Month: June 2021

Surely I wasn’t the only nerdy kid who looked forward to the summer reading programs at the local library just about as much as the whole vacation from school part? I still read A LOT, every single day, although mostly non-horse fiction. Still though, I do quite enjoy the occasional horse book, usually non-fiction, and I’m always on the lookout for good ones. The one I got last week is definitely what I would classify as a super cool book.

It’s called Cross Country Completion: considerations about jump decorating, written by ‘r’ eventing course designer and cross country course decorator Janine Preece McClain. I’m always interested in anything about course design, or how horses read fences, or why jumps are set or decorated the way they are. It’s super fascinating to me. McClain has decorated courses for tons of different venues and big events, including 2018 WEG.

This book is especially cool, I think, being that it’s chock full of gorgeous illustrations and handwritten notes. It’s spiral bound, nothing fancy, but it’s just so freakin pretty. It kind of makes you feel like you stole a course decorators notebook.

Plus it’s full of really interesting information, like when and how to use groundlines, what materials to use, considerations regarding color, jump shape, etc. There were definitely a few tidbits in here that I’d never thought of, and I think I’ll be looking at fences a little bit differently on course walks. I have to admit that decorations aren’t something I’ve given a ton of thought to before, beyond noticing if something looked odd.

If you’re an eventer or a book collector, this would definitely be a cool addition to your collection. You just don’t see a lot of books like this one, but subject matter-wise and presentation-wise. I absolutely love it. Oh, and duh… you can get the book on her website here.

I’ve also had my eye on Trafalgar Square’s New Releases page. They’re the best equestrian book publisher in the game and I feel like they’ve always got some interesting ones in the works. There are two that have caught my eye in particular.

Eventers have probably already heard some hype surrounding Jimmy Wofford’s new book, Still Horse Crazy After All These Years. This one is more of an autobiography, which I always love. He talked about it last week on the Major League Eventing podcast and it sounds like it has some good stories from the old days of eventing. Definitely up my alley, I find Jimmy to be super entertaining.

The other one that made my list is Ride Big, which is about building your confidence as a rider. Y’all know I love a good book about upping your mental game, and this one speaks to me for sure.

From the website description:

Haime invites readers to dive into three clear and informative areas of exploration:

• The Confidence Building Blocks: Firm up the fundamentals.
• The Confidence Builders: Systems and tips to help you build confidence.
• The Confidence Threats: An inside look at what to watch out for in riding and in competition.

Throughout, those who have reached the highest levels on horseback in a number of disciplines share their stories, including Michael Jung, Beezie Madden, McLain Ward, Laura Tomlinson, Harry Meade, Oliver Townend, Mattias Tromp, Casey Deary, Beth Underhill, Fred Mannix, Jared Zenni, Jonathon Millar, and Kelly Soleau-Millar. These Olympians, champions, and medalists explain what they do in the saddle and how their techniques for performing under world-class pressure might help other riders develop a similar kind of confidence.

Gotta be honest, I’m kind of dying to know what Michi had to say on the subject.

What’s on your summer reading list? Any horse books caught your eye lately?

Is it possible for someone’s entire aesthetic to be navy glitter? I might need an intervention, y’all. Or a glittervention, if you will.

I have acquired yet another navy glitter piece to add to my collection, this time in the form of a show shirt.

It’s hard to see the glitter in a picture so here’s a gif for good measure. It’s beautiful.

It’s also soft and lightweight and just a really nice show shirt in general, so no regrets. And in my defense, I didn’t set out looking for this shirt. I was simply (innocently? naively?) cruising through some of my favorite European sites looking at shirts. Window shopping really, just seeing what’s new and beautiful out there because I do love me an interesting show shirt. Equizone (always dangerous for me) is where I found her, in all of her glittery glory. Technically it was on sale, and pretty cheap for a show shirt.

If there’s one thing I’ve noticed by now, it’s that I will buy pretty much anything in navy glitter. I have built a fairly extensive collection, and I didn’t really accumulate it knowingly or on purpose, I’ve just gradually found things I liked and gotten them. Just so happens that what I like is definitely navy glitter. The shirt matches my sparkly navy socks pretty darn well.

Now the navy glitter collection also includes (but is not limited to, because I might be forgetting something)

• leggings
• gloves
• brushing boots
• open front boots
• socks
• show shirt
• helmet

I think all I’m really missing at this point is a glitter pad, and if they made them with sheepskin I would definitely own one already.

I don’t have any riding boots with navy glitter though. We should work on that. I’m also not sure if the sorta sparkly coat I ordered counts as navy glitter or not. Teeeeechnically they’re little tiny rhinestones. Navy sparkles, for sure, albeit not glitter. That coat hasn’t come in yet though so as of yet it’s not an official part of the collection.

I did get my new (glitterless) Motionlites, though! I sold my other three and promptly ordered two new ones in the smaller size. Many props to Royal Equestrian, a UK store I hadn’t ordered from before – I ordered last Wednesday and they arrived yesterday.

