Month: November 2022

Yes it is indeed Friday night when I’m writing this. Or rather, when I’m finishing writing this. It was Wednesday when I started. That’s just kind of how things have gone this week.

On Monday I clipped Henry. Which was not at all my intention for the morning, but he was hot and I did that thing where I was like “I’ll just clip part of him for now” which I don’t know why I tell myself those kinds of lies because that’s never what actually happens. I did everything but the very bottom of his belly, which is currently still hairy because I haven’t had time yet to finish him. It’s a look. He’s much happier though, so that’s all that matters.

I had plans for Wednesday through Sunday, so I had to squeeze a jump lesson in earlier in the week than usual. Luckily Trainer had time on Tuesday, so we went on over. I actually hadn’t jumped Presto since the POP show a week and a half prior, but much credit to this horse – he’s showing more and more maturity lately by just getting right to work and doing the things. It’s very sus sometimes.

But since we have now actually penciled in (very much penciled) a potential move-up, Trainer ain’t playing. A few warm-up jumps and up they went to height (with a few a bit over). Which, the good thing is, my eyeballs are getting used to the jumps being a little bigger again. I have no hesitation about anything looking big. It also helps that Presto is still just absolutely loping over these with minimal effort. I’m not sure at what point he’ll have to start trying, but we haven’t found it yet.

Perhaps the most exciting part about the lesson (to me) was when I absolutely biffed the distance to the Swedish oxer off of the short turn and he just pretzeled himself over it like “weird choice mom but okey dokey”. He is so non-plussed and does not get rattled by mistakes. The natural self-confidence level of this horse is really high. Very different from Henry… I always had to be very aware of keeping him confident and willing to put up with my mistakes, and he can get offended by them sometimes.

Presto on the other hand legit could not care less. He doesn’t really get rattled, he’s not worried about what I do or don’t do or what happened or why… it’s interesting. I mean, yes he might spook at a rock and drop me on my ass at any given moment, but he’s super reliable in other ways. I still keeping learning more and more about this horse of mine, week in and week out. He’s kind of fucking cool, y’all.

So I entered Rocking Horse, which will be our first recognized event and possibly our last Novice. We’ll see how it goes. Apparently their showjumping is known for being tricky, so goal is not dying. Of course, as soon as I entered I remembered that recognized means I have to do things like wear a coat (not so bad, I’ve been looking for a reason to debut my light blue one anyway) and braid my horse. Ugh, BRAIDING. This horse is the actual least fun to braid, 0% looking forward to that. I also only have one pair of white breeches (this is a two day show) and never did buy a white shirt to go under that light blue coat, so… cool. That’s fine. I’ll just… I dunno. Whatever. I can’t brain about it right now.

And then yesterday we had another hurricane pass through. Honestly this one brought more wind and rain to our area than Ian did, even though it was just a weak Cat 1 when it made landfall. It was WINDY. Not really a big deal though luckily, just lots of little branches and limbs down, but no loss of power or anything major. The horses just hung out in their stalls and ate their hay. Rough life for them.

This week/weekend I’m also working at WEC in the Luxe EQ mobile shop. That’s always a fun time for me, although it was perhaps less fun to get everything battened down for a hurricane. It survived though, and I was back out there today. Things are a bit slow, seems like a smaller show, but if you’re around, come say hi! It’s the tan trailer in the vendor area next to the hotel, closest to the patisserie.

I also made the mistake of trying on a bunch of Samshield clothes in there, which might solve my lack of horse show clothes problem, but at the extreme detriment of my wallet. Send help.

In other news, BRC has donated a pedigree report to EN’s 12 days of Christmas giveaways, so make sure you’re following them in preparation for that! I’ve also already started gathering info for Black Friday sales (can’t believe it’s that time again, omg) so if your business is doing something, feel free to drop me a message so I can add you.

Oh and best of luck to Bobbert and Carlson this week at USDF Finals!

