Month: April 2020

After working from home for a while, I had to go into work yesterday to give a presentation and move some inventory around. It was my first time in the city in 5 or 6 weeks, and it was a little weird making that drive that I used to make every day but haven’t in so long. The amount of traffic was about normal, so nothing seemed particularly eerie until I got to work. Seeing everyone in face masks and having all kinds of new procedures in place was interesting. Plus the building was a ghost town, with 80-90% of the company working from home. Our company hasn’t yet put an “end plan” in place for working from home yet, and I think it will go for a least another month if not longer for most people.

But the state is letting the current stay-at-home order expire today, and in it’s place will be an order with fewer restrictions. Bars, restaurants, malls, theaters, libraries, and museums can open but with a limit of 25% capacity. They want other businesses like gyms and hair salons to open by mid-May. The new order also overrides any local mandates for required face coverings or fines if they don’t wear one. The state order encourages wearing a mask but doesn’t require it, whereas most of the local governments in the more populous areas had required face coverings a while ago and now the state order will override that. This is all really interesting considering the number of cases is still increasing and our state has done very little testing compared to most others – we’re close to last on per capita testing with only about 1% of our population having been tested. As for outdoor sports, right now they will be limited to 4 participants, with social distancing practices encouraged.

Of course, horse shows are still on hold. USEF announced an extension to their competition suspension (through at least May 31) and USEA followed suit. I think that surprised pretty much no one, there isn’t much other choice at this point given all the different state orders. During my drive yesterday I was listening to some podcasts about when/how horse shows might get rolling again and that combined with my weird day at work really brought home how, even with things starting to mobilize again, we’re still a very very very long way from “normal”. And that our new normal will look quite a bit different, probably for quite a while. It will be interesting how horse shows choose to handle things going forward, once restrictions are lifted enough to permit them.

Of course, it’s already getting hot down in Texas (we’ve hit 100 already) and we’re nearing the end of what would typically be Henry’s competition season. By mid-late May it’s already too hot for him, so horse shows won’t be happening. We’ll see about the fall season, but I’m not really holding my breath too much considering it stays hot until November. I think instead the focus will be getting Presto out and about, be it on trail rides or to small local shows just to hang out when/if they start happening again. I had no plans to show him in the Future Event Horse stuff this year anyway (which I might be second guessing right now if shows were still happening because he’s actually looking pretty good) but the fact that all of our local qualifiers have bit the dust just kind of cements that. No FEH for him.

USEA still says that they’re planning on going ahead with AEC’s, which if people still need to qualify for they’d have to do it real damn quick. It’s hard to even guess what things will be looking like by the end of August. Will there be a second wave? Will they have relaxed limitations on large gatherings? Who the heck knows. We’re in uncharted territory here. I am starting to think that none of the 5*’s are going to happen this year, although I’m still crossing my fingers for Fair Hill. I am seriously itching for some horsey travel, and we may or may not have already booked an RV site for LRK3DE 2021.

Since I was in town yesterday I stopped to grab food from a couple of my favorite restaurants to take home. That was my first time going inside anywhere aside from the grocery store, so it was bizarre to see all the guidelines and the spacers. Going to lunch is a very different experience these days. I did order one more mask too – right now I have a mask and a gaiter, but I think our office will require wearing masks for a while to come so I wanted to be able to have plenty at my disposal, as well as different options. Giving a presentation while wearing a gaiter was a new experience too.

Like everyone else, I am itching for things to start getting back to normal again. I want SO to start his job so we can order our house and start getting the current one ready to rent. I want shows to start happening so I can get Presto out to see the sights. I want the economy to start picking up so our oil and gas industry can recover and our company can make some money. I’m also just getting bored and stir-crazy. But I also don’t want everything to try to start up again too quickly and make things worse, or put people in danger. It’s a tricky thing and I don’t envy the people making decisions.

For now we’ll be keeping our distance, wearing a face mask, and waiting to see what happens next. What are you guys thinking is going to happen with horse shows this year?

