Month: October 2015

The blog post from one of the Chronicle’s staff writers that I’m sure most of you have seen by now mentions my “When does control become abuse?” post in a backhanded kind of way, calling it a hastily written personal attack. Eventing Connect also published a post today in which the author (who posted many blog comments on my original post, if you care to go read them) says that it’s a witch hunt for ML. Look guys… let’s set a few things straight here so we can get back to the real issues at hand.

First, let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Yep… surprise! I’m a blogger! This is a blog! I’m not a journalist. I don’t write articles. Blog posts are OpEd pieces at best. Shocking revelation, I know. I’m not bound by the same politics that the news media is, so I stated my uncensored opinion, the history behind why I have that opinion, and what I think the problem is (notice I said the rules are the problem, not the rider). The post was not hastily written – I spent several days outlining my thoughts, researching, thinking, writing, thinking some more and writing some more. I didn’t post it (5 days after the second incident occurred) until I was 100% ready to stand behind every word I said. We are now 3 weeks post-Boekelo and 2 weeks post-Fair Hill. That’s light years in the world of social media, news, or journalism. The general news media can churn out articles in hours. For one person who blogs as a hobby, nothing about it was hasty.

This is much bigger than just one person. I do not care about Marilyn Little herself. My agenda is not a witch hunt. She was the catalyst for my post, absolutely, because it was the instance involving her and her horses that launched this whole train of thought for me in the first place. If I hadn’t cited her in the post, no one would have understood what the hell I was blabbering on about. But if you think the post was meant to attack her, you aren’t reading it all the way through. It’s about the fact that a horse went around a cross country course at a 3* event with blood dripping from it’s mouth. That it was seen and photographed by spectators in said state. That our current rules are such that the horse was not pulled up – and depending on how you interpret our very vague rules – the way all of this went down is totally legal. That this can happen repeatedly with no consequence. That in fact, when you look more closely, many of our rules (not just in the “abuse of horse” section) don’t really make a lot of sense or are very very vague when you look at them from a horse welfare point of view. And that our sport really can’t let things like that happen, because then it looks like we’re condoning it. I found all of the photos and an already very lively discussion on a European website – somehow they were off and running with this days before we were, and the view of American eventing in general was extremely poor. To be honest, in that moment it felt very hard to defend the thing that I love so much. If you’re focusing on ML or her bit choices here, you’re missing my point entirely.

I will ask you this – even if you DO believe that it was nothing but a “hastily written blog post attacking one specific rider” – does that make my questions any less valid? Does that make the issues at hand any less important? Criticize me if you want to, but let’s not lose sight of what really matters here. The issues are still the issues. The fact that others are trying to downplay the real issues is, to me, extremely disappointing.

I won’t apologize for saying what I felt I needed to say, and you can absolutely bet that I’d say it all again. My opinion hasn’t changed – we need to better define our rules so that things like this don’t happen. To those who have been supportive, which is the vast majority of the general public and eventing community – thank you. To those who haven’t – thanks to you too. We might not agree, but in our disagreements I always learn something (even if it’s just that I’m 100% dedicated to what I believe).

Now, for those who are actually interested in doing something instead of just talking in circles and pointing fingers:

I am looking to put together a small group of people to help draft and submit rule change proposals to USEF and FEI regarding our current rules about visible blood. If you are interested in being a part of this, are familiar with eventing rules, have strong written communication skills, and are willing to make yourself available for a few online brainstorming sessions/discussions, please contact me. Either leave a comment here that gives me some way to contact you, contact me on facebook (my blog’s fb page link can be found in the sidebar) or go to the Contact Page in the menu bar to send me an email. I think we’ve spent quite enough time talking… time to put our money where our mouths are and try to make some good come of all this.

As I alluded to in yesterday’s post, the hunt for a dressage saddle is in full swing. I finally sold my beloved Devoucoux that Henry outgrew (ok, it wasn’t actually for sale for very long but it’s my theory that time actually slows down when you’re trying to sell big dollar items like saddles and horses) and became a one saddle family again. Not ideal for an eventer, with that whole dressage thing we have to do. Or try to do, at least.

