Month: August 2021

Normally when I do my Monday update posts I kinda just jot down everything that happened in the past week and then go through my phone and throw in whatever random pictures I have. I legit sat here forever this week trying to remember what the actual f happened last week that’s even remotely worth talking about before turning to my phone’s camera roll to help me out. And well… I guess just… not much. Ok that’s not totally true, most of my brainpower and online chit-chat went toward one decidedly large thing but it’s still not 1000% official so I can’t talk about it yet. Soon. Otherwise it was kind of a dull week. Well, it was my birthday week if that counts?

My bday was Thursday, and I didn’t really do much of anything different from usual. I jumped Henry in the morning, since birthday jompies are more fun, but otherwise it was a normal day of work and stuff. I kind of ruined my own day to be honest, because I figured out (after much emailing back and forth) that Presto in fact is NOT qualified for AEC, because under qualifications where it says “Horse and rider must have completed a total of three USEA recognized horse trials during the qualifying period.” what it really means is “Horse and rider must have completed a total of three USEA recognized horse trials AT THE LEVEL OR ONE LEVEL HIGHER during the qualifying period.”. He would have to have 3 Novices or a mixture of Novice and Training completions in order to be fully qualified, and he has a BN and two N’s. So… yeah… he has the placings needed, and the number of horse trials needed, but since one of them was BN it doesn’t count for the qualification. Would be cool if they wrote that out a bit more clearly, because several people have made the same mistake, but… is what it is.

So that was pretty disappointing. Mostly because I was really really really looking forward to spending the week in Kentucky with some of my favorite people. Showcations are my favorite thing and that one in particular was going to be epic. Not being able to go definitely put a damper on everything. I cancelled my flight already and talked to Megan about what Presto’s plan is going to be now (what are we on, Plan C?) which I’ll write about more at some point. But yeah. Boo. Oh well. Just saved myself a shit ton of money I guess?

Last week was just kind of a mixed bag in general. A while back I sold off a bunch of my old shirts and breeches that didn’t fit anymore and ordered a few new things from my favorite Dutch store, Epplejeck. Their stuff takes 2-3 weeks to get here but their prices are so good that it makes it worth it. I’d ordered two shirts, two pair of breeches, and the new Micklem girth for Henry and Presto to share (despite Henry being considerably more stout than Presto, Presto is just so much bigger/deeper through all his parts that they can wear the same size girth).

Of course, when I opened the package only 3 of the 5 items were there, despite the packing slip saying that all 5 were included. SIGH. So now Epplejeck and I are currently going back and forth about the missing items. I had to send them a bunch of pictures and now they’re “consulting with the appropriate group” about it. I feel like it shouldn’t be that hard to verify, the missing items were a pair of breeches and a shirt, so the shipping weight def would have been a couple pounds lighter than it should have been had all the items been in there. But we’ll see what they come back with. Luckily I paid with Paypal so if they tell me I’m SOL I should be able to escalate it. I’m bummed because the missing shirt is the navy sparkly one and the missing breeches are the burgundy ones. And naturally the one shirt that did come was too small (it’s like… borderline child size… so much for that particular size chart) and the girth is kinda meh quality wise. I’m glad I got it from there instead of paying considerably more for it in the US. It’s pretty at least?

I do really like the gray Montar breeches I got though (I’m wearing them in the Henry pic above). I basically got the same ones as the navy pair I used to have, just a different color and smaller size. They could be a little tighter in the waist but I like the style a lot, and the price was excellent. I do really like the Montar breeches, I wish more places in the US carried them. Should do a mini-review of all this stuff I guess.

My birthday wasn’t a total bust, though. There were cupcakes (LOTS OF CUPCAKES, I LOVE CUPCAKES) and some queso. I could exist entirely on chips and queso and cupcakes and be a happy person. Maybe like 300 pounds but I’d be happily fed anyway. The SO and I had previously discussed how I wanted to do DNA testing on Mina to see what breeds (aside from Pit, anyway) it came back with, and he showed up with an Embark test. He wrapped it in my oh so precious unicorn wrapping paper so I guess it counts as a birthday present. We got the swab done and sent off, now we just wait. Anyone have any guesses as to what it’ll say? We should take bets and turn it into a game….

