Non-Mikey Updates and New OTTB, Shea!

Life has been quiet since I got back from OSU. Mikey is getting his own post next since he's been sitting in a stall doing nothing.

I did want to share this cute pic of Penny. I took it back in February, but forgot to share it.

Cute adorableness. When my husband and I replaced our windows, we made sure to get the extra wide windowsills so the cats have a place to sit.

The one exciting thing that happened after our OSU visit, our Rolex tickets came!

So many tickets! I collected for 18 of us and ordered them all together to make sure we could all sit together. We have grounds admission for all 4 days, and seating for both dressage days and show jump day.

And I got to work remotely last Thursday with this adorable face who didn't want me to keep working.

"No more working. It's snuggle time!"

I went to the barn Saturday, but didn't have a lesson on Cody. My trainer is taking him this week to an event, so rightly, she rode him. I took my trainer's new young horse, Shea, out for a spin instead. She's a 7 yr old OTTB who hasn't done much since she stopped racing, but she's a nice mare. Going to be a superstar for sure- reminds me a lot of the 2* horse my trainer sold a couple years ago. My trainer said I'd probably like her as she's similar to Mikey. Her old rider kept her "in frame" through sheer force and held her there, so my trainer has been working in the walk and trot only, aiming for soft and through, and trying to get her off the inside leg because she likes to lean on it.

I had to work around my trainer's lesson people, which is fine, but I was having trouble getting Shea round or off my inside leg. I ended up doing a lot of sitting trot. I don't like doing that on young horses just learning to work over their backs, I don't think it's quite fair. But when she was running through me, head in the air, trotting off like a mad woman, I sat the trot and used my seat to force her to keep a slower pace. Posting the trot was just not effective enough. My trainer said no worries about it, she does the same thing when she sits on her. As soon as the little mare softened I'd post, and sit again when she inverted. Once I figured her out, she was fairly easy to get round and stop her leaning on the inside leg. Cody refreshed the importance of riding outside hip to outside hand, supporting with the inside leg. I used that theory on Shea, and every time she'd come through and soften, if only for a stride or two. We also had a little practice just standing in the middle of the arena watching the lesson finish up. She doesn't like to just stand, so we stood!

I came out Sunday morning to ride her before my trainer's Sunday jump school because I wasn't happy with how the ride went Saturday, and I wanted to try again. I had a much better ride to the left, but it all went to hell when I tracked right. I was sharing the arena with a lesson again, and I was tracking the opposite direction. When it came time to pass the lesson horse, Shea freaked out, tried to spin and bolt, and almost scooted out from under me because I blocked her from turning, so she flung herself across the arena instead. I thought she was going to dump me, but thank goodness for long dressage legs around a thin TB barrel! I spent the next 15 min working the opposite direction, forcing her to simply walk round without freaking out. Every time I took her off the track to let the lesson pass, she lost her marbles. I put her back to work after she was freaking out less, and had a spectacular trot to the right, for 3 laps around the arena! Lots of good girl, patting, and posting trot.

A lot of her freaking out could be predicted by how the other horse was traveling- in front of the girth, and Shea wanted to stop and spin. Behind the girth, she wanted to bolt. My trainer hasn't ridden her with other horses in the arena since she usually rides her training horses in the morning before anyone gets to the barn, and said it's very good to know that Shea can't handle it right now. She was going to possibly take Shea in two weekends to a dressage show as a simple outing to see how she does- and she still might take her and if they scratch, they scratch. It seems Shea doesn't understand that herd rules don't apply in the ring! So she's going to be my riding buddy this week, and I'll make sure we ride with a friend!

