Month: December 2020

I usually pick one item every year to win my own personal “MVP” award, whether it be as simple as an awesome hoofpick (look, anyone who’s kept horses on black clay soil knows how important those are) or as complicated as a helmet camera. 2020 was a challenging year to say the least, the ripple effect of the pandemic making for a pretty quiet and solitary year on the horse front. For an active blogger the lack of horse shows, lessons, xc schoolings, and general “fun” outings made it difficult to come up with content sometimes. And when you’re like me and ride alone 99.9% of the time, the lack of outings or social events also meant that it would be super challenging to get any of kind of pictures or video. No one wants to read blog posts with no pictures or video, right? Enter: Pivo.

I’ve talked enough about the ins and outs of this thing by now that I won’t bore you with any of that. There are a lot of old posts you can go read if you missed them the first time through.

Look, is Pivo perfect? Hell no. New software releases can be buggy sometimes. It has a lot of limitations. There is a learning curve. It needs a relatively new phone and works better with iPhones than Androids. Pivo is very much still a work in progress, something to be expected from relatively new technology. For me, though, it’s been magical. Without that little pod I would have had very few photos or videos this year at all, and next to no footage of Presto period. Not only has it been a great learning tool, but it’s also captured some really big “firsts” that I’m delighted to have on film. I can watch my rides and see how the horses are looking and pick out things for us to work on. The education value has been super helpful for me. Plus, ya know… the fails. Those are priceless too.

For as cheap as it is ($140 for the Silver) it’s made such a big impact. Not everyone can justify dropping $800+ on a Pixem or a Soloshot, myself included, but a Pivo can be worked into just about any budget and it’s a lot easier to set up for those of us who are lazy or perpetually short on time (or holding a baby horse that has the attention span of a gnat). I still have absolutely no guilt and zero regrets about that particular quarantine splurge, and it’s definitely gotta be my 2020 MVP. It’s provided entertainment, insight, and memories… hard to beat that.

What was your favorite purchase in 2020? Any must-have items that would make your MVP list?

Well guys, apparently Facebook (as so many others that have come before) has decided that my presence is intolerable. Or, more specifically, my blog’s domain name and title. They sent myself and WordPress a trademark violation notice, with that super professional-sounding corporate way of threatening to destroy your life that really just makes your eyes roll around in your head. Sure Facebook, ok. I feel like y’all have bigger fish to fry but whatever.

So I have two options: change the name of the blog and get a new domain name, or ride it out and hope facebook forgets about me and that WordPress doesn’t shut me down.

As tempted as I am to flip them the bird and go with the latter option, truth be told I’ve been considering a re-branding for a while anyway. The only reason I haven’t done it is because 1) I’m lazy. It’s a lot of work to redo all this stuff and buy a new domain name and change all my social media blah blah blah. Ugggggggggh. 2) I have yet to come up with a name I really like.

When I started this blog, almost 6 years ago now, I never actually thought it would go anywhere. It was a very tiny for-fun thing that I did for my own entertainment. I still do it for my own entertainment, but it certainly grew to something much bigger and has lasted a lot longer than I ever expected. If I’d known it then, I probably would have chosen a different name right out of the box. I mean… at that point the story WAS mostly about how and where I got Henry. I’d only had him for about 6 months, it was still very new, we were still in h/j land, and things were very very very different than they are now. IMO I think we outgrew the name a long time ago… the story is so much more than that now. Plus the use of the word “pony” has been very confusing for a lot of people, understandably.

That said, I still have no idea what I want to name it. I know that I don’t want something wildly specific that won’t have any relevance in 5 years (been there done that). I know that I don’t want it to be just my own name, and I don’t really want it to be the current horse’s names. And I really don’t want any part of the current name in the new name at all, to be honest. If I’m going to all the effort of re-branding, I might as well use the opportunity to totally revamp. A lot of my pages and my layout have been long overdue for an update for quite a while anyway (is that weanling Presto on my header photo? maybe….). I don’t mind if I lose followers so it doesn’t have to tie in. I’m coming up totally blank though.

A few suggestions that I haven’t hated: BreederOwnerRiderEventer (or drop the owner part and just BreederRiderEventer), Chance the Eventer (a lot of people know me by my last name), Hennything is Possible… but nothing has really grabbed me yet. I’m struggling to find that balance between generic enough but not too boring. Something that encompasses everything. This is hard. The name is important.

So here I am once again asking the hive mind for some assistance. I know there are people out there much more clever and creative than I am, so if you have any suggestions please please let me know. I’ll even sweeten the deal and say that if I pick a name you suggest, I’ll send you a $20 e-gift card from RW or Corro (your choice)!

Despite what Presto may think, there’s more to life than ruthlessly destroying every ball I buy him.