We also got some really nice rain yesterday, which might seem like a dumb thing to mention but y’all don’t even know how weird this summer has been for Texas. I guess all our weather got sent up north because it’s been so incredibly mild compared to usual, and we’ve gotten decent bits of rain. Usually by this point in mid August it’s been 110 degrees for a month straight, the ground is concrete, all the grass has been burnt to a crisp, and walking outside feels like getting whacked in the face with an oven. We’re still hovering in just the low 90’s most days (which sure that’s hot I suppose, but it ain’t anywhere near our normal hot), and we got a beautiful steady rainfall of about a quarter inch yesterday. The grass is still alive. In AUGUST. I can’t even tell you how happy green grass makes me. If every summer was like this I wouldn’t hate it nearly so much.

Without AEC on the calendar I feel like it’s taken the wind out of my sails a bit, with nothing to really look forward to, but hopefully that’ll change soon. There’s potential things at play at least. And how do we feel about the odds of the Maryland 5* actually happening with spectators in October given the current covid situation? I haven’t even dared to get my hopes up yet…

First and foremost – small announcement before we get started with the weekly dose of foal cuteness. We’ve gotten a lot of requests for WTW merch and thanks to our friends at Two Socks Designs we officially have a store for Willow Tree Warmbloods! There are a handful of basic items in there to start, and we can add more if there’s enough demand. You can also special order things if you’d like, the logo is on file, or you can get different colors by request. I also want to note that WTW is not making any kind of profit from any of this, we just wanted to be able to offer some logo stuff to those of you that have requested it, and support a great (woman-owned, Texas-based) small business at the same time. Cutting ourselves out as middle man also keeps the prices lower and orders moving faster. Fun fact – Sydney of Two Socks Designs owns Manny, from the WTW class of 2018. Gotta keep in in the family! Alright, on to the cute babies!

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Some Foal Friday photo days you get a camera roll full of cute or classy little foal pictures. On other Foal Friday photo days you get a camera roll full of, well…

For this week’s photo shoot the babies were just plain WILD, which… hey, at least it’s entertaining? They ran…

They played…

And Obi even made a dreadful mistake in letting a yeehaw loose right in Pippa’s face.

Don’t worry, she chased him down and reminded him exactly who she is and that she’s not to be trifled with.

And, ya know, since girls gotta stick together, Teddy made a quick little lap and buzzed right past their butts afterward for good measure

I’ll give Obi credit though, he is delightfully undeterred by being put in his place. He has all of about 2 seconds of regret before he shrugs it off and is back at it (with maybe just a little bit wider buffer between himself and the fillies, of course).

While Percy isn’t generally front and center into the real hardcore play sessions (he’s not stupid and neither is his mother), don’t think that he isn’t participating. He has plenty of moments of his own.

He gets PLENTY rowdy, especially in a vertical direction.

That’s not to say that the other kiddos don’t interact and play with him though, they definitely do. In their own way of course.

Poor Percy… he’s getting there.

They do eventually calm down. Sort of. As much as possible for baby horses, anyway. I’m not sure that Obi really has an Off switch.

Happy Foal Friday, everyone!

I know y’all loved that cliffhanger yesterday. Trying to fit all 3 phases into one post is a lot and honestly I don’t have a lot of other blog fodder right now, so sorrynotsorry. Plus, ya know, I had to wait a day between stadium and XC too when all this was going down… fair is fair.

The good news is that Presto was the 2nd ride time of the day on Sunday, set to leave the start box at 8:02. THANK THE LAWD. If he went late in the afternoon I’d have had a stroke for sure. The other bonus is that Megan handed her phone off to her mom, who gave me a few live updates. I love Megan’s mom, she’s the best.

Anyway, River Glen is known for having fairly inviting cross country courses, it tends to be on the smaller/easier side. Especially compared to Chatt, which was a monster for both size and technicality. River Glen does have a lot more terrain though, definitely more hills than Presto has ever seen in his entire life (there was a really big hill that he had to go up and down between fences 12 and 14), so that was a good “new” element that he hasn’t really had to contend with much before. Megan’s impressions of the course for Presto were that everything was quite small and straightforward, the only two things that warranted much consideration in her mind were 1) fence 8 – a little wagon jumping out of an arena, with quite a decent drop on the backside of it 2) fence 11 – the ditch that was literally just a rando ditch all by itself in the middle of the field. Those were mostly just possible spook-factor type fences because they were a bit unexpected, otherwise she said it was table after table (you can tab through the whole XC course here).

Right around 7:45 Megan’s mom “signed in” and texted me to let me know they were in warmup, being serenaded by live bagpipers to open up the show day. Add that to the new-experiences-for-Presto column. The bagpipers completed their musical number with Amazing Grace… maybe not the best pump up XC song but it’ll do. Then she was out of the box and away they went.