I was going to call this “Monday Feels” and then I realized it’s Tuesday. That about sums things up.

Instead I’m going to pivot and talk about goals and plans and expectations… or the lack thereof. Or how my view of all those things has changed so much in the past 5 or so years.

Long-time readers of this blog have been on a bit of a roller coaster ride. First I didn’t compete much, then I did EVERYTHING and went REAL HARD and always had my eye on the next goal. and then now for the past few years I haven’t done a whole lot at all. I’ve talked a lot over the years about my journey with mindset, and how much of a struggle it’s been for me, and how much work I’ve had to put into it. Honestly, I needed the time away from the competitive side of things to help give me more perspective, and let all of that sink in. Time and hindsight are excellent teachers. But sticking my toe back into that world again, and this time doing it in a healthy way… that’s the road I currently find myself standing on.

Trainer is a big ol’ Planner (enneagram 3, if you know you know) which is probably good to counteract me, who dodges commitment and goal-setting with riding stuff like it’s my actual damn job. It’s funny because in other aspects of life I am extremely schedule and plan obsessed. I have an itinerary for literally everything and every day of my life is planned out. But I think I got so wrapped up in competing there for a while with Henry that now I’ve scared myself away from making too many plans thus ending up a) disappointed or b) so consumed by a goal that I don’t enjoy the journey. I have that obsessive, one-track type of brain that makes it really easy to slip into that. In an effort to not make that mistake again, I think I went from one extreme to the other. It’s probably good to have someone like Trainer to add a little balance back into things, otherwise I’d probably still just be trotting circles out in the field with Presto. I know I’m in a much better place mindset-wise with Presto than I was for so many of those years with Henry, but ya know… the process of learning about yourself and how you think/cope/react is never-ending, and I just don’t want to make the same mistakes. I can see now that it has gone so far the other direction that it’s become a bit of a “paralysis by analysis” thing, so… having her to push me back out of that is probably a good thing.

All of this to say that she’s been planning out my fall and winter season. I’m over here like “yeah sure as long as it doesn’t cause mental/financial anguish” because I have to be deliberately casual about it. First and foremost this is supposed to be fun, and no one can suck the fun out of something faster than my brain on Goals.

It does help that it feels different with this horse. I don’t know why it always seemed to me like I had something to prove with Henry but I don’t feel that way with Presto. If anything you’d think it should have been the opposite. Overall healthier mental state now vs then, maybe? It feels easier to enjoy every single little bit of progress with this horse, and be able to appreciate the journey no matter what it looks like. After all, how many times did all of this come precariously close to never happening? I never forget that. Not for a single day.

I also have no end goal in mind. There isn’t a particular level I want to hit, or a competition that is a “must”. I’m just here to enjoy the horse that I made, learn from him, and see what we can do together. If that looks like 10 years of Novice, that’s fine with me. If it looks like something bigger, then ok… we’ll cross that road when we come to it. I just want to get better and have fun with a horse that I already get so much enjoyment from, no matter what that looks like.

But I can also recognize the fact that being TOO nonchalant about that stuff does lead to the paralysis by analysis thing on my part. Taking a few years off from showing means I’ve settled into a bit of a comfort zone that could probably go on forever if I let it. And the truth is that I do actually enjoy competing. I’m not a super competitive person these days, and I don’t want to horse show like all the time (that is exhausting), but I do genuinely like it. Or at least I do now. There for a while I think I really didn’t, and I wasn’t totally sure that I would again.

But what I’m noticing now (that we’ve got a grand total of two shows under our belt… I know, things are getting serious…) is that the horse shows help give me a little bit of push and direction. Both important things if your priority with your horse is the journey. Apparently this new phase of life is going to be learning to actually go Do The Things but also without taking it too far and imploding my brain, because then I’ll just run away again back into my little brain cocoon.