Especially now, with his 4yo year looming very close on the horizon. I’ve made an effort over his 3yo year to build him up very slowly, mentally and physically. He’s got about 40 rides now by my guesstimation (I stopped counting at a point), which is what a lot of horses would have after 60 days at the breaker. So while he’s been under saddle since March, we’ve gone at an absolutely glacial pace, punctuated with periods of time off. This was totally by design, I think it takes time and (slow) miles for horses to build up the strength to carry a rider easily, and I wanted him to come into his 4yo year with some foundation in place rather than just throwing him into work (insert usual disclaimer of this is my opinion, you don’t have to subscribe to it). I wanted his mind and his body in a place where he was prepared to start “real” training when he’s 4. Think of the 3yo year like an equine Pre-K, I suppose.

The goal was to arrive at his 4yo year with him understanding that he has a job, have him forward-thinking and enjoying said job, and that his body has some strength and balance, at least enough to start to build on. This of course has meant that we’ve done a lot of hacking. He’s been ridden outside of the ring just as much if not more so than he’s been ridden in it, and we started that way back somewhere around ride #6. That was the first baby step toward the larger goal of getting him used to riding on varied terrain and different types of footing, which is the next baby step towards cross country.

Last week he went on his first little road hack. I ponied him out there a couple times last winter, but this was his first time venturing out on his own. The vet wanted me to do long walks to help the swelling go down in his knee (good news – knee is now back to normal, the cut is pretty much healed, and he finished his antibiotics yesterday) and my front gate happened to be open for once, so I added a little road loop to the middle of our hack. He’s seen enough by now to where it was interesting but not worth getting particularly excited about.

On Saturday I took him out to ride in what I’ve come to think of as “the cross country field”. It’s not a super big pasture but it’s got a couple little log jumps in it and some good natural terrain, including a runoff dip running across the middle that makes for some nice short hills and a natural ditch off to one side. I can do flatwork at the top where it’s flatter, ride him around the perimeter with a gentle roll to the hills, or cut in a little bit for steeper hills and to pass over the ditch. As he’s gotten more balanced and stronger I’ve been riding him out there more, and each time he seems to improve.

I rarely lunge before I ride him… haven’t in a while. Mostly because I’m not a huge fan of a lot of lunging, and also because I think that part of learning to be a riding horse is learning that when the saddle goes on, they’re in work mode. If he wants to get his sillies out he’s got 23 other hours in the day to do so. Plus the whole perk of having a young one is trying to mold him into the horse I want to have later on, so I try to treat him like that horse as much as possible. Every once in a while he’ll have the devil in his eyes and I might trot him around on the line for a few minutes and do lots of transitions to get his brain plugged in, but that’s about it, and those instances have gotten more and more rare as he’s settled into his job.

That’s not to say that I get on and he’s just calm and focused right out of the gate though. I mean… he’s a baby horse and I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but he’s kind of A LOT. Sometimes when we get out to the field and start trotting he’s a little pumped, a little quick, or wants to break to canter. That’s fine. I’ve got no problem with that as long as he isn’t rude or malicious (no bucking or bolting allowed, which luckily he has never shown any predisposition toward). I will never get upset at him for wanting to go forward. I just keep my posting rhythm steady, give him some circles of varying sizes and figure 8’s to occupy his brain, and wait it out. If he breaks to canter I let him go for a circle, then ask him to trot again. I think it’s important, especially for event horses, that they always feel like forward is a viable option. I like that he’s sharp off the leg and I like that he wants to go – those are good qualities, so I try to nurture them. Supreme Goal: just don’t mess up the horse.

Within a few minutes he always settles, at which point I start playing with the terrain. For now I try to mostly leave him alone and let him figure it out. I’m responsible for my balance, and not hindering him, but he’s responsible for his balance and his feet. If he struggles I’ll help him with a half halt here or a “more forward” there, but at this particular juncture I really want him to learn how to think and manage it himself. And so far, he really has. In the beginning I felt like we might go ass over tea kettle at any moment (ever trotted downhill on a drunk fence post?), but now you can feel him thinking about the terrain and adjusting himself appropriately. He can trot or canter up and down the little hills and pick his way through fallen branches (usually…).

Another thing I’ve started to introduce is just the very baby beginnings of a gallop. I’ve yet to really ask him to GO for real, but we’ve started to open it up a bit and get him moving a little quicker. I think it’s super important that they understand how to gallop (it’s THE biggest selling point of an OTTB as event prospect, for me) so we’re working our way towards that next.

