Month: September 2019

If you are a fan of live streams, this was a great weekend to nerd out on a laptop with 3 different eventing options to choose from. I was glued to the Blenheim 4* XC, mostly because it suits my schedule much more to watch a live stream from 5am to 9am. But also because I’m already wondering why the eff we came back here, where it’s supposed to be 100 degrees today on the first day of effing fall, when we could have just stayed in the UK for a month or so and gone from one big event to the next. Poor life choice on our part. I could even SEE some of the shopping in the background of the live feed. Didn’t take long for those Burghley withdrawals to kick in.

I also popped in and out of the Plantation live stream throughout the day, mostly to try to catch some of the Mighty Magic offspring that were competing. He had FOUR spread amongst the 2*, the 3*, and the 4*. Turns out it was a great weekend to be sat on a MM at Plantation, because 3 of the four finished on their dressage score and the other added only one rail. All of them were double clear XC and two finished in 2nd place – one in the 3* and one in the 4*. And in the 3*, the two fastest rounds of the divisions both belonged to the MM’s. Sometimes it’s fun to be a horse stalker.

Another Mighty Magic won the 3yo FEH West Coast Championships too. “Magical” weekend, eh (yeah ok I’ll stop being punny on a Monday morning, sorry)? When you’re waiting for a baby horse to grow up, sometimes the only way to get your kicks is by stalking his relatives, so give me a break. It helps me stay sane(r).

Speaking of Presto, he also had some adventures this weekend. Some good, some bad. Very bad. On Saturday I stuck his bridle on and trotted the triangle a few times in hand, to make sure he still remembered how. The entry fee money for FEH championships officially left my account so I figured I should probably like… prep for it. For at least maybe 5 minutes. He was perfect, he knows this part pretty well by now.

Then we stood in the ring and watched the other horses work. He finds that to be equal parts boring AF and fascinating AF.

We went and parked it down at the end by the trailers, where he became very obsessed with the horse in the window. For a long time. He’s pretty entertaining, I’ll give him that.

On Sunday I was at the barn super early to load up Henry to head to Pine Hill for XC schooling. It started out really well when I couldn’t actually FIND HIM in the pitch black. He wasn’t in his usual turnout, and I guess I interrupted his beauty sleep, because he finally stumbled up to the gate looking only half awake.

I got literally zero pictures or videos from schooling, so… you’ll just have to believe me that it happened. It was our first time back out on XC since Coconino so I had a pretty rank horse for the first half, but everything clicked back together by the end. It would be nice if the ground would soften up a bit so we could get back to our regular gallop schedule. Someone needs it. Anyway, since I didn’t get pics I’ll just give you GIFs.

The first half went like this

And the second half went like this

When I got home I unloaded the trailer, unpacked everything and was flyspraying the boys, getting ready to leave, when…

Yes that is Presto.

Yes that is a couple of gross cuts.

Yes that is a really swollen hock.

You gotta be effing kidding me, you little shit. It’s as if he could FEEL that entry fee money leave my account on Saturday. HORSES. EFFING HORSES. How? I don’t even know how!

Luckily the vet was just getting in his truck to leave when I found it, so he climbed back out, looked at it, gave him some banamine and penicillin, and said “Jesus, this is getting ridiculous. I have my gun back here if you want me to shoot him.” NO I DO NOT WANT YOU TO SHOOT HIM, YOU ARE NOT FUNNY (also that’s not very believable from a man who has a farm full of animals that other people wanted to put down and he wouldn’t do it). “Okay well you should probably cold hose it then.”.

So I cold hosed. For a long time. And Hillary won the A+ friend award by bringing me a blueberry lemonade to make cold hosing seem less miserable. By the time I was done it looked like the swelling had already gone down a bit. I slapped some Surpass on the hock, sprayed the wound with Alushield, cursed Presto a few more times, and headed home. I guess we’ll see if we can get that swelling down and the wound looking better before Championships, which are… Thursday. And maybe, like… not accrue any additional injuries before then? That would also be great.

HORSES.

This blog hop has been making the rounds and I’ve really enjoyed reading everyone’s answers to these questions, plus it’s Friday and I can’t brain hard enough for other content, so here we go!

1. Favorite quirk your horse has?

Henry – his weird tongue thing that he does, where he flops it out the side of his mouth and sucks on it. If he did it under saddle it most definitely would not be my favorite, but luckily he doesn’t, therefore it’s cute.

Presto – I’ll be honest, I find his constant need to have something in his mouth to be hilarious. Mostly when he’s holding something he shouldn’t (like a crosstie) and you’re like “Presto!” and he just goes totally still but doesn’t drop the object. He’s like “what, there’s nothing in my mouth, I dunno what you mean.”. It’s a symptom of his general personality, which I love. Luckily it seems like he wants to hold things more than actually chew on them… most of the time.

