Hopefully a few days off this weekend will do him some good.

Early Sunday morning, I woke up at around 1:00am and was absolutely FREEZING. Literally shaking because I was just SO cold. Mind you, we have a gas well on our property, so we keep our heat at like 70 degrees all the time, so there was no reason for me to be cold. I stumbled to the closet for a hoodie and then tried to go back to sleep. The whole time though, I knew that I was getting sick.

When my alarm went off at 3:00am for the horse show I felt like I had been hit my a truck. Every muscle in my body ached, my head hurt and when I got up and went into the bathroom to brush my teeth I just sat on the floor for a little while trying to decide if I was going to throw up or not. The boyfriend woke up and asked me what was wrong. When I told him, he told me to say home from the show. Of course, I couldn't do that. I was the only groom working for this barn and I only had until 6:30 to lunge the horses before the show closed the indoor ring for lunging. My first horse showed at 7am. I had to go. I got ready, took some cold medicine, bundled myself up and got in the car to make the hour drive to the horse show.

I slugged through the morning lunging and feeding but all the while, I was freezing cold and in so much pain from all of the muscle aches. It's been uncharacteristically warm outside for mid-December and on Sunday it was about 50 degrees out (plus we showed indoors so it was about 60 in the arenas), but I just couldn't stop shaking! By 7am I sent my horse to the ring and curled up on a tack trunk wrapped in a wool cooler. When the trainer and client came back, I was sitting on a step ladder with my head in my hand. The client took one look at me and said "go home." The trainer agreed. "You are so sick" she told me "we can manage." I felt HORRIBLE leaving the horse show when I was the only groom there, but I was too sick to argue. I told M (the trainer) that I would never leave the horse show like this if I didn't think that I wasn't going to make it the whole day. Everything that I ate or drank made me feel like throwing up, I could barely tighten the girths on the horses saddles and there was no way that I was going to be able to move tack trunks later in the day. I felt so bad leaving, but there was no way I was going to make it. One of the grooms from my old barn of employment saw me walking through the warm up ring and pulled me aside and said that he would help M if she needed some assistance. "Go home mi hija" he told me and then followed it up with "you look like shit." Oh Javier...never one to sugar coat anything lol. I barely made the drive home and then went straight to bed. I've literally been sleeping for almost a straight 24 hours, aside from the boyfriend waking me up every 4 hours or so to make me take flu medicine. I'm pretty sure that I have the flu :(

Amidst all of this weekend chaos, my grandmother has also been in the hospital since Thursday and is really not doing well. She's been hanging on by a thread. I wanted to go see her today, but since I'm sick I can't :( I have a feeling that I won't get to see her one last time unless I can get better by tomorrow and she hold on strong. My poor mother is a wreck...this is the only grandparent I have left. Please say some prayers for my family. I don;t generally put a ton of personal family stuff in here, but I feel like some extra prayer are always welcome.

Peace.Love.Ponies.