And, true to form, it was a pretty easy hop around. Presto took a little peek at a house set back in the trees at 5 (not sure what he thought he saw there that gave him a millisecond pause) but otherwise wasn’t too impressed. If anything he was maybe a little YEEHAW about the whole thing, Megan said he threw in a twisty little buck/leap over the ditch (he thought it was boring and chose to make it more exciting, I guess) and on the video you can see a very enthusiastic WHEEEEEE into the water. Megan’s mom reported that he cruised home easily, looked amazing, and barely broke a sweat. And he was quite proud of himself too, as usual. Cross country is his jam.

When you think about what we ask these horses to do on cross country – gallop over unfamiliar terrain, jumping things they’ve never seen before and sometimes don’t get their eye on until the last second, sometimes not knowing where they’re gonna land until they’re in the air, jumping out of arenas or up and down hills and into dark bodies of water… it really impresses me that Presto is so young and so new to this yet still so freakin bold and game no matter what we throw at him. He seems to love the challenge of never quite knowing what’s coming but attacking it with gusto anyway. A lot of horses would be intimidated by that, but he seems to thrive off it. You can see his little brain constantly thinking and figuring things out on the fly, and he’s always asking what’s next. Henry is probably the most brave jumper I’ve ever had and even he was not that confident and bold in the beginning.

Presto cantered across the finish well within the time allowed, 30 seconds to spare. His gallop is definitely getting better and more ground-covering with every run, to the point now where he has to be asked to dial it back a bit rather than just cantering around within himself. The hills didn’t seem to throw him off at all either. That’s a good thing for the future!

A friend of mine that was there was able to get some video of him in various spots around the course (thank you Francesca!):

Once he finished I was still hitting refresh on the live scores every 5 minutes, waiting for the results to get entered and then become official. It’s never a done deal until it’s right there in black and white, ya know? But finally they updated the scores, and Presto finished in 2nd place! Another red ribbon for the kiddo. All he had to do at this show was complete the event in order to finish out his AEC completion qualifications, but he did in style, earning another AEC-qualifying placing at the same time. And Megan’s sale horse Rocky won the division, so it was a nice little 1-2 sweep for the Novice horses.

With that, Presto has signed his entry for AEC. I’m not sure that he’d be competitive with some of the extremely fancy heavy hitters in the Novice Horse division, but I don’t care, he’s more than earned his spot. Of course, there’s quite a long wait list for AEC now so… we sent the entry, but we’ll see whether or not we actually get in. Sigh. Not much we can do but wait and see.

I already got my plane ticket because you can bet your ass that if we do get in I WILL be attending his first Championship. Now we just have to 1) keep him bubble-wrapped for the next few weeks and knock on wood that he doesn’t do any kind of dumb horse thing to himself in the meantime. 2) wait and see whether or not we actually get to go. Cross all your crossables! It sure would be fun to be able to cap off his first eventing season with a trip to Kentucky…

There is a special place in heaven for horse show photographers that are both affordable AND fast, I swear. I pre-ordered the All Photos package and had 97 pics in my dropbox by first thing Tuesday morning after the show. It’s a complete novelty for me down here in the land of 4-6 weeks for digitals that cost twice as much. Anyway, now that we have pics we can get to the latest Presto show recap!

Fair warning, I was unable to go to Tennessee for this show, so I don’t have as many of the nitty gritty details as I normally would. This is the first show of Presto’s that I’ve missed and I absolutely hated it. My level of anxiety was sky high. Especially because River Glen was very slow to update scores and Megan had another horse in the Novice that she was riding after Presto, plus the reception there is really bad, so she couldn’t always give me immediate or detailed updates. And he didn’t do dressage til almost noon on Saturday so like aagggghhhh the waaaaaiting. I HATE waiting. It was the very definition of torture. Do not recommend. I am a terrible absentee owner.

Anyway, Megan said he warmed up beautifully for dressage. The warmup was a long way from his show ring down by the river, and she said by the time they got down there with all the spooky stuff and no other horses, he went a bit tense and ADD on her. Nothing naughty, she just couldn’t really ride him super forward and flowy the way she had at Chatt, and he wanted to pop his head up above the contact and look around a few times. She said she felt to her like it was more of a 30ish test, but he scored a 33.

I had to kind of chuckle, because for a tense gawking 4yo to go in the ring and still manage to get a 33… I’m not upset about that. A tense gawking Henry is closer to a 40 and toes the line of belligerent. Presto was just kind of behind the leg and occasionally distracted. I won’t complain about his expression of tension, or the fact that a “disappointing” score is a 33. Either way, he still ended up 4th after dressage, about mid-pack… apparently a lot of horses aren’t really fans of that far ring.

