Month: March 2023

Now that Rue is out of the fresh-and-wobbly phase of foaldom, it’s time for another fun part of our baby timeline: introducing them to each other.

Now, it’s worth noting that these two girls are very different. Very very very different.

Rihanna almost acts more like a colt. She’s bold and brazen and playful and bossy, and has been far more inclined to use her teeth or feet. She sees humans as toys (to play with) or servants (to scratch her itchy spots).

Rue on the other hand is extremely sweet. Also outgoing and playful, but really loves people and will follow you around like a puppy and neigh for you when you leave. It’s pretty adorable. Rue is kind and wants attention and companionship.

These two really could not have been more appropriately named.

Anyway, their surrogate dams already knew each other and have been living together for a long time, so that made it a pretty easy integration. They basically nodded “whats up” at each other from across the field and went straight to grazing. It took Ri and Rue a few minutes to really notice each other.

Naturally it was Ri that took it upon herself to try to force an introduction.

Rue wasn’t super opposed to it, but Blue was having none of it. She’s pretty convinced that Ri is the neighborhood riff-raff and doesn’t want her kid playing with that one. She kept herding Rue away from any of Ri’s advances.

Goldie of course just ignored all this and stayed in her grassy corner. She has priorities and it ain’t dem kids.

While the girls still haven’t QUITE worked their way into playing with each other yet, they’ve gotten pretty close. Maybe soon. In the meantime Rue has been quite enjoying her larger turnout…

her zoomies are really coming along.

Small business? Check. Woman-owned? Check. Made in the USA? Check. Really damn good product? Check.

Review over.

Just kidding.

For real though, I have to give a big shout to Spot On Braiding Wax. Anyone who has been around the blogosphere for a while might remember California-based Peony and her mare Spot. Former-blogger Peony started this company several years ago, meticulously and painstakingly tweaking her braiding wax formula over time to get it just perfect. I’m not kidding, I was one of the original testers back in the day, and she’s really developed something great.

Prior to Spot On Braiding Wax I had never actually used any kind of wax-based product for braiding before. Water or QuicBraid was the usual go-to. They worked fine and all, but 1) once water dries it’s as if it never really happened at all 2) a lot of horses didn’t love the spray of the QuicBraid, and I didn’t find that it held the flyaways particularly well over the course of the day. It was about as useful as a weak hairspray, IMO.

So the first time I tried the wax, I was intrigued and also skeptical. I’m not sure what I imagined, but I think in my head it was going to be something like the really thick heavy pomade type wax that guys used in generous dallops in the late 90’s to twist their hair into spikes (if you were alive then you know exactly what I’m talking about). Thankfully, this stuff is nothing like that.

The wax comes in an easy to use little tube (like a really fat chapstick, basically), and you get your choice of lavender scent, peppermint scent, or unscented. I am a fan of all three so if you’re looking for my input on what to choose, I’m gonna just say to eeny-meeny-miney -mo it. You can’t go wrong.

I section the hair, swipe a few strokes of wax down the dry hair, then I just braid as usual. It’s easier to use than a spray bottle, takes up less space on your braiding belt (or if you’re me, in your pockets), and is way way way less messy than anything liquid. You also use considerably less of it compared to a spray, and don’t have the side effect of it dripping all over the place.

The real question is, though, how does it work?

A lot better than the sprays. The wax does a way better job of containing the little fly-away hairs, and IMO helps the braid hold it’s shape better. It also makes the hair easier to grip (a soft grip, not a sticky one, if that makes sense), which makes for a better braid job in general, especially if you have a horse like mine who isn’t the most cooperative about standing still. The wax also leaves the hair with a nice natural texture vs the somewhat crunchy texture you get from some of the sprays. It stays in well enough to do it’s job, but it’s also very easy to rinse out at the end of the day. Another perk – it doesn’t leave your hands feeling sticky or smelling gross by the time you’re done braiding.

A big part of that is because it’s made from all natural ingredients – no chemicals and nothing icky. Just a nice blend of Beeswax, Candiella Wax, Shea Butter, Jojoba oil, Coco Capyrlate, Vitamin E, Kaolin Clay, and Sunflower Solubulizer. Nothing that’s bad for you or your horse’s skin!

I am not a good braider by any means, especially not with Presto because he hates having his mane pulled, thus I don’t pull it, thus it’s thick and unruly on the best of days. Kinda matches his vibe, ya know? But the braiding wax does make a huge difference in my ability to execute a braid job that looks perfectly suitable for public consumption and helps keep everything tame throughout the show day.