My trainer is going away this week, as I said. Since she's going away, I'm going to help with barn work Saturday and Sunday, and teach both days. She takes a cut of the lesson money since they're her students, but that way we both make some money while she's gone, and her students get supervised rides in at a discount price. I'm basically doing the barn work for her for free because she's spending quite a bit of time with Mikey making sure he's taken care of properly. I'm glad we're both on the same page when it comes to his care... that she walks him herself, and wraps him herself instead of letting her part time working students do it. I have a good history with the one who I would trust to walk him, hack him, just not wrap him, she doesn't have a lot of experience with it. The other I have a shaky history with and have known for over 10 years. I wouldn't trust her to lead my horse out of his stall. When I got him and he was out running in the field, she said "I hope he falls and breaks a leg." I've heard other unsavory things from and about her, straight up lying to my face about things, and I don't care for the way she rides- aggressive all the time, walking and trotting the horse off his feet, no quiet riding. I chatted with my trainer about her and my trainer isn't thrilled with her (she's been working there for a couple months), and isn't letting the student work with the horses anymore, or work at all unless she needs the barn help. I'm not sure where that's at, but she's not handling Mikey, so I don't really care.

But anyway, so I'm teaching this weekend. And in the spirit of the lovely lady whose insane pole pattern videos are going around Facebook, I've come up with a pole pattern from hell for some of the lessons I'll be teaching (it'll be hell to them):

My trainer's students seem to think I'm tougher than our trainer when I teach. I don't see it! Ha!
When I answer to our trainer at the end of the day, we don't mess around!

Set at the 4'6" between trot poles (and middle to middle of the curved ones), allowing for 2-3 steps between the straight poles and curved, to be determined by the number of poles I have at my disposal and how they actually fit in our indoor (I may add a 5th pole to the straight set if I have the poles to do it and the room). I have this mostly in mind for a 17.3 horse who has trouble with his foot placement, hence the max pole distance.

I can think of a bunch of different ways to tweak this if I had enough poles and arena length to work with. I'd rather have a pole every step through the change in direction and through every 'circle' but space and pole numbers limit me. I'd like a serpentine, where each change has one of these to guide you through, or maybe a shallow loop or two down centerline, like straight, bend right for a shallow loop, go almost diagonal across centerline to bend left for a shallow loop, and then finish by ending up straight on centerline at the other end.

The goal is to keep the horse connected, and even between the aids. Trotting 20m 'circles' and 'figure 8s', keeping to the middle, no weaving or wobbling. And if that gets easy, trot the curved line of poles through the middle, canter the bigger circle, trot and keep your shit together before the poles, work through them and change direction, repeat. There's a handful of students whose horses get away from them and cut the turns and don't stay even, and most need help getting their horses into their corners on the short sides, so I figured it would ride like a 'figure square'. The poles in the middle force the rider to ride into the 'corners' in the middle, and then they can keep that same feeling across the short sides at the end of the arena. I'd like to try it myself on a horse educated enough to deal with it. But alas, I've only got a string of young horses available to me to ride this weekend, and maaaaybe one could mentally handle this (the 4 yr old I rode at one point in February), but the rest are working on being through in w/t/c, so this is entirely inappropriate for them.

Mwahaha! Students beware!

OSU Visit #2 - Tuesday 3/10 to Wednesday 3/11

My mom and I packed up and took Mikey back to OSU this past week for a recheck and APS treatment. I now have a much better understanding of what an APS treatment is because they let me watch and tag along with the students who were learning how to do it.

Tuesday was mostly uneventful, with only two bad parts:
1. My new trailer jack doesn't sit as far above the trailer tongue as my old one did. This means the two blocks I have under the foot (a 4" and 6") are much too tall, and the jack can't lower the trailer enough to get on the ball. I had to get a bottle jack to lift the trailer, so I could pull the smaller block out, so I could lower it enough to get on the ball on the truck. We're looking into a different jack since the bottom of the jack is too close to the road for our liking. I do love my new jack though. It isn't a full body workout to jack up and down.

Can't lower the trailer any further. The jack doesn't suck up any more. Note it is not on the ball of the truck!

The foot hovers about 8in off the ground. I took the foot off and was able to turn it a few more cranks and got another half inch or so.

2. It was it raining the entire drive. It took us 6 hours to get there because I was getting tired driving in a constant downpour and trying to deal with rain, pot holes and 18 wheelers flying by me. My back was killing me and I was not feeling well by bedtime.

Dry horse who got impatient with the trailer ride. Not that I blame him!

Munching in his stall. The same stall he had last time! We think his hock was extra swollen from the trailer ride, because it wasn't that swollen when we left Tuesday morning.

View from his hay door, through the plexiglass. Which is why his face is funny, haha.