Hillary and I combined our order so we could split the shipping cost from Europe. I just got a navy motionlite and a green motionlite… I decided not to replace the brown one since I had already ordered the sparkly coat. That’s, um, probably enough coats. This size definitely fits a lot better though, for sure, and I pretty much broke even money-wise in the end, so all’s well that ends well?

Which, while we’re on the subject, both of my overseas purchases made it here faster than my Smartpak order. Yes, I caved during their last sale. Once every year or two I kind of forget how annoying my experiences with Smartpak have always been, and something on sale will get me. Sometimes it works out. Usually it doesn’t. This time it didn’t. I snagged a navy and white striped sunshirt, a new set of quilts (fronts and hinds), and some standing bandages. The standing bandages are Toklat, so they’re good. The quilts are Smartpak brand and they seem… cheap. But more significantly, they’re stained. Both pairs. All four of them. They came out of the package looking like this.

Naturally Smartpak’s live chat has been disabled, and I do not really want to deal with this by phone (considering pictures are important), so I sent them an email with photos attached. Their auto response said it could be up to 10 working days before they got to my email. Good lord, Smartpak. And so far, yep, a week later I haven’t gotten a response yet. Literally every single time I order from them they remind me of why I stopped ordering from them in the first place.

The sunshirt (Smartpak brand) is ok. I do like the stripes and the fabric is decent, but the fit is a little boxy and long. Not my favorite but I’ll wear it. So I guess of the 4 things I ordered one was good, two were failures, and one was a meh. And it took 10-13 days for things to arrive (because it didn’t all come together). When I placed my order the shirt was showing as in stock, but when I went back a couple days later my order history showed it was out of stock (even though it still showed as in stock on the item’s page). Just kind of a general hot mess type of experience. These stained wraps though… they’re something else. In a year or two when Smartpak pulls me in again with a sale, someone please remind me of this. Clearly I’m incapable of learning.

Oooo ya know what though, someone (that’s not Smartpak) needs to make navy glitter standing bandages! That’s what my collection is missing…

As you may have noticed, I finally got around to “rebranding” the site with it’s new name! Well, at least in that I got the new domain name, set up forwarding for the old one, put up a new banner at the top, and changed my socials. Considering how long I procrastinated about any of that (6 months, but who’s counting) it didn’t really take that long. I mean, I do have full intentions of actually updating the rest of the site too, which is woefully out of date, and maybe changing the layout a bit, but… those things are actual work and I ran out of give-a-shits by the time I got the banner figured out. But hey, new name anyway. The old domain will continue to forward for a while but update your bookmarks!

Why did I run out of give-a-shits? Well ya know… Millstreet was live streaming this past weekend. Priorities. Must always stop whatever I’m doing if there’s a chance to watch one of my favorite event horses.

Plus I found a new horse to add to my favorites list in Tim Price’s Spartaco (an Italian-bred, don’t see that very often) who went around the entire XC course with his tail straight up in the air and his ears pricked to the max. He was having the absolute time of his life and it was adorable. A bit green but his excitement was so pure.

It was a little bittersweet to watch Millstreet since that was supposed to be our next big destination event, now delayed thanks to covid. But hey, at least Millstreet is up and running again… hopefully next year spectators will be back. Ireland is calling to me in a major way and I must go.

Other than the blog rebranding, the biggest news around here is that it’s FINALLY stopped raining every day. I long ago lost my good humor about the radar always looking like this.

At this point we’ve been a whole 3 days without rain, which is the longest we’ve gone in… weeks. Texas is feast or famine, I swear. We did need the rain after an unusually dry winter, but once it started it just would not stop. We got like 6 months worth of rain in a matter of weeks. The rain gauges from last week alone were throwing out some pretty insane numbers.

The one benefit of this is that it’s kept our temperatures down in the upper 80’s/low 90’s, which is pretty mild for us for this time of year. Usually by June we’re hitting triple digits already. I mean granted the humidity is higher than usual too, but still… you don’t immediately liquify when you walk outside, nor does the sun feel like it’s scorching your actual soul. It’s not that terrible in the shade even in the middle of the afternoon. I’ll take this weather, thanks.

Naturally though this means everything here is very very very soggy. Normally we dry pretty quick but even our fields are still quite squishy. The forecast for the week looks fairly promising though, so I think the show this weekend might actually end up happening after all. Granted, I’ve hardly ridden in the past couple weeks thanks to the weather, and there’s a 0% chance that I’ll be able to jump a course at all this week, but… preparation is overrated, right? I’ve been able to flat Henry the past couple days (at least a little bit, in the center part of the field where it’s driest) and he feels good, so… meh. It’s fine. We’re just showing for fun anyway. I did decide to do my dressage test in my jump tack, we both seem more comfortable in it. Now I just need to like… look at the dressage test at some point probably.

Oh – one other thing did happen this weekend! I helped Willow Tree Warmbloods get set up with a TikTok account. If you want bonus baby horse content and videos, give them a follow. Obi is already a star, naturally.

