Month: April 2021

This is the time of year where Michelle and I are constantly researching stallions and offspring, watching videos, and debating which stallions would go best with which mare. After a while your brain starts to melt and your eyes start to cross, and you’re pretty sure no more information will actually fit in your brain. Granted, these are also some of my favorite discussions, bouncing ideas around together and digging into the nitty gritty of each stallion and mare.

This year seems more frustrating than most, with a lot of semen shipments held up, or behind schedule, or just not coming at all. A lot of the frozen semen brokers are out of stock with most of the stallions we want, so we’re having to dig deeper and think more creatively. We’ve finally got a tentative plan ironed out for most of them, although granted there’s always The Plan vs What Actually Happens. Shippers and mares and frozen semen inevitably never all actually read the playbook. But ya know… Plan A is in place finally so the gods of fate steer the ship from here.

My brain melts over this every year, because there are a lot of options and my opinion on what crosses best with the mare can morph a little after every foal, not to mention what the actual end goal is (top level performance horse? amateur horse? it makes a difference). Still though, looking at stallions and matching them with mares and having these conversations and doing this research… it’s super fun for me. It’s just basically playing matchmaker with horses.

While my own choices and opinions are very much influenced by the type of horse that I tend to like most, I’m always interested to see what other people would choose and why. So: Tuesday fun time. Pick any WTW mare and any stallion – what would you breed for yourself? If you’re feeling frisky, give me a more conventional choice and then an unconventional one.

Like for instance, if I was making something for myself personally to keep, I would pick Tullabeg Fusion for Grace as my conventional choice (granted he’s not actually available in the US so if that doesn’t count then I’d pick Mighty Magic or Connect to Grace), or Innenminister xx to Lissa. No I cannot narrow it down to one, please don’t make me, y’all know how hard it was just to get it down that far? For my unconventional off-the-wall pick I’d do morgan stallion Spring Hollow Statesman to Peyton. Y’all know I like morgans, we’ve talked about this before, and I really like how sporty that one looks. I was gonna pick a connemara or french AA but that didn’t seem “out there” enough. Be bold.

So here are the mares to choose from:

Lissa – competed to 1.50m grand prix. Bold, quick, long-lined and tall, very rectangular shape. Definitely a German type of horse.

Chanel – competed to 1.40m GP. Shorter, more compact, very careful, sensitive. Extremely well bred from Dutch and Holsteiner lines and the most proven of the bunch as far as offspring go – she had two in Europe and one is competing 1.45m with the other at 1.40m.

Sadie (Presto’s dam) – big trot, very tall, easy to ride and good work ethic. By a hunter stallion (from dressage lines) out of a TB mare.

Grace – Irish mare, cute mover, sweet temperament, genuine, good jump technique, was an amateur event horse. I kinda think this one could have moonlighted in the hunter derbies. A little on the smaller side of average.

Inca – little black horse with a big jump. She’s got some get up and go and is definitely careful but also very sweet and kind. Huge canter.

Vee – good mid-size TB mare with lots of bone and substance, more compact. Turf pedigree.

Peyton – tall TB mare, more refined and leggy with great natural balance. Turf pedigree.

Stormie – pocket rocket sportpony deluxe. Big mover with a big jump, quick and catty and athletic and brave. A little spicy but also kind with a super work ethic and tons of personality.

Daisy – breeding stock paint (so basically QH), homozygous dun. Extremely good hunter mover with a lot of elasticity and a huge step, believe it or not. A little smaller than average.

I think there’s literally something for just about anyone here, regardless of discipline or personal preference. Get your thinking caps on, pick a mare or two, and tell me who your fantasy baby daddy (or daddies) would be!

Someone is getting more and more wild as his time off for his owwie footie has been extended. This same someone may have come spinning and squealing out of his stall this morning like he was putting on a one-horse rodeo.

The good news is that Henry looks pretty much sound again as he goes streaking and prancing around the pasture, so today his 2 week vacation is coming to an end. Of course the tractor tire is dead so I haven’t been able to drag the ring, thus it’s concrete, and the ground elsewhere is getting really hard right now too (I’m getting concerned at how dry this winter and spring have been overall), so I’ll ease him back into things out on the hacking path in the back, where there’s plenty of cushion. I might get murdered, because he also loves to spook at literally everything back there, so ya know… pray for me y’all. He really needs to get back to work though before the hamster in his brain flies completely off it’s wheel.

