Mickey is sound and settling well at the Pennsylvania facility after a mid-year injury. His conditioning includes daily walks and trot sets, plus twice-weekly aqua-tread sessions for muscle building. He'll move to Aiken in mid-January for dressage work, with a conservative competition target around mid-year.
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This is a video for Liz Halliday. All of the connections of Mixmaster C, including the owners Robin Cristicino and Debbie Palmer. Well, everyone, Mickey's settling in well at his new digs here in Pennsylvania. Everything's going perfectly well. He seems to have sort of acclimatized himself well to the, to the new place. Out of all the horses, he's probably the most seasoned out of a lot of them. And he's got that championship rock star look to him. We've been going quite slowly with Mickey. Obviously he's just coming back from. From a minor injury there picked up mid year and my vets checked him over thoroughly. He looks good and sound on trot up and we've checked his legs and been in contact with Liz's other vets and he's right where we want him. Like I said, he's trotting up in good order. His injury from mid year seems to be healing up in a good way and in a weird kind of way, I think this is a great opportunity for me to sort of spend a bit of time to get to know him without sort of having this exciting pressure of quickly getting to a competition. And at the moment, Mickey's on a bit of a specific jog set every day. We've got a good track with nice footing that's relatively flat. It's got sort of one uphill bit and at the moment he walks and hacks for about 30 to 40 minutes and then he does a trot set, trot set on the track each day on good long, straight lines. And we're slowly but surely increasing his trot work as he gets fitter and stronger. And then about once a month we just check his legs to make sure that everything's in good order. He likes trotting with a buddy. So often when I do his trot set, I find a friend for him because he gets a. Basically the trotting track goes right through the middle of the cross country schooling field and Mickey starts looking at the cross country jumps and getting excited. So if he's got a. If he's got a little buddy there, he seems to. Seems to stay a bit more chill. This is our conditioning pond, so it's sort of. I know Liz has got an aqua tread at her place. It's sort of the similar principle, except with this pond, we have a rider on it and it's sort of. He does 30 minutes in there and he does it twice a week. He seems to like it, even though he's a little bit spooky. Going in there. Once he's in there, he seems to enjoy himself. I sort of talked this over with the cruel vets and it's sort of a bit of resistance training with him usually walking 15 minutes to the left and 15 minutes to the right. He's sort of pushing against the resistance of the water and I think it's a good way just to build a bit of muscle and top line without putting any stress on his legs. From what I understand, he's been on the Aqua Tread there with Liz, so it's sort of. He's used to the water. As time goes on, I might fill the. Fill the water up a little higher, sort of in alignment with his knees. So he sort of has to push against it a bit more but sort of just being a bit. Just trying to get all the horses used to the new, new facility. But like I said before, he's, he's fiddling, he's fitting in well and seems like a bit of a rock star. You know, he's got that sort of look of experience in his eyes and you know that when you. When I take him trotting on the track that there's a huge engine underneath that saddle. I think we'll head down to Aiken. I'm pretty sure we'll head down about the middle of January. Obviously Mickey probably won't compete while we're down there, but I'd just feel better if he was under my supervision rather than leaving him in the farm. The other option is to leave him at the farm with Silver Skills. But I think a horse of this caliber be better if he comes down to a slightly warmer climate and we can continue this fitness progression work. We're slowly but surely building him up. I think by the time we get to Aiken he'll start doing a fair bit of dressage work and he'll probably sort of do like a lot of walking and then one day trotting for a long period of time, the next day flat work and after that I think we should be good to go. I don't want to put a time frame on it, but I would like to be thinking that we'd be out competing in mid year. Obviously we just got to keep checking him, but I think that's actually being conservative at the moment. His weight looks good, his coat looks good, his feet look very good. He seems quite chill. We haven't put him in a turnout just yet. The vet said just to keep hand grazing him three times a day. So Steph grazes him for sort of 30 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes at lunchtime, and 30 minutes in the evening. And different to other horses, he seems. Seems quite quiet and happy to be out there munching on the grass. From what I understand, in December, we're going to start putting him out in a smaller paddock, and then I think then the paddock, his turnout just slowly but surely gets a little bit bigger so we he doesn't run around too wild. And again, guys, I'd like to thank you all for placing your trust and care of Mickey with us. It's a huge honor and privilege having a horse of this caliber with us. And Liz, hope you're hanging in there, mate, and keep fighting. We're thinking of you.