The very loose “plan” is to do a recognized Novice at the beginning of December and, if that goes well, a schooling Training a couple weeks later. The show season here in Florida is really Jan through April, so things are gonna start to kick off hot and heavy in a couple months. How much or how little I want to participate in that will depend on a lot of things, but… I didn’t move all the way to Ocala to hide in the bushes, did I? I didn’t breed and raise my dream horse to not get out there and do the thing I bred him to do, did I?

I trust Trainer’s judgment implicitly, so I’m happy to go along with her whatever her plan is. I don’t have the best track record for plans, after all.

Both of the last two shows have been the best my mindset has ever been in competition so hopefully that’s a sign of growth. They’ve been fun, and no pressure, and I haven’t lain awake at night stressing about shit that’s completely beyond my control. There are a lot of things helping contribute to that, I think. But it does feel fun again, and I do find myself coming home from the shows and looking forward to the next one. It’s a work in progress but maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to find the middle ground.

And when I say supervisors I mostly just mean the extremely unhelpful onlookers that tended to just stir the pot even more (ahem Presto).

These guys all thought the weaning process was VERY interesting. To be fair, nothing that interesting ever happens here, so it was the most entertainment they’ve had in a while. Except for the entertainment that Presto produces for himself on a daily basis.

Naturally Gemma was the one who just kind of stood there and watched, whereas all the boys were inserting their assistance in the form of yeehaws.

Her version of standing and watching is VERY vigilant. Like… perhaps borderline stalkery.

And then there was Blue, one of the surrogate mares. She was the least impressed.

This is, unfortunately, the last *planned* Foal Friday that I have for the year. I’m not ruling out anything, because you never know, but… this is it folks. No more bebe’s until spring. Maybe I need to do a post about all the foals expected next year? I don’t think I’ve done that yet…

Alternate title: If You’re Bored Then You’re Boring (spoiler alert, we were both)

When we left off yesterday with our Punk Rock Noodle, we’d put in two delightfully boring phases to be sitting in second. A fact that I did not know, because I was not checking scores. My priority with this horse is to just ride him the way he needs to be ridden in the moment and not worry about what that may or may not mean for the score/placing, so a current placing is irrelevant information that I don’t even need in my brain, really.

Headed to XC warmup he was very well-behaved. We had 30 minutes between SJ and XC, and I deliberately took a little extra time putting on his boots and my vest. I wanted to get to warmup, jump two jumps, and go. If he’s gonna get nappy or worked up, it would be because he hung around in warmup too long doing nothing.

At the start they were just kind of taking people as they came, though, so I still ended up waiting for about 7 horses to start. I kept him walking well away from where the other horses were standing, jumped a couple jumps when we were like 2 out, and continued to keep him off by himself until we were a minute out.

I told Steph I would know by jump 1 whether he was going to be a good nugget or a turd.. either he would come out of the box and be nappy or rude, or he’d just canter to the first jump and we’d be in business. He made a good life choice and just cantered down to the first jump easy peasy.

After that it was yet again an extremely boring performance, in every good possible way. He just kinda… loped over everything. After how rude he’d been when we were schooling the day before, I did ask him to keep a slower pace, rebalanced for the jumps sooner, took longer routes around things, etc. I know for a fact that if I put my leg on and ask him to go faster, he will do it. What I have to be very sure of is that he’ll also always come back and listen. This was a schooling show, he’s 5, it’s Novice, he lost his marbles the day before… we were gonna put in a schooling round.

I don’t have photos of the jumps because I didn’t walk the whole thing, but here’s the map. It was the same course as the recognized show a couple weeks ago.

It was all your fairly standard Novice fare. Hanging log at jump one, a brushy rolltop at 2, then a step, then a table. A lot of single jumps to get you rolling before you get to any combinations. The first one came at 5 and 6, which wasn’t numbered as an AB but still rode as a combo… you jumped the ramp at 5, went downhill into a crater, then back up a steep hill to a skinnyish chevron. That was kinda fun, honestly. I love roller coaster terrain changes like that.