While there was no riding this weekend, I did get one major thing accomplished – my second covid shot! I’m officially fully vaccinated, and it feels great. After the first shot my arm was pretty sore for a couple days afterward, and I fully expected to have some flu-like symptoms after the second shot since pretty much everyone I know has gotten some degree of sick after one of their shots. I was fully prepared to feel like crap on Sunday, I had some soup and some OJ and some Tylenol on stand-by, my schedule was clear… and I felt literally nothing. My arm was lightly sore for about 12 hours, otherwise nada. I actually felt weirdly good yesterday morning, like my body was saying GIMME MORE OF THAT SWEET SWEET RONA. So… ok then. I’m not complaining at all and ended up using yesterday to run some errands instead. I’m tired today but I have a feeling that’s got more to do with the fact that the dogs woke me up twice in the middle of the night to go outside and then I got an early morning wakeup call (okay I was pretty much already awake, but I was definitely awake after that).

Why did I get an early morning wakeup call? THE BEST POSSIBLE REASON OF COURSE. Lark had her baby this morning around 4:50.

It’s a handsome bay colt with a star and two socks who will definitely turn gray and he’s got some big ol’ knees and hocks on him – looks like he’s gonna be a thicc boi like his daddy. He seems very sweet and affable so far, which mostly just prompted us to be like “Pippa is gonna eat him alive…”. HA. He’s a stout little dude though and Lark had to push pretty hard, even with assistance, but they both seem okay so far, knock on wood.

And just like that, we’ve got two foals on the ground! It’ll probably be two or three weeks until we get to see the next one, which will be fun since that’s the full sibling to this guy.

I was so excited about this that originally I wrote the title in all caps and really struggled to force myself to go change it so I don’t appear 100% insane. But we FINALLY have our first Foal Friday of 2021, which I’m ecstatic about, and boy are we ever starting the year out with a bang with Pippa.

I’m used to a lot of the newborn foal pics being cute in that awkward baby horse way where they’re discombobulated and wobbly and 95% legs, therefore mostly just fuzzy and adorable. And while Pippa does have her moments of being discombobulated or silly…

for the most part she’s actually quite balanced, really light on her feet, and has a general air about her where she clearly thinks she’s special. I feel like she’s judging me and finding me unworthy in a lot of her pics.

Pippa also trots A LOT already, which… normally we don’t have our first decent trot pic of these jumping bred foals for a good month or so while they figure out how to work their legs. Usually it’s cantering or nothing. But she’s out here trotting around like a machine, and managing to look fancy in the process.

I’m… pretty impressed with her, to be honest. I mean of course I like Peyton, and of course I like her sire Leprince des Bois, but I’m not sure I was expecting the full Pippa experience. Leprince is a 5* event horse, his sire Yarlands Summer Song was a 5* event horse, and of course Peyton is a full TB. Pippa’s got a lot of blood, 81% for crying out loud, and a pedigree that screams eventing from it’s very core. I’d have expected her to be a straight up galloper for the first few months for sure. Definitely didn’t expect her to be performing her best baby Valegro impressions just a few days old.

To be fair, she does plenty of galloping too, and it’s nice. Like I said, she’s quite light on her feet and quite balanced, even when she’s flat out. Like a little sports car. She already seems to have a lot of quality.

I think the most interesting thing is how different she is from Remi. This is only Peyton’s second foal, so we only have the sample size of two. They also have very different sires, Remi’s being Ramiro B. He has less blood and is a much more typical heavier warmblood type compared to Leprince. And indeed Pippa is quite pretty and more refined… maybe partly to do with the fact that she’s a filly.

The differences aren’t just physical though. Remi was a little more meek, a little more inclined to just be a good straight-laced kid and do exactly what his mother told him to do. He wasn’t ever the first one to show up to play or investigate new things, because Peyton (the helicopter mom) told him not to. She might have her hands full with Pippa though, who has yet to look twice at anything, already trots happily through puddles, was jumping the hay pile in her stall over and over at 14 hours old, and has started directing Peyton and telling her where they’re going rather than vice versa. I think Pippa is a born bossmare, brimming with confidence and a little bit of spicy sass. She’s still sweet to and very curious about humans though, like Remi.

Granted, she’s only 5 days old, so these are the only observations we’ve been able to make thus far. I think foals do tend to start to show their personalities pretty early though, and she’s been no exception. Maybe I’m wrong but I get the feeling this one will be a little more sophisticated and little less goofy.

Pippa has already been sold to an upper level event rider, the same one who has Remi and Ellie, so she’s staying “in the family” and going to what I think will be the perfect home for her. I suspect that this one will be pretty talented and she certainly looks like an event horse.