I took advantage of SO being here on Saturday to get some video that wasn’t just us trotting past my phone set on the tripod. And, naturally, baby horse was very blah that day. It had been hot the day before, but Presto and his little 2yo friend had galloped around chasing each other all afternoon anyway, so I honestly think he tuckered himself out. He was overly snoozy from the second I got him out, and required a lot more encouragement to get him moving. Even his typically lovely big gaits were blah. It’s hard being 3, y’all.

He was well-behaved though, so we “worked” for all of 10 minutes. We’ve started working on changes of direction at a trot, with figure 8’s and serpentines, regulating his trot rhythm, and tuning in the “whoa” from my seat that will eventually work its way into a half-halt. Changing directions in the trot kind of confused him at first, he wanted to just default back down to a walk, but by the third one he got it.

We cantered each way, and for the first time he picked up the wrong lead. He initially had the correct lead, then kinda bulged out by the gate a little bit and broke to trot in the process. I clucked and he went immediately back up into canter, but since he wasn’t really balanced/prepared for the transition we got the wrong lead. It wasn’t a big deal, I let him canter down the long side, trotted, then asked him to canter again, and he picked up the correct one. It didn’t really even dawn on me until then that he had yet to have picked up the wrong lead so far at all.

Since he did feel so sluggish and blah, I kept it super short. He was also being fussier in his mouth again, I think probably a symptom of our lack of forward, so we kind of just ticked the boxes for the things I wanted to work on and then I let him be done. He’s going to have days where he’s brilliant and we can do more, and he’s going to have days where we just touch some basics and be done. That day was the latter. For anyone counting, this is still only his 8th ride. We’re very much still in preschool.

He’s getting really good at whoa from the seat though, that might be his favorite. He and Henry have that in common.

Since I did have a groundperson there that day, I decided to end the ride with a bit of a hack around the field. We walked out of the arena and into the field, and made a short lap. Presto walked very politely on a loose rein and never put a foot wrong. He’s certainly not immune to shenanigans, but on that day he was so quiet already from his escapades the day before, it seemed like a good time for his maiden voyage in the field.

I’m quite pleased with how consistent he’s being about a lot of it. He stands well at the mounting block, he doesn’t anticipate or get worried, and he retains everything. The progression is pretty fast, even if some rides he’s tired or some rides he’s looking for his friends, or whatever. The quality of the work steadily improves from ride to ride, even when his mood is different. I like that about him a lot. I think I’m going to keep experimenting with bits though, he still just feels overly fussy in the mouth to me. His mother really liked a Myler comfort snaffle so I’m going to put that on next time and see if there’s any difference. If not we may go back to the Nathe.

And, lest you think he is always Baby Genius, I leave you with this gem:

Yes, he did indeed trip over 3 out of his 4 feet within like a 20′ span. It’s really hard to keep up with all those legs, y’all.

It’s been a while since we’ve talked about the tiny house. Everyone’s lives and plans went on hold when this pandemic started, and ours is no exception. We had originally planned to order the tiny house in early/mid April, and clearly that did not happen. At this point I don’t really know when it’s going to happen.

The good news is, we’ve saved more than enough for the down payment we wanted to put down. The bad news is, SO was supposed to start a new job the same week everything went on lockdown, so they’ve pushed back his hire date to an as-yet-undetermined date. He had already given his old job his 2 weeks notice, so when they did layoffs he was naturally one of the first to go. Therefore he’s been unemployed for about a month now. Financially that’s ok for a little while at least (although his money to live is now coming out of that accrued down payment savings) but it does make things complicated when it comes to ordering the tiny house. It’s tricky to get a good loan when you’re technically unemployed.

SO has already applied for other jobs in the mean time of course, since at this point we have no idea what’s going to happen with the other one, but as you probably guess, not a lot of companies are hiring right now. That leaves us in kind of in this weird gray area, having to wait to see what’s going to happen. Once he does start a new job, it’ll be a month before we can go order the house and do all the loan paperwork, and then the houses take 5-6 weeks to build. So… we’re going to end up at least a couple months behind schedule, best case scenario.