Showjumping was a few more hours later, and I spent most of the day hitting refresh on all the scores like a psycho. Rails were falling left and right all day, in mass quantities. Like… a lot of them. There were very few clear rounds and 5 compulsory retirements in the Intermediate, Prelim, and Training divisions. I dunno what was going on there, but it wasn’t good. Presto is pretty careful but he’s still kind of a monkey with his legs sometimes (little brain and a very long way from said brain to his feet), so it was hard to guess how this might go. Honestly though, he only needed a completion at this event to finish out his qualifications for AEC (you need a first or second place and 3 USEA event completions – he had a 2nd from Chatt but had only done 2 USEA events, so needed one more). Mostly I was just like “please, just jump all the jumps in the right order and no one fall down or fall off”. There’s something about very low expectations that make it even more nerve-wracking as you imagine the 1001 different ways it could still all go to shit.

His ride time came and went, with me madly hitting that refresh button (it’s VERY DISSATISFYING when nothing new shows up no matter how many times you hit it) and then I got a text from Megan: “He jumped so good! Barely ticked the last jump and had it down but probably the best round we’ve had, he was so rideable!”.

Thank the lawd, huge sigh of relief. Two phases complete! And I really could not care less about a cheap rail if he had a more rideable round. Stadium is his hardest phase at this point, so how he goes around the course matters way more than whether he jumps clear or not. She sent me the video of his round later and indeed it was a definite improvement from Chatt. Especially as the course went on he got better and better, and since she could actually soften before the jumps he was jumping better too. He still has some, uh, interpretive dance moves in the air sometimes when he spies some surprising filler, but I don’t think it ever even crosses his mind to not jump. I swear he cleared the first one by a couple feet LOL.

There were so many rails that even with having one down Presto moved up from 4th to 2nd. I dunno what kind of monsters were living under those jumps all day, or what kind of ejection seat jump cups they’re using, but that was nuts. Worked out okay for us though, with Megan’s two greenies sitting first and second in the Novice at the end of the day.

I couldn’t breathe too easily yet though, because cross country was the next morning…

Ok, let’s talk about this whole modern pentathlon thing shall we?

This Olympics was not my first introduction to it. I remember watching parts of it during the London coverage and cringing then, but admittedly I’ve never sat down and really watched any of it from start to finish. After all the headlines starting popping up about how a “stubborn” and “uncooperative” horse cost a German rider a gold medal, curiosity got the best of me. I wanted to be fair though before I rushed to judgment so I sat down, loaded up the replay, and watched the entire riding portion of the and women’s and men’s pentathlon before I came to any particular conclusions. And oh man, I cannot stress this enough… what the actual f.

There’s a lot wrong here. First and foremost, the format is insane. None of these riders bring their own horse, they’re all volunteered for use by private owners or riding schools. They have selectors that test ride and choose which horses they will use and then they all go into a pool. The riders draw a horse, have 20 minutes to ride it, are only allowed 5 warmup jumps, and then have to go in the ring and jump a 1.20m course. Which… I wouldn’t have much problem with the whole unknown horse random draw bits if the jumps weren’t so big – .90m to 1m… ok fine. But 1.20m is a big ask for even a lot of decently skilled riders (not to mention horses), and these people, well, they are NOT decently skilled. Most could barely stay in the tack, much less find a distance or actually RIDE the horse. They’ve got to be proficient at 5 sports and I think it’s safe to say that riding isn’t a strength for most of them. Fair enough, riding is my only sport and I’m barely very good at it either. Granted, I’m also not at the Olympics.

Anyway.

The German woman in question was the last rider to go. Most of these horses went around at least twice, which could either be a benefit or a detriment to the later riders, depending on how it went. On one hand, they’ve seen the course once already. On the other hand, some of these riders were so bad that they didn’t make it around the course the first time. And by the end, some of these horses were just plain over the bullshit – the German woman’s mount, Saint Boy, being one of them. The German came into the ring already bawling (my guess is warmup didn’t go well) and the horse was extremely nappy about leaving the gate. I’m not sure how much more clearly a horse could have screamed “I AM NOT OKAY WITH THIS”. His first rider didn’t ride him very well and had crashed him, enough to where he’d flipped her the bird by the end and just stopped jumping entirely. Now he was coming in again with another rider he clearly had no confidence in and was flipping this girl the bird in advance. Honestly, I can’t blame him. Who knows what happened in warmup but I’m guessing nothing good.