The students weighed him when he arrived. He weighed 1130lbs, ten pounds less than he weighed when he came in for surgery. Not what we were hoping for since he's been locked in a stall for a month and a half eating. He does looked to have filled out a little, but lost topline muscle, so let's go with muscle weighs more than fat, and he lost muscle?



Mom and I got up early Wednesday to make sure we were in the vet hospital well before they took him out for evaluation, because I wanted to see him jog. We got there while they were doing rounds, and we got to hear them tell the students about Mikey's injury (using big veterinary terms I couldn't even hope to parrot back to you all).


Mikey got his turn to trot shortly after. The surgeon checked him over first, and was very pleased with the lack of infection from the incision that was still draining when I took him home, and how nice all of his incisions looked. Everything had scabbed over and healed over very nicely, and there was less swelling than she expected. Everything in general looked much better than she expected. She said I did a really good job keeping it clean and taken care of, so I passed the high praise on to my trainer. She's the one who did the work, checking on him daily and micro managing it, and also keeping OSU's directions in mind as we both rejected our own vet's wrapping instructions in favor of OSU's.

After she checked him out, the surgeon had a tech walk and trot him on the pavement inside. She said he was walking with some stiffness, which I'd expect since he spends all day in a stall and traveled the day before. They jogged him, and she gave him a grade 3 lameness, but it was very mild. He wasn't flexing the right hock as much as the left. I could barely see it. They didn't bother with the flex test, she said there wasn't much of a point as he'll flex positive the rest of his life anyway, so there's no reason to pressure the joint. As a background, he flexed a grade 4 pre-surgery and was almost crippled in his movement. Just short of 3 legged.

Does anyone out there understand the 0-5 lameness scale? I obviously don't because I don't know why a very mild lameness would hit grade 3. I didn't want to pester her with the questions about the scale since they had a full schedule and it's something I can research on my own. Is it just a consistency thing? Since he was consistently not flexing the hock as much? It was more a stiffness than a lameness I thought. His right hind has always been weak and he never bent it as much as the left. We're always after him to keep up with the right hind.

Anyway, the surgeon said she was comfortable doing the APS injection, so everyone scurried to get him prepped. They didn't need to shave his leg again as not a lot of the hair has grown back. They spent 10 minutes or so scrubbing him! As they scrubbed, they pulled a huge syringe of blood.

Before going into the process, Mikey is one of under 100 horses to get this treatment. APS stands for "Autologous Protein Solution" and is essentially an injection of concentrated protein rich plasma that has regenerative qualities into a damaged joint. His surgeon helped develop it, and here's a link to an abstract from her research, and here's a link to a PDF that has more layman terms of the experiment on page 3. He got one of the last kits she had, and each kit is a mind boggling $1500, but I got it for free. I feel very lucky.

Pardon me if I get some of this wrong but here's what it looked like how it went. I didn't take pictures even though I really wanted to. I thought it'd be rude!
1. Pull a huge syringe of blood from the horse, add an anticoagulant. Ok, so maybe not huge, it's a standard size that seemed huge to me! Looked like at least a 5 inch tube that's an inch in diameter? Huge.
2. The first part of processing the blood is how you would process for a standard PRP (Platelet Rich Plasma) injection. They put the blood into a sectioned off cylinder with some chemical or something in it, then into the centrifuge for 15 minutes at 3200 rpm.
3. Drain off the yellow plasma in the upper section of the cylinder, then pull out the ~6mL of platelet rich plasma (it's red) at the bottom of the upper section, leave the other red stuff in the bottom section. I guess those are red cells? I either don't remember that part of biology, or we didn't go into enough depth. Put the platelet rich plasma into the next divided cylinder, and smash the little beads at the bottom into the blood until they're all absorbed. They basically pull out water.
4. Put the cylinder back in the centrifuge and spin at 3200 rpm for 2 minutes.
5. Drain out the bottom section. I believe this amounted to about 2mL of protein rich blood/plasma/platelets? Not sure what, but it's super protein rich and highly regenerative.
6. Inject into the horse's joint.