The wax is currently retailing at $16.99 per tube, which IMO is an extremely reasonable price. I use a lot less of the wax than I do of the sprays, so a tube lasts me a long time. Spot On also sells a really nice waxed thread in a wide variety of mane-matching colors, for those that like to sew their braids in with thread. Peony was nice enough to offer a coupon code for my readers – use BRE5 to get 5% off your order!

To sweeten the deal even more, she also offered a giveaway to one lucky reader. You can win a free tube of braiding wax and a spool of waxed thread – all you have to do is comment below to get one entry, and you can also check out my post on Instagram for info on how to get more entries. Good luck!

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Yes I know, I missed Foal Friday. You have every right to be upset. I didn’t even realize I missed it until Sunday, so… that was a big fail. BUT – I have a very valid excuse that I hope you’ll find acceptable: Friday and Saturday Hillary did her first Training!

She badbitched it, with a double clear XC, so now she and Lex are officially a Training level pair! So anyway yeah… I was morally supporting for that instead of doing Foal Friday. Sincerest apologies. (If you’re a Patreon member I posted some Rue and Ri video in the facebook group to tide you over!)

Last week was pretty busy with other things too. My big project was writing a piece for Eventing Nation about Mighty Magic (that might be posted today? not sure…) that had me calling and interviewing all kinds of people from Andreas Dibowski to Miks Master C’s breeder. It was a lot of coordination and phone tag, and it ended up being the longest piece I’ve written for them yet. Shocking, I know, given the subject matter. I was delighted when I was asked to write something about MM.

We also had aquatred on Monday, which was Presto’s 3rd session total and his first one in a while… their machine was broken for a few weeks. Kind of a bummer because part of the point of doing it was to try to catalog the week over week progress. On Wednesday we also had a jump lesson, where we started putting some bigger stuff back in there. Since show season has been so hot and heavy we’ve just kind of been cruising in between the shows, but this time we had some harder exercises again and the triple combination ended up set pretty big… boob height? However big boob height is.

We’ve also had friends in down visiting… first it was Holly, who some of you may know from blogging. She was here for a week and I think got the pretty good full Ocala experience. She ordered a custom whip and custom boots, and we stuck her on pretty much all the horses while she was here.

Presto, who she thought was a lot of work. She is correct. He is large.

Henry, who she rode a bunch and got to take him XC schooling at Sweet Dixie. He was quite pleased with himself.

And last but not least…

Holly and Nunez got along like a house on fire, it was really quite adorable. She is well suited to the Adult-Riders-On-Ponies lifestyle.

A couple days after Holly left, my friend Stacy came out for a long weekend. It was her first time here and she came to the show with us, we took her to WEC, she got some boots (its like… the thing we do to everyone I guess), and she rode Henry and Presto. She too thought he was a lot of work. Henry was quite delighted to take her over some jumps too… he’s feeling very superior after the last couple weeks. He thinks he’s King Henry God of the Guest Horses (he’s not wrong).

I also perhaps ordered a new custom whip of my own

I’m excited to see how it turns out because it took a lot of debating for me to choose. I don’t like color very much but also just a black and silver whip is boring, so I was trying to figure out what color I could add to it that I wouldn’t hate. In the end I settled on purple, which was my mom’s favorite color. It’ll be black with silver glitter and purple thin stripes, a silver glitter spiral around the handle, and a black soft popper with purple stitching on the edges and a silver embroidered lightning bolt. Hopefully that’ll be distinctive enough to prevent it from walking away (or, uh, me losing it). I’m excited to see how it turns out!

I think that catches you up on most of the happenings around here. Later this week Hillary and I will be down in Sarasota to cover the 4* at TerraNova for EN, but I swear I’ll schedule a Foal Friday post to run while I’m gone. I swear. I don’t want to incite a riot by missing two weeks in a row.

Yes, yes, let’s get to the fun part, shall we?

After SJ we made a quick trip back to the trailer to put on Presto’s XC boots and my vest/pinney/skull cap. Rumor had it that they were taking people as they came rather than going strictly by ride time, so I boogied back over there in hopes that we could go early. Once again Presto demonstrated that he knows exactly what warmup he’s in at all times because as soon as I picked up the canter he was like BYYEEEEEE and tried to zoom off into the sunset. He earned himself a few canter/halts so we were very clear that unsolicited zoomies weren’t going to happen.

Once again it was an entirely new course from last month’s event, they always change everything at Florida Horse Park, which is great. Even the start box was in a new place (this was our third Training at this venue and the third entirely different course with entirely different startbox placement). It’s something I really appreciate about the venues here, because in Texas the courses only changed once or twice a year. You never know what you’re going to get when you come here.

Well that’s a lie, you do know you’re likely to get a decently beefy, more challenging T course.