2. Three adjectives that perfectly describe your horse?

Henry – cheeky, genuine, emotional

Presto – confident, goofy, curious

3. Plan your next ride. What will you do/work on?

Pole work! We do a lot of that.

4. Have you ever trained an OTTB? If yes, what was the biggest challenge?

Many. I think they’re all quite different, you can’t really come at each of them exactly the same way. The most important thing is to be realistic about the horse you have, what it’s holes are, and what it needs physically and mentally. I also think that it’s important to remember that there are huge changes in their body happening in that first 6 months to a year off the track, and they might need extra support or help, changes in diet, extra care, etc etc. Stay diligent and be ready to alter your program as needed.

5. Have you ever groomed or worked for a professional rider?

Yes to both. I’ve been a working student for a couple different upper level riders and have done some work here and there (mostly when I was younger) as a groom.

6. Favorite horse and rider combination?

I tend to be drawn to the ones where you can really see and feel the connection they have forged together over time. To me that’s what it’s all about. You know, the people who clearly worship their horse and maybe can’t even talk about them in an interview without getting a bit choked up or beaming like a lunatic with pride. Historically I’ve really liked duos such as Buck and Ballynoe Castle RM, and Michael Jung with Sam. They’re both retired now, so I think my current “famous” favorite is Ingrid and Hale Bob, although there are so many (at every level) that I really enjoy.

7. Have you ever ridden a horse at the beach?

Yes, twice! Once in Half Moon Bay, CA and once in Jamaica. A beach ride in Texas is on my bucket list to do with Henry, maybe this year or next.

8. If you could experience the equestrian community (i.e. ride and compete) in another country, what country would you choose and why?

The UK, hands down, for practical reasons. 1) I know the language. 2) SO many competition opportunities. 3) it’s cheaper. 4) it’s highly competitive. 5) it’s so saturated with top level riders, horses, and coaches. I feel like I could learn a lot with a year in the UK.

9. In your opinion, what is an item of tack that is given unnecessary hype?

Having come from the h/j world, the first one that pops to mind for me is standing martingales. I don’t really understand the whole “martingale as an item of apparel” thing, even though I’ve been guilty of it in the past (lord, the h/j life feels like it was such a long time ago). It’s silly. There are plenty of other things that I think are totally useless for me personally, but if other people like them then whatever.

10. What was the first horse you rode called? Are they still alive?

I don’t remember exactly which the first one was, but considering that was 30 years ago and they were schoolmaster types even then, I highly doubt any of those early ones are still alive! Thanks for making me feel old though.

Yeah I know, I’m slacking a bit on this one seeing as Burghley was 2 weeks ago. I fully intended to post this before we left but I had only gotten about 3/4 of the way through my spreadsheet by that point. And now I’m kind of glad, because I broke things down a little bit differently this time considering the heavy influence that cross country had, and looking back at the XC finishers and the top 12.

There was nothing particularly unusual in most of the statistics. By now, after doing these breakdowns on a lot of the big events, they are generally pretty consistent across the board. The average blood percentage (how much TB or arabian blood a horse carries in it’s bloodlines) of the starters – 62% – was a bit higher than we’ve seen at some of the European “majors” before (that tend to average around 57-59%) but a tad lower than we saw at Kentucky (65%). This is probably because with that big contingent of Americans we brought 6 fullblooded horses with us.  Fun fact: all 4 of the fullblooded horses that completed cross country were American (Vermiculus, Indy 500, Tight Lines, Unmarked Bills). Leamore Master Plan, who had the fastest clear round from an American, is 80% blood by full TB stallion Master Imp xx.

More interestingly, the average blood percentage of the top 12 was 73%… higher than the field average of 62%. However, if you look at the average blood percentage of the horses that showjumped clear, that dips to 57%.

The usual disclaimer about the facts and figures in this post applies: several horses, especially those of Irish descent, don’t have complete pedigree information. In those cases I have to exclude them from any datasets where I can’t verify the numbers or the parts of the pedigree I need. The record keeping (or lack thereof) around the Irish pedigrees is incredibly frustrating. Every breeder in Ireland will soon know that I’m a complete psychopath, because if I can find out who the breeder is I will definitely message them and ask if they know more about the pedigree. But hey it did benefit me this time when I saw that the winner was listed as being out of an “unknown” dam. I messaged and was told that they were fairly certain it was a full TB dam, but the ISH board was working to confirm that.