They put Mikey under a light sedation and injected the full amount into the front of the joint. She wanted to split the injection- one in the front and one in the side, but she wasn't comfortable doing the side because there was a lot of scar tissue where it needed to be injected, so he got it all in the front. She popped a needle in first, and nasty orange/red fluid started dripping out. They took a little vial of it to hold on to for records. No idea what was in it or if they tested it. He got his injection and was good to go!

Mikey's care directions were complete stall rest for three days because of the injection, then he can keep walking for 15 minutes a day... but the good news is we can gradually increase his walk time! He was approved for ground driving, very light riding, and turnout again (with the help of Ace the first few times) at day 60 (the beginning of April). She said to gradually increase his workload back to normal over several months, and reevaluate him in June/July for lameness and his ability to go back to pre-injury work

Overall, he's doing much better than expected. His surgeon left his prognosis as 50-70% chance of a full recovery where he can continue to do his pre-injury workload. It took some of the happy out of his very good visit, but hopefully that's just the cover their butt percentage.

We had an easy trip home, driving in the sunshine!

Everything Between 2/6 and 3/9

3/8: Bad pony rolling around in fresh sawdust with the bag leg down! Sigh. He obviously doesn't know he's hurt.

So the time Mikey has been healing has been very stressful and tiring and depressing so I haven't written. I've barely ridden! But Mikey is going back to OSU for an APS treatment on 3/11, but we're leaving tomorrow. 

The extra short story: Mikey's leg is healing beautifully. His soundness is the only question left. He's healed up without any infection or oozing after the one incision stopped draining.

The short story:

-2/9/15: Mikey's oozing incision was done oozing by Monday after surgery. Yay!

-2/11/15: Our vet flipped shit about his vet wrap covering the point of his hock, before she even saw the leg. She wanted it wrapped as a figure 8. We ignored her because he was being very good about laying down with the good leg on the bottom, so he wasn't rubbing the bad leg in poop, or laying on it in general. There's no reason to make that leg more flexible, and OSU was wrapping him with it completely covered by vet wrap. She sometimes goes off on tantrums. We deal with it because when you're having an emergency, she drops everything and comes out. Oh, she also forced me to take a 16" no bow wrap. A single no bow. Not a pair. Because a 14" wasn't tall enough... even though the 14" was overlapping the hock wrap. >:-(

-2/21/15: Mikey got his stitches out on day 19 after surgery instead of 14. He also tried to colic that day. We had wrapped him with the figure 8 wrap so the vet wouldn't flip shit, so he promptly laid down on the bad leg, got cast, got upset, and began to colic. All on a day that we were hosting a clinic, the pipes froze, the tractor wouldn't start, and the arena drag was buried. They stitches were delayed to this date because the one incision had just stopped draining, and then the temps dropped to a high of 1 degree, so we weren't about to undress him and make him stand on concrete to have stitches out... they weren't healing into him or loose or being pulled, so no reason to have them out. She said only wrap him for that night, then no more. My trainer and I also ignored that. The horse was open to the bone. We weren't about to let him lay down and rub freshly scabbed incisions into his bedding. Hello infection. So the hock wrap stayed on. He also started a series of three Legend IV injections (one every week for three weeks) and a series of ten(!!!!) Adequan injections (one injection that day, then six more every four days, then once a month until gone). After a couple other incidentals, my vet bill for this visit was $824. Talk about blowing through the money I set aside for his after care.

-The next week, he walked for five minutes on days that she changed the bandage. She wasn't about to let him colic again... we'd end up walking for hours if he did.

-2/28/15: Mikey is bucking and squealing in his stall for the second day in a row. So much for 'stall rest.'

-3/4/15: Mikey reached day 30! He's now allowed to walk 15 minutes every day.

-3/7/15: We stopped wrapping the hock. The scabs had healed nicely, and everything looked super. We're still wrapping the lower leg since he's been wrapped continuously for over a month. We also started the Back on Track Hock Wraps for a couple hours each day.

-3/7/15: My wonderful husband and father-in-law put a new jack on my trailer since the old one got stuck and almost couldn't lift the trailer off my truck when we got home from OSU in February. Thank goodness my husband's dad raised him to fix anything.