Pretty darn strong start to the 2021 foal crop, I’d say! Healthy, beautiful, and already matched up with the perfect owner… you can’t ask for much more than that. Lark (Chanel’s recipient) is at 330 days as of today, and Chanel herself isn’t far behind at 315. We shouldn’t have too much longer to wait for more babies!

Happiest first Foal Friday of 2021, and here’s to the next 6-7 months of weekly foal cuteness. Yesssssssss I’m so glad it’s back!

I’ve been blogging for… almost 7 years now (JFC time flies). I like it, it’s fun for me, writing is cathartic, and I’ve met a lot of great people and had a lot of opportunities because of it. The only real downside, to me, (okay aside from the fact that it’s time consuming) is that making yourself “public” opens you up to a lot of criticism. Unfortunately the reality is that you have to have a bit of a thick skin to blog and/or have an active social media presence – when you choose to put yourself out there, people are guaranteed to have opinions.

All things considered, I feel like I’ve probably taken less heat than a lot of other bloggers, but I haven’t avoided it completely. Every now and then people just can’t help but to criticize the way you ride, or the choices you make, or, ya know… there was that whole ML debacle that I may or may not have started (my bad). For the most part I really don’t have a problem taking the heat. There will always be the ones who are just haters in general, and whatever, ain’t nobody got time for that. Of all the things I’ve taken criticism for over the years, none of it has really bothered me all that much, except for one thing: when I hand the reins of one of my horses over to someone who is a better and more experienced rider than I am and people want to judge me for it. God that really grinds my gears.

Someone is going to have to explain it to me because I legit don’t understand. When I had my trainer ride Henry at his first couple Training events because I had a little bit of trepidation about the move-up, the criticism was… confounding. I wrote about it then, and about the importance of the trainer ride for me personally when it came to helping me and my horse feel more confident. And hey guess what, it worked out pretty well because when I did my first T on him it was a seamless move-up, my horse was super confident and so was I, and we went on to have good success at the level. And now that I’ve handed Presto’s reins over to a pro for a little while, here we go again: I’m getting some of the same kind of comments. “Glad he’s doing well but sad that you aren’t riding him!” or “I would have a hard time putting so much time and effort into a horse and then handing the ride to someone else.”. Ya know… various passing comments (mainly in Instagram DM’s, why is that everyone’s dickplace of choice?) where basically people are saying that I bred the horse and raised the horse and put the first year of work into him, why in the world would I hand him over to someone else now?

It’s weird to me that I even have to explain this to anyone, but I guess there may have been a time in my younger years when I would have thought the same way. Back before I knew better, back when I was ruled more by pride and ego than by what was overall best for the horse. And for sure, I spent a lot of time not really being able to afford the luxury of pro training, so I get that as well. But the benefit of hindsight also allows me to look back on various horses and think “someone else really could have helped that horse understand xyz thing better than I did” or “we may not have had that big problem with x if I’d gotten help with it earlier”, especially the really green ones (which were almost all of them). There’s nothing quite like getting a few years down the road and realizing that your horse is full of gaping holes that you yourself helped install. I have never in my life regretted getting some pro rides put on some of my horses, but I can sure as hell think of many many many occasions where asking for help (or asking for help sooner) would have benefitted both myself and the horse in the long run.

I’m a big proponent of high quality early education for young horses especially. The things they learn in the beginning are the things they spend their whole life referring back to, and it’s SO MUCH EASIER to have it done well from the start than to go back and try to undo and redo things over and over again. Like, um… Henry for example. I don’t know exactly what the heck happened to him before age 7, only that he was “fried”, but I do know that he will forever be a tense tight horse that’s mistrustful of contact.

And when it comes to Presto, the entire reason I wanted to invest in a pro ride at this stage in his career is exactly BECAUSE of all the reasons these people are mentioning in their comments. They’re right, I DO have a lot of time, energy, work, blood, sweat, tears (so many tears), and money (so much money) invested in this horse already. And he’s a nice horse – so far he’s everything that I had in mind when I picked the stallion and the mare. You know what I want more than anything in the world? To do the absolute best I can by him and set him up as best I can for our future. Right now for me that means handing the reins to someone else, someone better than me, and letting him learn from her. Could I keep him here and ride him myself? Sure. But I have the luxury of being able to afford to do him one better, so why not take advantage of that?

Of course I’d be lying if I said that a part of me wasn’t a little wistful, watching his videos, mostly because I can’t wait to be the one in the pilot seat doing this stuff with him too. Granted, I’m a grown ass woman with a brain in my head, and I’ve had a shitton of green horses, so I also know that this is the right thing to be doing and it’ll pay off in the end. Our time together will come, but for now the priority is the horse I’m trying to give myself in the future.

