Month: August 2019

With most horses, it’s easy to look at them and be able to get a good idea of their sheer athletic potential. The ones we pick out as being talented tend to move with a certain swagger, a natural suppleness with hints of raw power. Their reflexes are fast, and the work seems to come easily to them. All of our young horse classes are centered around gauging a horse’s sheer natural physical ability, by looking for things just like that.

But what you can’t see, watching a horse in the beginning of it’s career, is the horse’s heart. A horse that wants to please. A horse that really loves and wants to do the job. It’s a quality that’s pretty important in any sport, but especially eventing. You see it all the time, horses that have all the talent in world but they just don’t have the heart.

You also see horses on the other end of the spectrum – horses that don’t have great conformation, great gaits, or a whole lot of natural ability, but they have a heart like a lion. Those horses might not look like much, and they might not be the ones that score the best, but they exceed expectations because they love what they do and they really want to do it. It’s not as easy for them, but they achieve beyond their initial potential because of qualities that we can’t see with the naked eye.

Owning Presto and Henry really highlights just how much of the latter that Henry really is. Watching Presto gallop is enough to make anyone stop and watch, with his long fluid strides that seem relatively effortless. He’s naturally uphill, and just looking at him you can tell he screams ATHLETE.

Henry, while I love him dearly, is kind of the opposite. He is a naturally thicker-bodied horse, built downhill, traveling always a bit croup high. Everyone who sees him go thinks he’s an appendix. His stride is a bit short, and he’s not naturally very fast. None of this job comes as easily to a horse like him as it would to a horse like Presto. Which is why I never really expected that he could make it past Training level.

Well – let me clarify that. I knew the horse could jump 1.10m, that wasn’t the problem. What I doubted (a lot) was his ability to get us out of bad situations at that height. If I spectacularly missed the distance at a max Prelim fence, I wasn’t convinced that he had enough athleticism to save us. What I didn’t really take into account were those internal qualities that actually matter so much… his brain and his heart.

He’s smart enough to say “No, this isn’t a good idea” if I’m that wrong and he just doesn’t think he can make it (or, uh, if he’s real tired of my shit). Self-preservation is a great quality in an amateur event horse. But he’s also got enough heart to where, if he can make it happen, he’ll dig deep down into that little QH-looking body of his and pull out just that liiiittle bit extra that no one would really expect. It’s not as easy for him to get us out of those situations as it would be for a more athletic horse, but he gets it done because he he’s dedicated to it. He really wants to find the other side of the fence. He loves his job.

I was wrong about Henry. He’s got that little extra inside of him that you can’t see with the eye, but it matters a lot. It gives him the ability to go a bit beyond where his conformation and natural ability say he should be able to go. He’s scrappy, and he’s got the “lemme at em” attitude that makes all the difference.

Owning and riding Henry has taught me a lot about not judging a book (er, horse) by it’s cover. I find myself watching a little more closely these days, looking for that horse who might not be as attention-grabbing, but quite clearly just loves the hell out of whatever it’s doing. The ones who are all-in.

It’s so hard to see those things in a young horse, or be able to pick out from a quick assessment which ones will want to go that extra mile for you and which ones won’t. We really don’t know until we ask, and I do think that part of it (not all of it, but part of it) comes from how the horse is raised and trained. It makes me look at Presto and think of all the things I need to do to try to cultivate those qualities in him. Positivity. Confidence-building. Understanding. Trust. Patience. It’s a very interesting perspective to think about, when you approach it as if you’re trying to develop a partner with a lot of heart, one that really loves the job it’s doing. I got lucky with Henry, and I find myself thinking about how to encourage those golden inner qualities in other horses. Especially if I could get those qualities into a horse that was naturally more athletic, like Presto.

In this way Henry has taught me something very valuable, and made me look at horses and training with a new set of eyes. Have you ever had a horse that proved you wrong, or had enough heart to make up for some of their natural shortcomings? What did that horse teach you?