But – there is a little bit of a silver lining. This spring the builder released a new tiny home model, one that we actually quite love. They already had a lot to choose from, but we have a king size bed that we are unwilling to give up, and as you can probably imagine, not many of these 399 sq ft tiny homes have bedrooms big enough to fit a king. So originally we only had a few options, which was fine because we really liked one of those floor plans anyway. The new one, though, can also accommodate a king. AND, it has a bigger closet. Plus you can add a back porch without taking away too much of the bedroom space. It does mean that the living room area is smaller, but both of us really like the bigger closet and the back porch.

Technically the one we like is a combination of two of this model’s floor plans:

Basically it’s the bottom one with the loft/stairs, but with the back porch added from the top one (we’d probably do smaller porches – 6′ front and 8′ back). Adding the back porch requires moving the washer and dryer to where the pantry would be, to open up that space for a door. You can see an example of one like what we’re thinking in this video tour.

I actually really like the model in the video. Like a lot. More than I’ve ever liked any other model as-is. There are only a few things I would change: that ugly reddish orange accent color, the kitchen sink (I want stainless), the door on the little pet nook, the location of the closet door (I’d like it opening into the hallway rather than the bedroom, and with a pocket door). And we don’t want/need cabinets up in the loft. And the bedroom door needs to open out, not in. And I’d add an island on casters in the kitchen. But otherwise… I’m obsessed with it. I like the colors (except the red), I like the brick accent, I like the shower tile, I like the closet, and I like the little raised area in the loft that would make a damn fine reading nook. I even like the exterior. That’s rare.

I think the big reason we like this one so much though is because with such a small house, we plan on being outside a lot. We want a porch we can hang out on, when it’s not too hot, and had planned on putting a big front porch on the other model. I had been waffling a lot about screening in a front porch though. I love the practicality of it, because if we’re going to be outside a lot, I’d prefer to not be inundated with bugs, but I HATE how a screened front porch looks on these models. It makes it look exactly like the cabins from the Girl Scout camp I went to as a kid, and I absolutely hate the idea of my house looking like a camp cabin.

But if we did two porches, we can leave the front one pretty and screen in the back one, using the back one as our primary outdoor space. That gives us the best of both worlds. Also having the screen door access off the back porch means that we could make the little fenced in dog-potty area back there, instead of at the front. I would much prefer that. The only downsides to this model are the smaller living room (I think we lose 2′ of length in the living room compared to the other model), slightly less cabinet space in the kitchen (maybe one set of cabinets), and slightly smaller bedroom. Our king would still fit, but it might be up against the wall on 2 sides. We both think we’re ok with those sacrifices, but we need to go look at the inside and see how it feels before we decide for sure.

I thought we’d had everything pretty much decided, but this new model definitely threw a wrench in the plans. Maybe it’s not so bad that we got delayed after all? We may not have seen this one otherwise. Fingers crossed we’ll be back on track soon so we can finally order one!

Things are relatively quiet around here, which I suppose is the case with just about everyone at the moment. I’m still riding Henry about 4 days a week, which for him is a pretty relaxed work load. Some days we do dressage in the arena, some days we jump or do pole work, some days we do canter sets in the field (which are mostly him spending the first few minutes leaping around all over the place), some days we do bareback flat work, and some days… I get more creative.

Last week after a few relatively sedate and boring days, I made up a little mini-XC course for him. All of the pastures here join together, so I opened a few gates to let us pass in and out a few different pastures, kicked any rocks and sticks out of our projected path, and put a couple jumps in the dressage arena. I already have a little baby log (like a foot tall) out in one of the farther back pastures, and some coops/barrels in a middle pasture. By opening the gates and linking them all up, I was hoping we could string together enough jumps to make Henry feel like he was having fun. They were all small, the biggest being 2’9″, but it gave us a little bit of that XC feel.