What it comes down to for me is this: what good is it to be able to say “I did it all myself” or “No one has ridden him but me” if the end product is subpar, or has big holes in his education? I just don’t understand the appeal of that. He’ll be a more confident, more educated horse in the long run, which will make things easier for both of us. Win-win. So please don’t get at me with the thinly-veiled judgy comments about my choice to hand over the ride to a professional… if you don’t understand the choice now, I think you probably will someday.

I’m not sure there is any better group of people on the internet than Presto supporters. A lot of y’all have been with him since he was just an idea in a blog post, so in a way it feels a bit like he belongs to all of us and not just to me. The support he gets and the sheer number of people that are standing in his corner is really amazing. And extra shout out to Kathleen for today’s post – when I asked on Monday if anyone could get out to Majestic Oaks in Ocala early on Tuesday morning to video him, she volunteered. And she wasn’t even the only one! But Kathleen got a ton of great video, and I’m eternally grateful for her because it was a really important occasion – Presto’s first big boy cross country school. He’s been a couple times with me last year of course, just puttering through the water and trotting over very teeny logs and banks (like… very very teeny), but this was his first legit official school as a Real Boy, the first one with Megan, and the first one since he’s been in pro training.

He’s been busy learning to jump courses and getting a grip on his general enthusiasm about life. He thinks things in Ocala are VERY EXCITING (shocker, right?) which is really the whole reason why I sent him. Life experience like he’s getting there is exactly what he needed to help him grow up a bit. He needed to be a little wide-eyed and figure out how to handle it. But Megan finally deemed him ready to get out and try his hand (hoof?) at some of the fun stuff, and well… I think he proved what phase he was really bred for.

They started small, trotting some of the smaller stuff.

As he started to get more comfortable (and rideable), she pointed him at a fewslightly bigger jumps. These are the first over-2’6″ fences I’ve ever seen him jump and I’m pretty delighted with what he’s got in the tank. There’s definitely some scope in there, and he’s pretty quick and clever with his feet. Megan said she thought he had really good instincts, and I think you can see that. I thought he jumped well and safely no matter how he got to the fence, which is super important to me, and his balance is quite nice for a just turned 4yo.

a better view of the Novice table from that GIF, which is a little spooky with it’s cutout:

They strung a few of them together to make little courses. I think she did an exceptional job of waiting and supporting him without overriding or pushing him – if he wanted to come back to trot that was fine, as long as he stayed straight and kept going. She let him figure out his feet and his body even if it meant slowing down to do so, and as a result he really got better and better as he went, and never really looked unbalanced or concerned in any way.

Next was ditches. Presto has seen a couple of little ones in his life, in hand, but these are the first ones he’s met under saddle. No problem though, he popped over it each way, did the BN ditch bending line to box, then came around and did the N half coffin. Check that off the list.

Then it was on to the water, trotting through and jumping the BN table on the other side, which he did wiggle and peek at the first time. Figures that the only jumps of the day he really looked at were the smaller ones, he’s taking a page out of Henry’s book there. The table was white and blue and airy underneath, though, so that’s fair. He popped back over it the other way with no issue. Then he came back through doing a jump, water, jump a couple of times to string some things together. And then they capped off the holy trinity of cross country (ditches, water, banks) with popping up and down the smaller bank out of the water (which was on the N course), and finished by hopping down the T bank into water and cantering out over the little blue and white table again. He seemed quite pleased with himself at the water, and no hesitation to any of it. I think he had fun!

Here’s the full video if anyone wants to watch it. I left all the jumps in, just edited out some of the long canter stretches so it wasn’t quite as lengthy.

You can see a couple that he peeked and wiggled at, and the progression from the smaller questions to the bigger ones and how Megan strung things together. I left a few seconds of warmup in there too so you can see how he’s looking. Kiddo is growing up!

He has been deemed ready for his first event, so we’ll just have to see what fits into the schedule. She’s got a lot going on with her upper level horses in the next few weeks, understandably. I definitely have no regrets about spending all my money to send him to Ocala, I think it’s done him a world of good and I’m delighted with his progress. We’re finally starting to get a real true glimpse of what he’s really made of, and it’s hard not to be excited by what I see. He’s still got a lot of maturing to do, obviously, but from what he’s showing us so far I think he’s got all the qualities I wanted. It’s always a little iffy when you breed your own – you never quite know what you’ve got until you start asking the questions and seeing how they answer them. So far so good though, he’s really stepping up. Can’t wait to get to Ocala in a couple weeks and see him with my own two eyeballs!