Sorry, literature fans, this post has nothing to do with The Little Prince. Although now I want to go back and read it for like the 200th time…

The subject of the day is sheepskin. Specifically sheepskin saddle pads. Extra-specifically saddle pads with sheepskin lining underneath the top half.

Shocker: Henry is a sensitive, delicate flower. Sometimes his coat decides that something in the universe has rubbed him the wrong way, and hair will start to fall out. Usually this is around the back edge of the saddle pad, several inches below his spine, although no area is immune. It’s worse in some pads (the spur rub pad that I use when he decides that my legs – sans spurs, I might add – are rubbing him the wrong way OF COURSE seems to be the pad that his back finds particularly offensive) and better in others, but none of them seem completely exempt. I control the progression of the rubs by using an assortment of powders and lubes, but still, at any given time there’s probably a rub on that horse SOMEWHERE from SOMETHING.

I had a real problem with this at Coconino, where he had a bite mark on one side that sat right under my leg, so I had to use my spur rub pad to keep it from progressing. In turn, the spur rub pad itself rubbed a bunch of hair off of both sides of his barrel along the back edge of the pad, because Henny. And once it started, even switching to the Ogilvy pads (which are what I’ve had the most luck with for him) couldn’t stop it. I tend to play this game of musical saddle pads in the winter too, when he’s body clipped and therefore anything that touches him is a good reason for a rub. It’s why he has to wear HUG blankets. It’s a little ridiculous.

Every time the rubs occur, I feel like I have a bit of a gap in my arsenal of equipment. This was especially true at Coconino, when trying to stop one rub resulted in 3 more. At that point it became a battle to keep as much hair on him as possible, especially when I was riding him twice a day. I really found myself needing some good old fashioned sheepskin, something that I used to own but don’t anymore. It was kind of a PITA to own and maintain. Especially in Texas where it’s hot AF. But it is the best thing for the delicate flowers, and I think I’m at the point where I need something, some kind of sheepskin option to use when the random rubs try to emerge, even if I don’t use it all the time. Naturally, I started googling and quickly fell down a rabbit hole.

I like the contoured shape under my jump saddle, more like a cross country pad. The situation is a little complicated by the fact that I have two different types of saddles. I ride him more in the jump saddle (and I use that saddle for our longer conditioning rides, where he’s more likely to get rubs), but… would I need a dressage version too, to cover my bases? Anything sheepskin is expensive, naturally, although finding a dressage one isn’t as hard and they’re not as pricey.

The cheapest solution is to just get a sheepskin half pad and use it under the regular pads. I have some concerns about that setup sitting well on him, though, and ending up too bulky, or fitting well under one saddle but not the other. Both of those scenarios are a potential recipe for more rubs or maybe even backsoreness, which defeats the purpose. But maybe I’m being too paranoid and it would be fine? I guess I could just use the half pad by itself if I had to, although I don’t particularly want to.

So basically I think my options are:

1. Buy just a sheepskin-lined jump pad (there are so many options, my eyes started to cross, so I quit googling. Which are your favorite contoured ones?) and hope that’s enough to curb the issue
2. Buy a sheepskin-lined jump pad AND dressage pad, to cover all my bases (again, suggestions welcome on which ones)
3. Buy a sheepskin half pad (dressage shape, I guess?) to use underneath the pads I’ve already got, and hope that doesn’t cause additional/different issues.

And the follow-up question to any of those – do I want them to be shimmable? I currently don’t have anything shimmable, so it would be a nice option to have with Presto coming up the pipeline since my saddles are fit to Henry, not to him. I don’t know that it’s totally necessary though.

I am a little overwhelmed with possibilities. I don’t really want to spend a lot of money on this, but I will if it keeps my horse happy and covered in the appropriate amount of hair. I could also just wait and see what I find while we’re in Europe next month. I dunno.

Help, the indecision is crippling.