We started at the little log, went down to the little natural ditch (it barely counts as a ditch, more of a little dip for runoff, but Henry always jumps over it like it’s a ditch, so…), then out of the far pasture into the middle one, where we jumped a skinny coop to a barrel bending line, then looped back to the other skinny coop, out of that pasture into the dressage arena pasture, where we jumped a barrel and looped around to a stadium fence, before galloping back out to the far pasture to jump the ditch to the tiny log again. I had Henry in his sidepull that day, so it was a yee-hawin’ good time. For him anyway. He was jigging afterwards, like he really did just run XC. Close enough I guess? It seemed to make him happy, so we’ll call it a success.

It was quite hot the rest of the week so we kept the other “work” a little more basic.

Tuesday was Presto’s really good “redemption” ride, which I already talked about, although I did ride him on Saturday too (ride #8!). We’ll talk about that separately. Mostly he just spent his week galloping around the pasture like a lunatic and playing with his ball. Or rather, teaching me to play with his ball. He kept tossing it over the fence and watching me retrieve it and toss it back. It happened 4 times in a row before I realized he was legit playing fetch with me, except I was the one fetching. Who’s the idiot now?

I did order some breeches from Luxe EQ last week, which came in the mail. This is my first pair of Cavalleria Toscana and boy are they comfortable. Those damn Italians, I dunno how they’re so consistently superior at making riding clothes. They’re super stretchy and a really pretty green. I may or may not have worn them basically all weekend.

Getting those in the mail appeased some of my sadness about packages. The Mattes pad I ordered for Presto way back in January left Australia almost a month ago and hasn’t been heard from since. Either it’s just sitting somewhere in California in a pile with a million other packages, or a man on a very tiny boat is rowing it across the Pacific… I’m not sure which. And the pretty new La Cense bitless that I ordered is stuck in the country of manufacture at the moment, with nothing really moving outside of their borders, so, no idea when that will come. But I did get some good news last week – the navy Brockamp bareback pad that I’ve been waiting a couple months to be back in stock did ship last week and will be here this week. I was concerned I might not ever see that, since 1) they’re made in Italy, then distributed out of Germany 2) they have a very limited number sent to the US distributor every year anyway. But my navy one did arrive in the latest batch (which may end up being the only batch for the US this year), and it’ll be here hopefully on Wednesday.

I also decided to try something different for Presto’s crazy thick mane – a dog rake.

I don’t really pull manes anymore, but Presto’s is so thick he really has enough to have one whole mane on each side. A few people on my facebook were discussing a thinning rake, and I figured… for $12 on Amazon, might as well give it a shot. There was a slight learning curve to figuring out the best method of attack, but it did seem to help. I’m gonna do a little bit at a time over this week and then shorten his mane… we’ll see how it turns out in the end. But I think we thinned it a good bit on the first go and it’s quick and painless.

What has everyone else been up to? Staying sane I hope!

Today would have been cross country day at LRK3DE, if not for the coronapocalypse, and it’s got me feeling a little nostalgic.

My very first trip to Kentucky was in 2000. I was in high school, had grown up in the h/j world, and found myself starting to contemplate what the heck I was gonna do with my life after graduation. One of the options on the table was being a working student, and in those days working student programs really only existed with eventers. May as well go see what the sport was about, eh? Rolex was the first event I ever attended, my first introduction to the sport. And while those were the days before phone cameras or DSLR’s (I’m pretty sure I took these with a disposable) I did manage to get a few pictures.

Bonus points to anyone who recognizes some of these combinations! There are some big ones here.

In a lot of ways this was a catalyst event that changed the course of my life. And it’s kind of crazy how everything still looks so similar, even all this time later.

On that same trip we went to several big thoroughbred stud farms, getting to see the likes of Seattle Slew, Rahy, Wild Again, and many more. We even stopped at Churchill Downs and got to see the Derby horses working in the morning – I picked Wheelaway.

While I’m bummed that there’s no LRK3DE this year, hopefully everything will be back to normal by 2021! Here’s to 20 years of being an eventing fan.