About 25% of the field had a full TB sire, where 40% had a full TB damsire. Sky Boy xx, Mr Prospector xx, Hoist the Flag xx, and Danzig xx all made multiple appearances, but the most common sire to show up in the first 5 generations was Nijinsky II xx, present in 5 horses. Lots of Northern Dancer (and Native Dancer).

While stallions are mentioned the most due to the fact that they produce way more offspring and therefore show up way more often, any breeder will tell you that mares tend to be more influential to the offspring. So it’s definitely worth mentioning that one mare had TWO offspring in this year’s Burghley field. Faerie Dazzler, who competed through 4* before becoming a broodmare, is the sire of Xavier Faer (by Catherston Liberator) and Faerie Dianimo (by Dimaggio). Faerie Dazzler’s dam, Mudlark (a full TB by Ben Faerie xx), produced two advanced level event horses herself. Great mareline!

As usual we have some stallions showing up more than once within the first few generations: Courage II is the sire of 3 horses (2 finished top 15, one DNF), OBOS Quality is the sire of 2 (the winner and one DNF), Fleetwater Opposition is the sire of 2 (both DNF), Mill Law is the sire of 2 (one top 20, one DNF), Cavalier Royale is the damsire of two and the sire’s sire of two (2 top 10, one top 20, one DNF), Marlon is the sire of 1 and the damsire of 1 (top 20 and DNF), Cruising is the sire of 1 and the damsire of 1 (one top 25, one DNF), Chellano Z is the sire’s sire of 2 (2nd place and DNF), and Master Imp xx is the sire of 1 and the sire’s sire of 1 (one top 10, one DNF). We’ve seen most of those names before.

This time I did a little more digging, looking further back in the pedigrees to pull out more sire lines. This was a little interesting. Galoubet shows up in 4 horses, Landgraf in 4, Capitol in 5, Ramiro in 6, Clover Hill in 9 (by far the most represented Irish horse), and Cor de la Bryere in a remarkable 13 horses. Five of those 13 are via his grandson Contender, who was by Calypso II out of a Ramiro mare. Even more incredibly, 6 of the top 12 horses – HALF – have Cor de la Bryere in their pedigree at least once.

Corde was a prolific showjumping sire, becoming a legend in the Holsteiner breeding history books. He’s pretty common in jumping pedigrees these days. And while he found much success being crossed with the Holsteiner mare base, if you look at his pedigree he is actually Selle Francais – and 2/3 TB at that. He is by TB stallion Rantzau xx. His jumping prowess combined with a good bit of blood seems to help make him a prevalent ancestor of event horses.

The other more interesting thing (to me) that showed up was the representation of particular registries. For instance, 38% of the field had one full TB parent. When you look at just XC finishers, that number drops slightly to 37%. However, if you look at just the top 12 final placings, 50% of those horses could be verified as having at least one full TB parent.

We saw a  similar trend when it came to Selle Francais, traditional Irish Sporthorse (ie contains Irish Draught), and Holsteiner bloodlines. The percentage of horses in the field that carried Selle Francais bloodlines in the first 4 generations was 29%. For XC finishers that figure rose to 35%, and for top 12 horses it rose a little more to 46%. Same story for traditional ISH. The percentage of horses in the field that carried traditional Irish bloodlines in the first 4 generations was 19%. For XC finishers that figure more than doubled to 41%, and for top 12 horses it rose even more to 55%.  Holsteiner blood was also largely represented. The percentage of horses in the field that carried Holsteiner bloodlines in the first 4 generations was 49%. For XC finishers that rose to 55%, and for top 12 horse it went up to a whopping 73%. To lend some comparison, 17% of the top 12 carried Hanoverian bloodlines, and 0% of the top 12 carried Trakehner.

So when compared to the overall starting numbers, TB, Holsteiner, Selle Francais, and traditional Irish blood have a higher amount of representation in the top 12 horses.

But once again, even amid all of the more predictable pedigrees, eventing also showed some diversity, with an Arabian x TB cross (Vermiculus), a Connemara x TB cross (Feldale Mouse), and a Clydesdale x TB cross (Harelaw Wizard). Cross it with a TB and it still has a chance.

Next up on the In the Blood series we’ll be keeping an eye on all the Young Horse Championships that are happening in the next month or so, both here in the US and in Europe! Hope I haven’t bored everyone to death yet.

When we last left off with our intrepid baby hero, he had tried to rip one of his feet off. Like… a week before entries closed for FEH Championships. Because horse.