I'm still very nervous that Mikey will never be sound again. He rolled this weekend and had to get up with the bad leg underneath him, and he struggled. How will he ever be able to do even training level under saddle? Very depressing. I'd never sell him, or give him away. He'd have to be retired and I can't afford to keep a second horse. Buying one wouldn't be a problem, I'd hit up RRTP classifieds and find an OTTB right off the track. Leasing a horse might be an option, but nothing is appropriate at our barn. Everything is capable, but every horse has an eventing career in its future, not straight dressage. And everything is at training level dressage. Not to rag on that, but when I'm so close to my bronze, to have to start over would be very sad.


I only rode a handful of times in Feb, partly because of the distance to the barn, and partly because it was so cold. I rode one of my trainer's 3 year olds for one of my rides. Best 3 yr old ever, plus an OTTB to boot! Quiet, attentive, and a very good boy. It's been a long time since I sat on something that green!

I rode her 3* event horse two more times since my last mention of him. He and I are slowly getting to know each other. I had joked with her about taking him to finish my bronze medal after he ran Rolex. She said go for it! So I might take Cool Decision, "Cody", the Rolex horse, down centerline to finish my bronze. I'd rather finish it on Mikey, but... I think he's going to need time, if he's even able to do 3rd level again.

I'm terrified of screwing Cody up, so I find I'm not as commanding as I should be on him, which of course will screw him up! He is very well schooled, and will do what you want, if you ask the question the right way. In a way, he's an extension of my trainer. For his whole life, he's only been ridden by her and a handful of other people, who have done at most hack him around. So he responds to being asked correctly. When you don't ask correctly, he doesn't guess at what you want, but he doesn't throw a tantrum either, he simply waits for you to ask properly, then promptly rewards you when you do ask correctly. She's letting me just ride him, not in lessons, and it's like I'm getting a free lesson. I have my trainer in my head, and I'm sitting on her horse, so I hear her in my head, I apply what she says, and he responds. With only 3 rides on Cody, I've almost broken my hanging left rein habit. Cody won't connect in the canter to the left because I'm too heavy with my left rein. Recall right hip to right hand, lots of thigh for a half halt, and releasing/soft inside rein, and he connects immediately. And lower leg. More lower leg support than I ever gave Mikey.

When I rode him last Sunday, I really got the feel of what she meant when she described him as a man's ride. Cody is very, very strong, and he's a cocky confident boy. I needed very strong thigh and core half halts to get the good response. My legs hurt for days after riding him! He's giving me quite the education though. When I lose connection, I tend to shorten my arm instead of encouraging more neck stretch to the bit. With him, when he shortens his neck, I feel it, and I know immediately shortening my arm won't work, and I'm able to push him forward and back to the bit. He's gotten me to soften my left hand. He's gotten me to pay a lot of attention to my hip and inside leg and my bend, and then ways to get it all back. He's also gotten me to get my flying changes more accurate and timed better. No more kick and hope. It's plan, get the timing right, and ask. If I botch it, I get a rump high change, if I don't, I get a smooth change.

She also said I can come ride him in the evening during the week whenever I'm out! :-)

He's by no means an easy ride, but he's as close to a school master as I'm going to get! I'm hoping to ride him in our farm's dressage show in June, and maybe take him to one or two USDF dressage shows and do 3rd, and maybe 4th level just to see. My trainer will be selling him after Rolex to pay for her farm, so if he can be ridden by an AA down centerline at a USDF show at his highest level of education, that's all points in his favor. I'll be trying to get to some shows early in the season before he sells. After he sells, Mikey will be the most advanced dressage horse in the barn, and if he's not sound... well then no more fun stuff for me! But everyone deserves to ride a horse at the top of their ability to ride, that knows a lot. It's very enlightening.

I'm going to ask for an actual lesson on him and see if she'll take a little video of me on him.

So here's a mass of pictures from the last month:

I may have gone overboard on the no bows and the cotton sheeting!

Nickels in his dog blanket. He gets around really well in it! 

Mikey's leg on 3/1.

Some awkward snuggling with Penny. Silly upside down snuggle puss!

I got domestic and made Danish Heirloom Cake. 

3/7: Let the rehab begin! 

Completely adorable.

OSU Visit: 2/6 Friday - Coming Home!