So let’s talk about this real quick. This course came out firing right from the beginning. You came to your first real question at only jump 3, which was a log, 7 bending strides to an upbank, 2 strides to a pretty substantial down bank (the log on top of it made the whole thing come up to my rib cage on the landing side) and then a 90 degree turn left to a skinny log in 6 strides. When I first walked the course I was looking at my trainer like “what the actual shit”. At least wine me and dine me a little before you throw a combo like that at me. But nope… fence 3. Alrighty then. Technically it was numbered such that you could jump off the bank, circle, and then jump 5, but Trainer told me that was a wussy way out (ok she didn’t say those specific words but that was what I heard) and I had to make the line happen. Aye aye captain.

From there we had a simple log ramp, and then you were already at the first water. The line to the A element was kind of wonky, you had to come through some trees that put you on a bit of an angle to it, but the jump at was pretty friendly. You landed with a couple strides before the water, then passed through it and out to the right over a little house on the mound. Mind you at this point you’re still not even a minute and a half into the course. Hope you didn’t want to ease your way in.

But then you did have a bit of a long gallop stretch to the MIM oxer at 8, and then another shorter stretch to the next combo, at the first crater (they love their craters here in Florida to make terrain questions). This one was a bit legit, they had a big max brush steeplechase fence at the lip of the crater so you jumped down into it, then came through it and up out of it to the right over a skinny wedge.

Then you had another gallop fence (a table) before you got to the next crater. This one had an interesting approach too, the A element was set in the trees in such a way that it kind of funneled you to the jump, which could potentially distract the horses a bit. Once again it was a jump on the edge of the crater (this one definitely smaller and friendlier than the previous one) and then you came through the crater, to the left, and out over a corner. The designer did a clever thing here where there were 2 possible paths to this corner – the obvious path over the less steep edge of the crater made the angle of the corner very severe, but you could also go up the steeper edge of the crater and have a bit more room to turn left and come straighter to the corner. I planned to take the second option, because I thought the first one just made that question a bit too hard to read for a young, green one that hasn’t seen a ton of corners yet.

From there we had a simple wagon, then we came to the next combination, the coffin. This is the same coffin complex we jumped through last month, but with a very different jump out. Last time we had an angled brush, this time we had a skinny, very square table that was set on a bit of an angle. This was a very legit question for Training, I’m not sure you’d see anything harder than that anywhere else at the level. MIM rail, two downhill strides, big wide ditch, three uphill strides to the skinny angled table.

After that it was a bench and then (you’ll never guess) another combo. This time at the second water. There was a wide house (they call it house – it was wide enough to fall into the table category IMO) at the edge of the water, and then a 90 degree left turn to a smaller skinny house on the mound edge out of the water. I thought this might ride a bit spooky, seeing as how they wouldn’t know they were going to land right on the water line until their front feet left the ground. Also where they would put their hind feet to jump the B element was still quite down at the lip of the water, so you’d have to really keep the power up to that one since it would require a lot more jumping effort from the horse than just the size of the jump itself.

From there you were home free, with just another steeplechase brush and a log box at the finish. Once I walked the bank a second time I got over it and wasn’t super concerned about any of it, I just knew that I had to get the ride right at the bank combo and the second water in particular, since those were questions he hasn’t really seen yet.

So let’s get into how it rode!

Presto came out of the box 100% business. He was forward, he was looking for the jumps, and he was full of running. All great things, he’s gotten way more focused. Fences 1 and 2 were easy, and I let him flow forward as much as possible for those so we could set the tone. 3 came up quick, just as I expected it would, and I brought him back to a coffin canter. He hopped over 3, popped up the bank, leaped like an orangutan off the down bank (as I suspected he would) and I had to be like “EXCUSE ME SIR WE ARE NOT DONE THERE’S ANOTHER ONE”. Trainer said to put my eye on the skinny and get it done no matter what, so that’s what we did. The 6 strides ended up a bit tight because of how far off the bank he launched, but he locked right on to the skinny and was dead honest there.

After that I let him roll a bit again, popping over the ramp out of stride, and then bringing him back so we could pick our way through the treeline back to the water. Once again he just had a real “LEMME AT EM” attitude here so I basically just lined him up, said “that one and then that one” and he was like WHEEEEEEEE.

After that water I could finally gallop for real so we were off across the field, letting him open up. He was delighted. We popped over the MIM oxer in the most casual way (he’s not impressed by a lot of these T fences any more) and then I brought him back to a smaller bouncier canter for the crater. I thought he might be a little surprised here when he left the ground and discovered the drop on the other side, but no. He was like BOMBS AWAY and leapt into the crater like a little genius, then was super out over the wedge. He’s feeling very scholarly and learn-ed about it all now.

