Hope everyone had a happy Halloween! It’s my favorite holiday,,, candy plus “dark”-themed things plus costumes… how could it not be my favorite. This year we were invited to a horsey gymkhana day, with costumes, and that was an opportunity I just couldn’t turn down. Let my inner 10yo horse kid out for a day? Sign me up.

My original idea for our costume was to dress Henry up as a unicorn and me as a rainbow. But then while scrolling through rainbow bodysuits I stumbled across a llama onesie and I was like omg that’s it – I can be a llama and Henry can be the drama (not a stretch) so together, tada, drama llama! I was able to find the onesie on Poshmark for pretty cheap, snagged some rainbow hair tinsel for Henry, and bought a little button where you could record whatever you wanted on it. I recorded it to play the “is it me, am I the drama? I don’t think I’m the drama. Maybe I am..” soundbite. Which, if you have TikTok you will definitely recognize – it’s one of my favorite viral sounds and very suited to Henry. He also had a drama llama sticker on the other side of his saddle pad, Julie painted his butt to say “Am I…” on one side and “the drama” on the other, and his bonnet had a drama llama sticker on it too. Plus he wore his glitter boots.

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I didn’t want to put so much on him that it interfered with his ability to be a gymkhana pony, because priorities, but it seemed to be enough for people to get it. The button was a hit, at least with those in the TikTok demographic. You can hear it if you scroll to the video in my Insta post. The llama onesie was hot AF but hilarious, so… worth it. Definitely a little slippery to ride in, but very convenient that the hood fit over my helmet easily.

Once we were all ready we got on and headed to the covered, took some pics, laughed at each other (there’s something particularly great to me about seeing adults have some childish fun with their horses) and then got down to the serious business of games. There was some pole bending, which Henry was actually quite good at. He caught onto the idea of weaving around the poles pretty quickly and was firing off lead changes at each one. We also did some kind of cup-moving race, and a relay and… something else that I already forgot. Henry was down for anything that required speed, and if it didn’t require speed, he thought it should. Maybe he missed his calling. After I did a few games I got off and Hillary got on, and I was like you gotta try the pole-bending though.

Henry was like YEAH I GOT THIS. SO FAST. He’s always pretty proud of himself and this was no exception.

A friend of mine had a polo mallet as part of her costume and asked if I wanted to try smacking a ball around. Sure, why not? I removed my hot AF llama suit for that, and made sure Henry was ok with me swinging a mallet around him. He’s fairly whip-shy so I wasn’t sure how he’d feel about it, but he didn’t mind. I whacked the ball around a little bit (with… um, mixed success) but I dunno that polo is for me. I broke my right elbow in a cross country accident years ago and something about the swing and the weight of the mallet made that old break ache. I handed the mallet back and we headed back toward the trailers to untack. The trailers were right next to the jump field, so I was like hey Julie, want to jump Henry?

We were there, jumps were set, Henry was warmed up, Julie hasn’t been able to do a lot of jumping lately… why not hop around on King Henry. He was a little bit lit up because of all of his pole bending domination and the fact that now he saw JUMPS, but he was polite anyway. Julie got on and cantered him over some jumps and it was just really freakin cute. Then I was like hey Hillary, you wanna jump some stuff too? We already had a pony ride thing going on and Henry seemed to be quite enjoying himself. I handed over my boots, she hopped aboard, and off she went to jump some things too.

Good on my friends for always being up for a little horsey fun time. And of course Henry is the bestest boy in the world and seemed to enjoy taking everyone for a spin. It’s really cool to have a horse like this that you trust, that you know will be safe for people to ride and is fairly straightforward. This kind of stuff is his jam. He did keep searching the surrounding area for cross country (sorry buddy, not this time) but seemed pleased enough to get a few jumps in anyway.

We hung out and chatted and ate candy for a little while before making the trek back home. Another fun weekend with my best dude, and we even came home with candy… better than ribbons, if you ask me.