Once the Devoucoux officially hit the road, the feelings of panic started to set in. I haven’t ridden in a lot of different dressage saddles before, and of the ones I’ve tried, the only ones I’ve liked are CWD and Devoucoux. Apparently my ass is French. But I don’t really have the budget that allows me to easily find either of those brands, especially considering I took some of the saddle money and put it in the Black Betty Rejuvenation Fund.

My trainer was kind enough to let me borrow her saddle (also a Devoucoux, but with the right panels for Henry) for Greenwood, which… I’m pretty sure that thing was blessed at birth by a voodoo priestess or something, because that saddle is divine. Definitely different from my Makila, and it was just so easy to ride in, not to mention that Henry moved great in it too. I’ve considered offing said trainer and keeping the saddle for myself, but I figure I actually need her for other things, so that’s out (at least for now… we’ll call it Plan B if nothing else works out).

My problem now is that my budget is lower than my ass’s expectations. Since I haven’t been able to sit in a lot of dressage saddles in my time, I don’t really know how to guess at what I’ll like vs hate. I can do it with jumping saddles because I know exactly what I like, but dressage saddles are more of an enigma. Big block or little block? Set high or low? Deep seat or shallow? Narrow or wide twist? High or low pommel? Hellifiknow. So I stared at the Dev for a long time to observe it’s attributes and made a list of what features it has, and what I know Henry needs. I also made a list of all the other dressage saddles I’ve sat in and not liked or didn’t fit Henry. I scoured ebay, facebook, and used saddle sites and quickly decided I was screwed. One night I found a Kentaur Andromeda for super cheap and snapped it up, figuring it was worth the gamble considering how underpriced it was.

It fit Henry ok – a little bit too flat for him but good in the tree/shoulder – but it didn’t work for me at all. I was able to sell it on facebook the next day at enough of a profit to have made the venture worthwhile, but still a little disappointing. So I did what anyone with #firstworldproblems would do in my situation: had a little pity party for myself and did a lot of whining, because I just couldn’t find a single thing that looked promising in my price range unless it was in questionable condition. Finally I decided to get super serious and scour every single used saddle site I could find, foreign or domestic, and happened upon this little gem:

A Luc Childeric. All the specs are right on paper, so I’m really hoping this is The One. The shop I got it from in New York offers a 5 day trial, and it was listed at a really reasonable price. It’ll be here on Tuesday, so cross all your crossables that it works. Otherwise I might take up bareback dressage. Or heavy drinking. Or both combined.

It’s no secret I love nice things. Love them a lot. Sadly, I don’t have a bank account that permits me to go around buying all the nice cool stuff I want… one of life’s biggest injustices. So when I see things that I must have, I usually play this little game with myself that I like to call Trading Up (yes, I might have issues).

Basically I can only buy said item if I sell the item I’ve already got that’s like it, or enough other stuff to make up the price difference. This is why I try to buy stuff as cheaply as possible, because some day it’ll probably be on the rotation out. I recently did a massive purge of stuff, so we all know what that means. UPGRADES! I recently sold off everything in my breeches collection that I wasn’t wearing, specifically because I needed to buy another pair of whites. Behold said whites.

They’re La Valencio’s, just like my current whites, which I bought from Divoza in the Netherlands. I had a coupon code (because always always coupon code) so before I checked out I decided to take a quick glance at the sale section. Why do I do that? Why? It’s a trap. What I did I see there, staring at me with their big puppy dog eyes, begging me to take them home? Navy Lorenzinis. The ones I’ve been lusting after for months but could never justify the price tag. They were almost 40% off the best price I’ve ever seen anywhere else. So what did I do? Added them to the cart and sold a couple more things to make up the difference. There was nothing else I could do, obviously.

Not a new item but equally exciting – my Samshield finally came! She’s so purty. Too bad no one will know just how pretty she is until next show season. I need to take a pic of it with my coat so that it’s all matchy. Obviously I had to sell a lot of stuff to make this one happen, but it needed to. My current GPA is at the end of it’s life span so I needed a new helmet anyway. And one simply cannot buy a plain regular helmet when one is an eventer. Especially when said eventer already has a coat and Ogilvy pad (also bought via Trading Up) that are navy with yellow piping.