The vet had to nerve block the foot, trim off the flap of hoof, and do some magic to try to preserve as much of the tissue as possible. Presto pretty much took off the entire heel of that hoof, and ripped a flap of tissue up into the coronet band. How, I still do not know, but he was pretty thorough. It took the vet a while to get it cleaned up and situated as he wanted it, and he bandaged it up and advised me that Championships were very likely off the table, and the heel of that hoof may or may not ever grow quite normally again. Depends on how much he really damaged. Good job baby horse.

When I left town Presto still had the bandage on, and the vet said he’d take it off in a couple more days and see how things looked, fully expecting to have to put another bandage back on so Presto would be able to walk comfortably. But it looked a lot better upon removal of the bandage, so he checked for soundness and against all odds, Presto was sound. Still a bit tender on the gravel on that foot if he steps on a big rock, but… sound. None of us really have any idea HOW, because it still looks like it would hurt.

The farrier was able to trim his feet without a problem, and we’ll just have to keep an eye on that one as it starts to grow out. It’ll be a while before he actually has a heel again. You can see there’s still a bit of open wound at the bulb, but the sublayers have already closed up so he doesn’t seem to feel it at all. I’m just keeping it clean and trying not to mess with it too much. Luckily its the outside of a hind foot, so it’s not a place he’s likely to step on or reinjure with his own feet (I said LIKELY, not impossible. If anyone could do it, it’d be Presto…).

The vet filled me in on all this when I got home and said “he hasn’t taken a lame step since I took the bandage off – go ahead and enter him.”. Times when it’s great having your horse at your vet’s house… he’s seen him every day. So the original 3-6 week timeline for soundness (originally the vet gave me a 50/50 shot of him being sound in time for Championships) really ended up being like 5 days. THANK GOODNESS. I will give Presto credit, he is a pretty tough little dude. Looking at the foot, none of us feel like he should be sound, yet he is. I know Henry definitely would not be.

I got Presto out this weekend and walked and trotted him on the lunge line for a grand total of 3 minutes. I wanted to make sure it wouldn’t bother him as he went, and it didn’t. The cellulitis that had developed in his giant effing butt hematoma (or as I called it – the 3rd butt cheek) is mostly gone now too… still slightly lumpy, but it’s hard to see. He’s looking growthy again (although for him he looks pretty good) and is covered in bite marks (we’ve given up) but… I think he can go to Championships. Knock on wood, cross your fingers, pet that rabbit’s foot, pick up a penny, find a four leaf clover… ANYTHING. I’ll take ANYTHING. It’s possible that I considered hanging an evil eye from his stall. Maybe I should just braid one into his tail.

So the entry is back in the mail (I went and retrieved it from the outbound mail box just in time when he first injured the foot) and I put in my PTO request for next Thursday. There’s no going back now, money wise, since there are no refunds. And that entry was really expensive for a 5 minute in-hand class. Hopefully I can keep him together and he can stay out of too much trouble until then? I dunno. Now I’m just nervous. This animal is walking T-R-O-U-B-L-E.

Presto has definitely racked up his fair share of vet bills this year. I remember his mother did that in her 2yo year too… hock infection, crazy ass wolf teeth removal that required all kinds of extra shit because they were GIANT (it’s never good when the vet is like “WOW, do you mind if I take pictures of this?”), x-rays, stitches, staples, something with her foot that I’ve blocked from my memory. I’m starting to think 2 is the worst age. At least for this particular line.

He also had his half-birthday a couple days ago. Officially 2 1/2! We’re getting so close to 3, guys… that’s exciting.

As sad as I was to leave Europe to return to the land where walking outside is akin to putting your face in an oven, I was happy to get back to my horses. I’m sad when I take even just one day off from the barn and don’t get to see them, much less 10 days. Plus I came back bearing gifts, and all sorts of fun new stuff to try on them. What’s more fun than trying new stuff on your ponies?

As soon as I rolled into the barn on Friday, Henry (ever the drama queen) pretended to be mad at me by retreating to the back of his stall. He does that every time I’m gone for more than a couple days. Show up every day, he greets me ears perked. Skip several days, endure his wrath. I gave him a handful of cookies and he magically got over it.

I wanted to try everything on to make sure it fit before I started taking tags off, lest I need to re-sell anything, so we started with Presto.

I thought Presto might hate the fluffy halter. Ever since he had to wear that muzzle as a foal, he was wary about things being brought up over his nose. Like no joke he didn’t really get over it until last fall, after A LOT of repetition and teaching him the “head down” cue. I thought all the fluff might garner some protest and make him think I was trying to suffocate him, but nope. He mostly just wanted to eat it. Which… watching a horse try to eat the halter that is attached to it’s head is akin to watching a human try to lick it’s elbow.