But she kicked and smacked him (and the coach whacked him on the butt over the fence in between her oh so helpful screaming advice to the rider to “hit him harder!”) and eventually the rider did convince the poor horse to get moving. She proceeded to miss a couple distances, but he kindly went anyway, before she completely crashed him through a vertical. At that point the horse said “You know what, I think I was right in the beginning” and from that point on he refused to move any direction but backwards as the girl had a screaming crying meltdown while the clock ran out.

I feel for everyone in that situation, to tell you the truth. First and foremost the horse, for sure. He was put in an extremely unfair situation and when he said very clearly THIS IS TOO MUCH FOR ME the humans just kept pushing and pushing and pushing. I thought he was pretty kind about it, all things considered – there are many worse things he could have done besides back up or stand still. And while I don’t think the girl rode well or handled the situation well at all, I do have empathy for the fact that one of the worst moments of her life played out on a worldwide live stream at the Olympics. I can only imagine how I’d feel about that if it were me. But honestly I think the biggest loser in all of this is horse sports in general. All of us.

The general public doesn’t really have this divide between disciplines. To them riding horses is riding horses, and now there are a hell of a lot of comments on social media about how using horses for sport is cruel. Looking back on the Olympics, I actually sat there for a few minutes and thought about whether or not they’re right. I mean, to be fair, there was a dressage horse excused for blood in the mouth, an eventer with a catastrophic ligament injury, a showjumper with blood gushing from it’s nose, and now a German girl and her coach hitting a clearly distressed horse. It’s not a good look from a horse welfare perspective, I have to say. I think I saw more showjumping horses hit the ground this Olympics than I ever have in my life and some of the riding on cross country was just plain dangerous. Even as an insider in equestrian sport, I had to sit there and think carefully about all of this.

Nothing pushed me over the edge quite the way that the modern pentathlon did though. It’s how it was handled (or, really, not handled at all) that set my blood boiling. Watching horse after horse be crashed through fences with ZERO regard for their welfare (they don’t even check them to make sure they’re ok before continuing. Even if the horse hits the ground.) was really freakin hard to watch. They don’t run under FEI rules so I honestly have no idea what kind of care these horses get. I would never in a million damn years allow one of my horses to be used for this. A lot of what I saw classifies as straight up abuse of horse, IMO.

UIPM posted a very lame “look, the horse is just fine” update on their social media featuring pictures that look like they were taken in the winter. Is it even Saint Boy? Who knows. It’s not helping their case, either way.

Neither is the Irish pentathlete that sent one of the Olympic vets (who criticized the treatment of the horses in MP) a message calling him a clown.

What a clusterfuck.

In reality I’d love to see some changes to the riding portion of modern pentathlon. Clearly they are asking too much – it’s not fair to ask a horse to pack an unskilled rider around a 1.20m course, and it’s not fair to ask an athlete who also has 4 other sports to focus on to pilot an unknown horse around a course of that height either. It’s a miracle no one was seriously hurt in Tokyo, really. Whether they lower the jump height considerably or turn it into more of a dressage/equitation type of event, I don’t really care, but it definitely can’t stay as-is.

They also need to take a good hard look at whatever rules they may or may not have regarding horse welfare. I’m sorry but if a horse hits the ground that should be an automatic elimination, and the horse should be examined immediately. People shouldn’t be allowed to fall off and get right back on without examination. Horses exhibiting mental or physical stress should not be allowed or asked to continue. Stewards and vets and medics should be all over this, because as it was it looked completely barbaric. Over and over again we saw horses used as objects, riders taking out their emotions on their mounts, and absolutely no one advocating for the welfare of the horses.

I think what’s bothered me most though are the actual horse people who saw this go down and think that the horse is to blame. Luckily they are in the small minority, but still. How can ANYONE who knows horses think that what happened here was remotely the horse’s fault. Horses aren’t machines, and it’s not their job to make up for a rider’s complete and utter incompetence. If you think differently, you shouldn’t be on or near a horse. Period.

I think this also should be a bit of a wake-up call to all horse sports in general though, outside of the modern pentathlon event. We have to be our own worst critics about anything remotely looking like a welfare issue, because it’s guaranteed that the rest of the world will be too, and they don’t have even a basic understanding of what’s going on the way we do. We have to take a hard look at every incident in Tokyo that happened and why, and figure out how to continue to improve things. There was a lot of really good stuff happening horse welfare wise in Tokyo, but plenty of not-so-good stuff either.