And since I had a remaining shop credit, I jumped on the chance to try out the new merino quarter zips from Kastel. The green one was calling my name. An atypical color choice for me but there’s just something about it…

There has also been some saddle shuffling and news on that front, but we’ll talk about that tomorrow. The struggle is real. Real painful.

I obviously have a lot of reviews to do in the coming months.

Somehow, out of all of this buying and selling, I still managed to come out of it in the black and put some dollars aside into the Black Betty Rejuvenation Fund. Trading Up… it’s a thing.

FINALLY, a month later, I can finish the recap! In case everyone has forgotten, here’s Day 1 and Day 2 to refresh your memory. When we left off, Henry and I were sitting in 10th place individually after XC and Team Always be a Unicorn was first in the Adult Team Championship with a 17 point spread over the second place team.

At AEC they run show jumping in reverse order of placing, so I had about 20 people ahead of me in our division before I went. Luckily I think the ring crew was just as ready to be done as we were, because they were ushering horses in and out of there without so much as a pause in between. So fast, in fact, that even though there were 4 other rounds between my first teammate to go and myself, my trainer didn’t make it back down to warm-up until they were calling me to the ring. We quickly jumped 3 fences and off I went up the hill and into the ring…

where I proceeded to ride one of the worst stadium rounds I’ve ever had on Henry. I just couldn’t get a canter that I liked, couldn’t pick a rhythm, kept changing things instead of letting it flow, over-correcting, and basically every choice I made was wrong. I really have no good explanation or excuse. We had a few well-deserved rubs along the way before finally having a rail at the very last fence. I walked out and told my trainer “I deserved that”, and she agreed, because I did. Still, we got our completion medal, Henry got an apology, and I dismounted so I could stand and watch our last two teammates jump.

Jeannette went in and had a trip fairly similar to mine, also having the last rail (damn that stupid last rail, it came down a lot). Then, finally, it was Bobby’s turn. He was in first place after XC so he was the very last person to show jump, and he DID NOT have a rail in hand. At this point I wasn’t even sure what our team had left in hand anymore either, because I hadn’t been able to pay close attention to everyone else. The pressure was on, and I could hardly watch.

I was so nervous for him, I think I jumped every fence with Halo. He had a couple of rubs that made my heart absolutely just STOP, but they stayed in the cups. Finally, after what seemed like an hour instead of a minute, he rounded the turn to the last, saw a little bit of a gap, moved up to the distance, and had another hard tap. In that moment I think time stood still and I lost a good 10 years off my life, but all the poles stayed in the cups. This is the point where I lost my ever-loving mind, screaming like a banshee and jumping up and down like I won the megamillions. Somewhere in the walk between my vantage point and the ingate I started bawling, handed Poor Henry to Poor Trainer (who at that point was laughing at me), and hugged Bobby for a good 30 seconds. Proud doesn’t even begin to describe it. Bobby is a huge turd but I love him anyway and I can’t think of anyone more deserving of that win.

They did the awards for the Adult Team Championship first. Turns out that even with my rail and Jeannette’s rail, we still opened up the gap and finished with 19 points in hand over second place. Since they drop the highest score, all 3 of ours that counted toward the final tally were in the top 10 overall… hard to beat that. The best part is that our trainer made a bet with us that if we won the ATC, she would wear the unicorn mask for our win photos. She thought she could weasel out of it by standing outside the ring and trying to look nonchalant in the hopes that we would forget, but I yelled at her to get her ass in there and put the damn mask on. Everyone got a good laugh out of it and asked who was under the mask… I made sure everyone knew that it was AMANDA MERRITT of ANCHOR EQUESTRIAN. I think she told me that she hated me a couple hundred times but we all know that’s not true. She looked majestic AF.

After we got our team awards (which was so much stuff that it took a whole ‘nother team of people to carry it all) I started to leave the ring because I figured my rail had knocked me out of the top 12. Then I heard them call the 12th place person with a 35.8 and I came screeching to a halt, turned around, and put myself in line. I knew that I finished with a 34.8 but had no idea what place that was… turns out I didn’t change places at all, we stayed in 10th. If I hadn’t had the rail it only would have made a 2 place difference, putting us in 8th. I was actually kind of okay with that because the 10th place ribbon is way prettier than 8th. Shallow people problems.