Then there was a little ditch wall, which the ditch was small and faux so I didn’t actually even notice it was a ditch wall until I saw it was called that on the course map. After that there was a wagon and a palisade, more single jumps before the next combination.

10AB was just a straight line on a related distance, table to corner. After that we swung around to the first water, which had a jump a few strides before it and then another one a few strides after. He did pretend to be a bit surprised at the entrance to the water and took his last stride a bit sideways before leaping (and I do mean leaping) into it… by far the most “exciting” part of our whole run.

After that I totally got lost and couldn’t for the life of me remember wtf 13 was. I saw the chase cart (they don’t have jump judges at every fence here, they have someone following you at a safe distance in a gator) cross over behind me to the left and went “OH YEAH” – the half coffin in the tree line. I took the world’s longest approach to that one. Whoops.

Presto popped through that easily and then we were back into the other field, cruising past some of the combined driving obstacles to a shark’s tooth and then a ramp covered with mulch.

Then we hung a right, towards the second water, which was just a jump a few strides before and then a canter through. Then up the hill out of the water, over another table, through another crater, and to the last hanging little table. Somewhere around that mulch table Presto’s antics from the day before finally caught up to him and I felt him getting weary. We crossed the finish line and when I asked him to whoa it was almost reining quality.

Of course the first thing I asked Steph when she got out of the chase cart (SEE – massive benefit to the chase cart is that your trainer and/or friends can ride along to see your whole round and/or get video! I thought it was fantastic that Steph could get a good view of how literally the entire thing went, and Hillary got what is legit the best XC video I’ve ever had) was whether or not I’d jumped all the jumps. This is always my first concern when I finish XC, because I’m paranoid AF that I missed something. Plus I actually wasn’t 100% sure I’d known exactly where I was going. So… whoops. But, yes, I had jumped all the jumps. She thought it was a great round and said he was super, and I agreed.

I did it really slowly though. Like… really slowly. Turns out the time was actually a bit tight to get, people were flying over that last bit of the course to make it, and me with my quiet canter, big turns, and long approaches racked up a lot of time. Like a lot a lot. Like 26 time penalties a lot. LOL. I was annoyed about it for a minute, because it did cost us a 2nd place ribbon, but honestly – I’m glad I rode it the way I did. It was the right choice because Presto and I both needed a quiet, boring, focused round. At this point, still so early in our partnership, we needed a round where he was 100% with me and listening every step of the way. I know it was the right choice for both of us, given how he’d been the day before and given that it was literally our second XC run together. I feel like we put a lot of deposits in each other’s trust banks, and if that isn’t the whole entire point of these schooling shows then I’m not sure what is. Sure, it’s more fun to be able to come on here and say we finished second in the Novice at our second show together, but is that really the long-term goal for this horse? No it isn’t. This is a nice horse, and I want to do whatever is the best thing for him and our partnership, whether that looks like a win or whether it looks like finishing dead fucking last.

Truth be told, he was fantastic the whole day. Never once did he even consider flipping me the bird, and aside from the exuberant leap into the first water it was the most boring XC round I’ve ever ridden in my entire life. Like a school horse popping around a starter. Perfect. He was really unimpressed, which is also exactly what I need from him. He’s an easy horse to wind up and get excited, but getting him bored is the harder task. If he wants to be bored and boring AF cantering around a Novice at a venue like Florida Horse Park, I’m all for it. I think it will set us up well for next time.

When we left off yesterday, Presto had completely and firmly lost his brain when we were schooling because he had friends. I woke up Sunday with a heavy sigh and a “if we could not do THAT again today, that would be great…”.

First order of business was getting the tips of Presto’s mane and tail sprayed pink, to match my mohawk. Priorities. I didn’t have dressage until 10:50 but I did want to get there extra early so that Presto had time to chill at the trailer. So at 8 we loaded up and off we went to Florida Horse Park, with Presto pawing angrily basically the entire way there (the “entire way” being like 35 minutes – FHP is one of the furthest show facilities from me around here, and my Texas self hates my Ocala self a little bit for even daring to think that it’s “far”).