Friday morning was a whirlwind of packing and getting all of Mikey's stuff ready. The vet went over the stuff I would need to wrap Mikey, and I took home a first set of bandage change materials:

The stuff.

But we were finally off! Mikey loaded just fine and we were on our way. By the way, Columbus has a lot of pot holes. I pissed off someone by going so slowly through the city and back to the highway. He honked and flipped me the bird as soon as he could pass me. I wanted to scream at him that I had a horse who just had major surgery in my trailer, so F Off!

Trailer cam, going home!

The drive was long and I was getting tired halfway through. I was drained from the week. The weather didn't help, the back roads had been snow covered all week and I had to go the long way around to avoid a steep section of road... only to find a Fed Ex 18 wheeler parked in front of the barn driveway, delivering the dressage show arena!

Dressage arena delivery!

He had to back up so we could sneak in the drive, and then my trainer backed my trailer right up to the door of the barn so Mikey would back off the trailer and onto the concrete isle, and then walk forward and turn right into his temporary stall. A little pony was evicted to Mikey's bigger stall in the back, and Mikey got a small stall up front where he could hang his head out all day and look outside, and hopefully not spin circles!

Mom and I finally got home, and we were happy to be home!

OSU Visit: 2/5 Thursday - Stem Cell Injection

My phone got all jacked up Thursday morning, so I missed the call for the stem cell treatment, so I missed seeing his leg unwrapped and how they were wrapping it. By this point they were finally wrapping both lower legs as both had fluid building up from him not moving.

I did get a call about my truck, and they said the rear line had been spliced by a past owner instead of being fixed properly. We knew the lines were rusty when we bought the truck, the question was how rusty. They needed to be changed anyway, and we were planning on doing that in the next year. We opted to have them replace all the brake lines (front and rear) with stainless lines. They said they would have to hand bend the lines, and it might not be done by the end of the day, but it would be done by noon Friday.

We went to the vet hospital and heard from the vet that everything went very well with the stem cell injection. She said that one incision was still leaking and they were worried about infection and wanted me to consider leaving him there for another week. They were fine with him going home or staying.

Much happier today, licking the wall after a mint.

 We brought Mikey a 3lb bag of carrots and he was very happy, and so the staff kept giving him carrots every time they checked on him.

I talked to my trainer, explained they wanted him to stay for a week at least and why, and we both agreed he should come home. My trainer was a vet tech for 8 or 10 years and keeps a meticulous barn, neither of us were concerned about infection. We made arrangements for what Mikey would need when he got home, so my mom and I were off to the local tack shop for shopping therapy!

I bought this wee little dog blanket for Nickels. It was on super sale!

Mikey had a good haul for the day. My wallet is extra empty.

Standing wraps, a wall treat to keep him busy, Back on Track No Bows, a new lead rope because he's had the same lead rope for almost 10 years, stall guards so he can hang his head out for the next 40-50 days, and some cheaper wrapping supplies. I also ordered Back on Track Hock Wraps from Smartpak.

We got a call from the Chevy dealership around 5pm that my truck was done. We had decided that if it wasn't done by 10 Friday morning, we weren't going to go home Friday because we'd be unloading in the dark. Unloading a horse that doesn't want to walk in the dark by backing him off the trailer didn't sound like a good idea.

We went to get the truck and thanked the dealership profusely. The person we were working with said that he told the mechanic that the truck was an emergency and he had til the end of the day to finish it. The bill was large, but better than we expected because nothing broke unexpectedly as they took apart the components and changed the lines.

We let the vet hospital know we would be taking Mikey home Friday, and went back to the hotel to pack.

Some pictures of Mikey in that evening:

Adorable boy :-)

OSU Visit: 2/4 Wednesday - Recovery Day 2 & Brake Failure Day

Apparently I didn't take many pictures on Wednesday, and none were post worthy!

We stopped by the vet hospital to see Mikey in the morning and I got him to move via mint offering. And by move I mean, awkwardly three legged sideways hop that almost looked like he was going to fall down and break a hip. Apparently he can walk, but moves awkwardly at first. They walk him to the treadmill room every day to change his bandage.