He got bored of that pretty quickly (because attention span is approximately .5 seconds), so I adjusted the fit and admired our $18 score. It’s so fluffy. I like it. I’m totally pretending like he needed a shipping halter anyway (he didn’t) and that it was worth lugging all over Europe in a backpack (my spine is still mad). I took him over to see what Henry thought of it…

and then moved on to Presto’s next acquisition. He was still bummed to find that this one wasn’t edible either.

These are the little faux leather bell boots that I found at Equip’horse for $20 and talked myself into buying even though I have like 4 pairs of bell boots already. In my defense, I bought these specifically for Presto (being able to reason myself into anything is my super power) and I do go through bell boots relatively quickly. Can one ever really have too many? It’s kinda like saddle pads. These bell boots do look really cute on him though and I kinda wish I had bought another pair, because I’m pretty sure they’re Equip’horse’s house brand but can’t find them on their website anywhere. Tekna makes some very similar to these although more expensive and hard to find. We’ll see how fast Presto destroys them. The faux leather itself seems very durable but I have my concerns about the elastic strap.

Once Presto was done trying on his new clothes (and putting everything in his mouth), we moved on to Henry, starting with his own super fluffy halter, and his fancy ice boots.

His halter fits him too, and he looks adorbs. He didn’t particularly need a shipping halter either but shut up it was $18. That’s basically free. I did kind of wonder for a minute if I should have bought them both navy, but I think there are two kinds of people in this world: those who match all of their horses to themselves (ie people who are orderly), and those who want each horse to have different things so they don’t mix them up (ie people who live in a state of chaos). I’m clearly the latter, as a human. Plus my horses also have different color schemes – navy and yellow for Henry, navy and green for Presto. They don’t have to match. So their shipping halters are adjusted to each of them and easy to keep straight without having to label anything. Works for me.

The ice boots are maybe a touch big for Henry, which I knew they would be. He was at the upper end of “medium” on the size chart, but Presto will definitely be in the “large” range, and I figured being a bit big is better than being a bit small. Large it was. They fit just fine.

After that it was on to the pièce de résistance…

This bridle is honestly my favorite thing that I bought. I had eyeballed the plaited hunt bridles last season but even I couldn’t talk myself into spending $200 for a hunt bridle when we hunt like twice a year. The vendor that had this one at Burghley (same vendor that had the halters, that place was dangerous) had plain flat hunt bridles with rubber reins for $30, or this plaited version for $50. SO CHEAP. I almost talked myself into the plain version, but then I was like “nah girl, you really wanted the plaited one last year, it’s your favorite style, it’s only $50, buy the damn bridle.”. So I did. And I have no regrets. I don’t get to hunt Henry much but I plan to hilltop Presto as much as possible next year, so I figured the purchase was more justifiable. Plus it was cheap, so if when Presto chews up the reins I won’t be as mad.

I tried it on Henry to make sure it would fit, and then took it home to soften it up. It was pretty darn stiff, especially the reins. Belvoir worked it’s magic on the bridle itself, which soaked up A TON of conditioner but softened up amazingly well. The reins were a little more stubborn, so I went back to my h/j roots and pulled out the good ol’ warm olive oil dunk + baggie + sunlight trick.

That worked like absolute MAGIC, and a few hours later everything was soft and supple and beautiful. Like… waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay nicer than I ever expected it to turn out, considering how cheap it was. Nicest $50 bridle I’ve ever seen, that’s for sure.

There are few things more satisfying than that first oil/conditioning on a new piece of tack. One of life’s greatest pleasures.

The only thing I bought for the boys that I didn’t really like was the lead rope. It’s soft and thick so I thought it might be good for ponying, but in reality it’s a little bit too short and EVERYTHING sticks to it. Like it’s basically just a ball of shavings now. But it was $4, so I’m not that upset.

As far as the stuff for myself, I’ve tried both pair of gloves and like them. We’ll see how they hold up, that’s always the real question. I really like the feel of the Fouganza gloves, they’re very thin but grippy, and I can feel everything through them really easily. Of course, that also makes me think they might not last very long. We’re 4 rides in with no signs of wear yet, so we’ll see. They were $16, it won’t be that upsetting if they die quickly. If they came in more colors I would beg Mimi to go to Decathlon and buy me some more!

That’s pretty much everything. It all fits, and I like everything except that lead rope. I really didn’t buy that much, considering the sheer number of stores we went in. I’m secretly relieved that Fairfax wasn’t there, because I probably would have blacked out and bought a breastplate that cost more than all of this stuff combined. I came in WELL UNDER the budget I had allotted for myself. When does that ever happen? Shoulda bought more bell boots…