Henry thought the entire awards ceremony was stupid and refused to look even remotely interested for his award photos, but the victory gallop was pretty damn fun. I will happily run around the ring to “We are the Champions” without complaint any day of the week. It was a pretty cool moment.

All in all, it was a very successful and fun AEC experience. We had a blast, had a great dressage, easy XC, and learned exactly how not to ride stadium. Plus we walked away with lots of awesome stuff. Can’t really beat that!

On Friday when I posted what can only be called my opinion piece on the bloody mouthed horse situation, I thought it might get a little bit of attention. What I didn’t count on was it getting over 40k hits (and counting), lighting the Internet on fire, and causing me to spend most of my weekend trying to respond to it all. Those 10″ of rain we got here in Texas at least came in handy for something, since it was far too wet for me to ride anyway.

There are a few more things I’d like to say on the matter before I return to my regularly scheduled blog content, mostly in general response to a lot of the conversations I’ve seen on the blog comments, Facebook, and message boards.

Somehow a lot of people got stuck on my post being a snaffle vs non-snaffle discussion. If you’re getting hung up on that, you’re missing the much more important big picture.

Some defended the blood, saying it happens to everyone and isn’t uncommon or a big deal. I’ve been to a lot of competitions in my 32 years and never seen it before in my life. It’s never happened to me before either. Not to mention: if you think it’s ok for horses to be bleeding from the mouth in the middle of a competition, you must not like horse sports very much. Eventing already has a bad enough reputation for safety and horse welfare. What kind of repercussions do you think we will face in the future if we let bloody horses continue around course and do nothing to stop it? We have to police ourselves or someone else will.

In case you missed it, someone named Emily jumped to ML’s defense with her comment on the blog post, which was probably the saddest of all the comments I read:

You have no place to comment on another rider’s system. Especially not one who is as successful as Marilyn. As a groom at the FEI level I’ve seen the behind the scenes and Marilyn’s horses are not being abused in the least. They are strong horses and she needs control.
So you can comment after you’ve won a gold at the Pan Am Games, won a few Grand Prixs and gotten multiple horses to Rolex
#TEAMML

I wasn’t aware that bringing home medals and ribbons was justification for leaving a literal trail of blood in your wake. I think Aimee of Sprinkler Bandit fame said it best

Our sport cannot survive mindsets like Emily’s. Any horse showing visible blood while on course should be pulled up IMMEDIATELY, no matter who you are or where you are. This isn’t just about ML… anyone should be pulled up. But a rider who has two bloody mouthed horses two weekends in a row should get extra close scrutiny. That’s not normal, especially not in conjunction with some pretty wild equipment setups.

I received story after story in my email and fb inbox from people who were at Fair Hill, all saying that many spectators clearly saw the blood and wondered aloud to each other why the horse was being allowed to continue. Is that what we want people to see and think when they come watch our competitions? A couple even went so far as to question officials, who assured them the horse was “fine” and had just bitten it’s tongue. That looks bad for our sport. Incredibly bad.

How it happened, while important to understand for the sake of prevention, should not factor into a decision to stop the horse/rider pair because it can’t be determined until after the fact. Visible blood should equal immediate mandatory retirement. Period. And I personally, as an eventer, would be 100% ok with that if it happened to me. I would WANT to be pulled up on course if my horse was bleeding so much that people could see it even as I was galloping past. No competition is worth risking his well-being or causing him discomfort. I would hope that the vast majority of my peers would feel the same. Not to mention that IMO a tongue bite serious enough to cause that much visible blood is not a minor injury at all. Mouth injuries hurt like a mofo, I think any of us can attest to that.

If we want to stop things like this from happening, IMO we have to target the specific wording of the rules regarding blood and we have to make sure they’re fully enforced. Having arguments on the internet about snaffles is a waste of time and energy. There will never (and should never IMO) be a rule saying we can only use a snaffle while jumping. So instead of arguing about bits on Facebook groups and forums until we’re blue in the face, why not channel our efforts into something that will actually matter? Email, call, and make yourselves heard to our governing bodies. Sign the petition. Submit rule change proposals. Help protect our sport.

And to those trying to threaten me, bury the photos, or have them removed – shame on all of you.