He came off the trailer with a few screams but settled into his hay net pretty quickly. This gave me hope. I figured he’d either devolve completely, or he’d settle down and get over it. Luckily he seemed to choose option B. I got on him for dressage around 10:20 and first headed for the further away, grassy area that only had a couple in it, vs the smaller busy warmup ring. But that grassy area was closer to cross country, and his focus kept drifting into the distance, so I quickly changed tactic and went to the busy ring instead. That worked much better, and he instantly had to focus on me in all the hubbub. Every show I learn a little bit more about this horse and how to handle his brain. In a lot of ways he’s very opposite from Henry… bigger/louder/more is what gets Presto’s attention and settles him.

When it was time for our test, as we were trotting around the outside of the ring waiting for the bell, the judge stopped me and asked if I knew that we were supposed to be doing Novice Test B. As I’d been in the warmup ring I did notice a couple people getting rung for errors, but I guess it had been happening A LOT. I said yes I knew it was supposed to be Test B. She asked me if I knew Test B. Me, who had been 99% certain 5 minutes ago, was now like “Yes. Yes? I think so?”. She seemed skeptical. So was I, now. To be honest I hadn’t even ridden this test one time before… I’d just realized a few days prior that we were doing B, and learned it via the Ride iQ read-along. Now all the sudden I was second-guessing my whole life. This is why dressage is by far the scariest phase.

But on with it we went, and turns out I did in fact know Test B. After how much of a come-apart Presto had had the day before, my whole goal for this show was to have a quiet, boring day. I wanted a quiet, boring test with no yeehaws or screaming, and if that meant that I “went for it” a little bit less, that was fine by me. Let’s dazzle them with mediocrity.

To give Presto credit, he’s now 2 for 2 at being easier to ride at shows than he is during schooling or at home. Also very different from Henry. I think its finally enough of a pressure situation to make him want to pay attention. It was not a fantastic test in any way, but it was very consistent, scoring all 6.5’s and 7’s straight down the sheet. Quiet and boring, achieved. Our score of 32 actually somehow put us in 2nd out of 25 horses. Note to self: it helps to know the test.

After that I had a couple hours before stadium and XC, so I went to learn the stadium course and watch a couple friends go. The arena at FHP is MASSIVE, I was like “why it gotta be so big though, this is just a lot more room for Fuckery…” but the course was very basic and the jumps seemed small. Again I just really wanted a quiet, boring round.

I did learn from the last show that stadium warmup is not a place where Presto thrives (he feeds off chaos, and that is always supreme chaos) so I deliberately got on a bit later. Still had a bit too much extra time, but I was able to keep him occupied. I’m figuring out all these little things about Horse Show Presto, bit by bit. Knowing when to get on and how to warm up is such a big part of the whole strategy.

We went in the ring and took the long way around, so I could trot him past all the banners and spectators on the far side, then picked up the canter. My instructions from Steph were to keep him busy and not use too much of the ring, so I picked up the canter, asked him to be active and connected, and away we went, directly to the first jump. He jumped that first single oxer a little wonky because he was looking off at the warmup ring, but that got his attention, and after that he actually put in a really good round. He paid attention, he did what I asked, he stayed in his rhythm, and he even gave me a couple flying changes. Clear round! Steph called it an equitation round… considering this horse was a flailing hot mess like 3 months ago, I can’t be more pleased about that.

We kept our 2nd place standing (I didn’t even know that at the time because I never look at scores during the day) but really I was just happy that it had been what we set out for – quiet and boring. It felt easy, he stepped up and listened, and we both stayed cool in our heads. This is so new for us as a partnership, that’s really the whole point of doing these shows. Brick by brick laying a foundation that will hopefully serve us well for later.

After that we had a 30 minute gap before XC, which we’ll talk about tomorrow!