I am convinced that what we currently understand of genetics is just the very tip of the iceburg. I mean, it’s easy to understand or measure heritability when it comes to certain traits, like coat color or conformation. What I’m dying to know is what part of the genetic code is responsible for the weirder, more “niche” attributes. Like, for instance… Henry’s tongue thing. I found photos with his sire doing the exact same weird thing. Or how Sadie and all of her foals all have the instinct to want to sit on things (water troughs, trees, other horse’s heads, they’re not picky, but they all come out of the womb wanting to tackle problems butt-first and smash it…). Like, someone please explain whatever genes are responsible for those kind of idiosyncrasies, because I’m 100% certain there’s a “weird tongue thing” gene and a “just smash it with your butt” gene. One day we’ll find them.

And part of the fun of watching the foals start to develop their little personalities is seeing what traits come through, especially compared to their dams or their siblings. Teddy, for example, has been interesting, because we definitely all remember Ollie from last year. He was not lacking in character, that’s for sure. At first Teddy seemed like maybe she wasn’t going to be Mischief on Hooves the way he was, but little things are starting to come out that make me go “Oh yeah, there’s Ollie.”

I mean, the most obvious thing is the sass level. But then again, she’s a pony, and I’m relatively certain that sass has been bred into them since the actual dawn of time. Is there a pony in the world that isn’t sassy? Probably not.

We’re starting to see a little bit of a comedian start to show, too. Teddy’s got some jokes. I mean, usually they’re at Stormie’s expense (I think Stormie’s already got a “days til weaning” countdown on the wall of her stall), but she’s definitely got them.

But there’s one thing in particular that Teddy’s started doing that made me go “oh my god, it’s freaking genetic”. Remember how Ollie made a game out of climbing over the top of round bales? You’ll never guess who else has adopted the exact same game.

Her technique is slightly different, so far she seems more inclined to attack it from a gallop rather than just climb straight up it, but the end result is the same. Thank goodness the round bale is so small for now, while she’s learning the game and figuring out the moves. I have a feeling that by the time a new round bale comes in she will have totally mastered it and we’ll be getting some truly impressive leaps, just like Ollie. This little filly is a powerhouse, I wouldn’t be surprised to see her scale a whole round bale.

None of the other foals show the same “gallop and leap into the round bale” proclivity, they prefer to nap in them more than anything else. It’s so bizarre the traits that siblings share sometimes, I swear.

When somebody finds the genetic markers for Round Bale Leaping, let me know.

Happy Friday!

Well, our 2021 foal crop is officially complete. Unfortunately last week when Michelle checked the mare that was carrying Lissa’s second ET, she found her to not be in foal. She must have aborted sometime early on, after all the initial pregnancy checks, and being a chonky little QH mare it wasn’t really obvious until the end of term. Definitely sucks to not get Percy a full sibling, but at the same time it’s been a long hard stressful foaling season and there’s some relief at finally being at the end of it. Plus, like, who can complain about the 5 little cuties we did get? The class of 2021 is pretty cute.

Pippa is spoken for and Teddy is a keeper, but the colts will be available for sale. There were a few big moments with this crop, particularly with the birth of WTW’s first embryo transfer foal (Patrick) as well as Michelle’s much coveted grulla sportpony filly – exactly what she ordered. We also had no red-based foals this year, only bay and black (although Patrick and Percy will go gray), and a couple daytime births: one at 3pm and one at 5pm. Comparing and contrasting the two full siblings, Obi and Patrick, has been pretty interesting. There are some similarities but also plenty of differences, not only in how they look but also in their personalities. Genetics are funny.

As for the Baby Bets contest, while in years past it’s been a really tight race right down to the wire, this year we had a very clear and decisive winner. Bethkira finished with a whopping 80 points, with the next closest competitors having 65. Much of her success is attributed to the fact that she very impressively (what kind of voodoo magic are you working with, girl?) guessed all 5 colors correctly, and 4 out of 5 genders. She also got Lark’s foaling date and Stormie’s foaling time, plus some of the markings. That was a much deserved win. Bethkira please shoot me a message or email so we can get you your $100 gift card!

We do also want to recognize a couple other really good efforts. Two runners up had 65 points each, Kelly Synnott and Sydney Salle. We’re in the process of setting up a WTW merch store with Two Socks Designs, and as soon as it’s open we’d like to comp you guys an item of your choice up to $30 value. Drop me a message with your email and once Two Socks is ready to open the shop we’ll get you guys hooked up with something. I think Kelly deserves a special shoutout too because she guessed the foaling date, color, gender, and leg markings of Teddy, along with the comment “all I want for my bday is Michelle to get her grulla filly out of Stormie!” – that’s exactly what happened, so the good juju paid off and was much appreciated.

Thanks to everyone who played along with the contest this year, and congrats to the winners! Whether you won or not we hope you’re enjoying the Foal Friday posts, and now WTW is hard at work creating our 2022 crop.