The field has too many trees/bushes/hills for my Pivo to work very well (granted I could have at least turned it on during the flatwork part but I wasn’t really thinking), so I’ve not been videoing any of his work out there up to now, but I did at least prop my phone up on Saturday to try to get something. Much love to the baby horse that is totally ok with me carrying and setting up my tripod from his back. Henry loses his shit when I try to telescope the legs. The only problem with Presto is that he wants to play with the tripod. It’s crappy footage, but you can see a bit of what he’s working on anyway.

I like having this “free time” to work on these kinds of things. He hasn’t started jump training yet, he’s not being rideen more than 2-3 days a week, he’s not doing any real dressage yet, he has no shows looming on the horizon… it’s a nice low pressure time to be able to install these kinds of super basic things that hopefully set him up for what’s to come, and get his body prepped to more easily handle his career. I’m hoping that the real work will come a little easier to him by the time we get there.

Admittedly Christmas isn’t really my holiday. I’m not religious, there’s none of that “fun in the snow” thing happening in Texas, and aside from Elf and It’s a Wonderful Life, I’m not really into Christmas movies or any of that stuff either. Halloween is my holiday. But I do like parts of Christmas, especially out here on the farm. Like making the horses a special Christmas breakfast.

Which they inhaled, of course. They both went for the cream pie first. Henry is an experienced mint eater but Presto is still trying to figure out if he likes them or not, and how to eat them. He dug them all out and ate them though, albeit very slowly.

Food was kind of my unofficial Christmas theme this year I guess. I always get the dogs a special cookie, which they’re big fans of. I used to get them from a local small pet store that made them in house, but sadly they closed up shop in 2019. When I had the boys at the groomers a couple weeks ago they happened to have a good selection of cookies from another local vendor, so that worked out perfectly. They each got a gingerbread man. Quinn especially was pumped.

The SO and I have one single solitary Christmas tradition too, and naturally it’s food-related: we always go out for either Chinese food or Indian food for Christmas lunch. Originally it was Indian food because we had an AMAZING buffet by our house, but when that one closed we unofficially switched to Chinese. This year we managed to find a place that had very socially distanced tables (like no joke the next closest table was a good 20′ away) and super quick service, plus we got there early enough to where there were only two other tables seated in the whole place, so I got my holiday Sesame Chicken and they got a nice holiday tip.

When it comes to gift-giving I defaulted to food on a lot of them too. Admittedly, when it comes to soothing the 2020 burn, I can’t think of anything better. Plus it’s nice to be able to support small and/or local businesses that I know have been struggling this year. My dad got an box of cajun food shipped from New Orleans, and my brother who moved away to Georgia got a box of tamales and chili from Texas.

Not everyone got food though – I found an artisan on Etsy who does cool metalwork (largely using horseshoes) that had THE BEST horseshoe flamingo. The barnowners have a bit of a flamingo theme, and I figured what better for their Florida farm than a horseshoe flamingo?

Even better, the shop also uses the proceeds from their Etsy store to give back to horse and dog rescues. I was pretty excited to find that store and will definitely be buying from them again. How cute would these wreaths be on a barn?

The SO got a Masterclass subscription as his main gift, plus a couple of books and some spicy snacks from Buc-ees (here we go back to the food). From him I asked for a breaker bar for my trailer (he can get good prices on nice tools through his work) as my practical gift and a pair of sequin vans for my fun gift. They did not disappoint. Inside they just look like regular black sequins, but outside in the sun they’ve got a real rainbow sparkle vibe.

The barnowner played off of our horse doorknocker theme with the tiny house and got us these super cute horsehead hooks. They’ll be perfect to put inside by the door, and they totally look like they were meant to go with the doorknocker. Excellent addition to the tiny home decor.

I also got some cash, which will probably go towards an automatic gate opener. We got news that our expected couch delivery has now been pushed back to MARCH (it was supposed to be January) so I’ve basically totally given up on even thinking about a coffee table or rugs at this point. It’s all dead to me.

Overall it was a super chill, relaxed holiday. It was nice to have a little break from work since this is our busiest time of year, and the weather was super cooperative. It was a gorgeous weekend.

Hope you guys also had a great holiday and received/gave some fun gifts too!

I take holiday pics of the boys every year, and this year of course was no exception! I did drag Quinnie into the ordeal, much to her chagrin, but it was totally worth it, because LOOK HOW CUTE.

They all had hats – Quinnie was “Nice”, Presto was “Naughty”, and Henry was “Bah Humbug”. Naturally.

I did manage to get a couple cute shots after that, so at that point I thought poor Quinnie had suffered enough and let her go, retaining just the boys to get some photos of them together. They were thrilled.

And since y’all are getting the Director’s Cut edition of this particular holiday show, here’s a little behind the scenes of the actors getting ready. Or, rather, trying to get ready, but someone kept pulling the others’ hats off…

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas from the crew!