It was like, 40 degrees that day, so Mom and I decided to go to the Columbus Zoo for a few hours in the afternoon. We were on our way there when I got an error message on my truck dash that said "Service Brake System". I checked for error codes, nothing. I found the nearest Chevy dealer on my phone, and off we went.

When we got there, the building was empty, the parking lot was empty, and everything was just abandoned. Great. By this point I realized that when I stopped at traffic lights, after ten seconds or so, my truck would slide through the brake and creep forward.

I remembered that we passed a Ford dealership on our way to the Chevy dealership, so I went back there. I explained we were out of town, the truck brakes seemed to be going, I was supposed to take my horse home the next day, and he had had surgery two days before. They weren't willing to work on my truck because it wasn't a Ford. I didn't understand, they sell used cars. Not every used car is a Ford. Fix my brakes. Instead they sent me a quarter mile up the street to another Chevy dealer.

I got to the service center of that dealership, explained the brakes were going, out of town, horse had surgery at OSU, blah blah, emergency, can you fit me in today/tomorrow/this week? I was told, nope, nothing until next week. Try somewhere else. I asked, can you give me a phone number of a dealership near OSU? I wasn't about to keep driving a truck that was slowly losing it's brakes. They grudgingly gave me a phone number of yet another Chevy dealership. Thank goodness I was near a major city and they're all over the place.

The phone call went something like this:
Me: "I'm out of town, I lost my brakes, I have a horse at OSU for surgery and no way to get him home without the truck, and no way to get myself home either. This is an emergency. Can you fit my truck in sometime this week?"
Lady: "Well we might be able to get to it tomorrow."
Me: "Good enough for me, what's your address?"
Lady (whatever the address was) "Our service center closes at 6, will you be dropping it off after hours?" (it's about 3:30pm by now)
Me: "No, I'm coming by right now. I can't get anywhere else. Do you have a rental car available?"
Lady: "Well... I'm not sure. We might, but I think they're all gone."
Me: "I'm five hours from home, if you don't find a rental car I'm going to be sleeping in your showroom."

By this point in the day, I was frustrated and upset, and mom and I were mostly laughing so we didn't cry. Nothing else we could do.

To get to the dealership, I was that guy on the 70 mph highway going 45 mph with my blinkers on. I'm sorry. I got to my exit ramp, put my foot on the brake, and nothing happened. Talk about cold pits in your stomach. Pushed the brake down harder, finally got some stop.

By the time I got to the dealership, I had very little brake so I rolled my truck to a stop by running into a snow bank. I wasn't driving through the glass doors of the service center or hit one of the brand new cars.

We went in, they asked where's the truck, I pointed out the door and they said to bring it in, and I handed them the keys and said go for it. The brakes aren't so hot. The guy almost hit the glass door after pulling into the center.

They got me set up with a rental, a brand new Chevy Cruz with 3 miles on it. I think it wasn't a rental, and when I called and threatened to sleep in the showroom, it became a rental.

I apologize if anyone has a Chevy Cruz, but I hate that car. It's small, uncomfortable and I hate it. But it got us out of there.

As we were moving stuff to the crap car, some of the guys looked under the truck and waved us over. The rear brake lines were pouring all their fluid out onto the service center floor. They said they would have a mechanic look at it first thing in the morning and call us then.

We went back to the vet hospital after leaving the dealership and let them know that we couldn't take Mikey home Thursday like we planned, it would be Friday at the earliest. We stopped by to see Mikey and he was doing just fine, and being spoiled rotten by the staff. His 2lb bag of carrots was almost gone!

OSU Visit: 2/3 Tuesday - Recovery Day 1

Sorry this next post took so long, it's been a bit depressing lately.


The day after surgery Mikey was pretty miserable. That pretty much sums it up. He didn't care for the bandage on his leg, and refused to move. The students and techs tried to get him to move up to the front of his stall to eat his grain, hay and water, but he was determined to continue his bandage paralysis.

The look of misery.

I'm holding a mint trying to get him to move. He wasn't willing.

More misery.

Mom and I went back to the hotel and found some food before coming back in the evening. We brought a bag of carrots with us to keep on his stall since they were trying to making him move with treats. We came back to see this:

Spoiled rotten by the OSU staff.

His student caretaker had brought all his stuff to him, and he was much happier!