Then we had another little gallop stretch, popping over the table out of stride,

before I had to bring him back again for the turn into the next crater. He argued with me for a few strides about that but ultimately gave in, and he jumped super into the crater, through it out, out over the steep side, and popped over the corner easy peasy.

The wagon was also boring (his words)

And then we were at the coffin. I made the canter bouncy, lined up the middle, and he picked his way through it like a gymnastic. So easy. Such a brilliant kiddo.

I was so busy patting him and telling him he was the goodest noodle that I almost missed my turn for the bench. Whoops.

Anyway, we hopped over the bench and headed to the second water. Per trainer’s instructions I brought him back early to make sure he had time to see what was approaching and keep a more balanced approach, and tapped him behind my leg quite a ways out just to reaffirm that we were going forward and staying in front of my leg here. He didn’t hesitate, just popped right on in there like no big deal, we made the left turn, and cantered out easily over the house on the edge.

As we were heading to the steeplechase jump I heard my watch beep for 5 minutes (OT was 5:24) so I slowed down a bit and just let him lope over the last two. He cruised home easily to log himself another double clear and another finish on his dressage score, which also gave us the win (in the 6yo division on his 6th birthday… very fitting don’t you think?)!

I was kind of sad there weren’t more horses in the division, since I feel like his finishing score of 30 still would have been respectable in full company. I’ll take the blue ribbon though.

Most importantly, he feels really solid at the level now. Like past solid and into bored territory. Even for this course, which was about as challenging as you’ll see at Training, he was wholly unimpressed. There were plenty of problems throughout the course in the other Training divisions, particularly Training Horse (which would have been his division if not for the 6yo offering) where 10 of the 18 starters had an issue on XC. His 30 would have won that division too. The MIM oxer, the coffin, and the bank combo seemed to claim the most victims, although there were problems spread throughout. He just felt super confident about the whole thing, like it was easy peasy.

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But even when he’s unimpressed he’s still jumping so much better than he was even just a few months ago. He’s gotten stronger and stronger, and smarter and smarter. For sure he’s making a better shape in the air now, patting the ground and keeping his shoulders up, and following through properly with his hind end.

We’ll take a little bit more of a pause now for a few weeks while we consider what to enter next. Honestly he’s ready for Modified, but we’re at a weird part in the season where the next Modified would be at the same show where there’s a 1*, and that Modified tends to mostly follow the 1* track… not sure if that’s the best choice for a move up. The next option after that would be a good one, but it’s like 2 months away, which isn’t ideal in my mind for a move up either. So we’ll just spend a couple weeks working on stuff and make a plan from there. The most important part is that he’s looking and feeling fantastic!

Lord, there haven’t been this many show recap posts on this blog in… maybe ever. Even when Henry was in his heyday we didn’t have access to shows like this. This season has been a lot, but it’s slowly starting to wind down.

This time we were back at the Florida Horse Park for Ocala Winter 2, and entered again in the 6 year old Training division. Huge fan of the one day format they offer on Thursdays at these winter shows, especially since a lot of the work I do now is on the weekends. It’s honestly easier for me to show on a Thursday than it is on a Saturday. And to be honest I kind of like that it ends up putting me in the pro divisions, too. We always seem to be running ahead of schedule, the warmups are less hectic, and I like to see where my horse stacks up in comparison with all the nice young imports. It’s a “made in the USA” point of pride thing, just go with it.

This show all my times were quite close together – dressage at 12:45, showjumping at 2:11, XC at 2:50. Because my trainer was also showing her 7yo in the Prelim, we walked our XC courses the afternoon before. I rolled into the show about an hour before my dressage time, slowly tacked up and got ready, and then headed to warmup. And Michelle came this time with her camera, so I actually have dressage pics!

Presto has really become the king of getting right to business in dressage warmup. It’s very amusing to me how he knows the difference between each phase and his behavior in the warmup is dramatically different for each. I’m glad he does not choose lawless chaos for dressage warmup… he’s more like “let’s get this boring shit done and move along”. If you didn’t know him and only watched him in dressage you’d be like “what a lovely quiet serene animal”. HA. Hahahaha.

Our little division (there were only 2 of us this time in the 6yo, which made me sad, but I think it’s because 1) so many of the pros were at Carolina this weekend 2) a lot of the 6yos have moved up to Modified already) was tacked on at the end of the day, so by the time we went in for our test there weren’t many of us left in warmup. We also had the ring closest to cross country, which thrilled me (sarcasm)… Presto always has one eye out on XC when we’re showing here. He’s no fool.

The plan this time was to just go for a quiet test, since he got a little rattled a couple times in the last two. Especially since we were back to Test A, which has the canter lengthenings on the 20m circle, which are hard for a horse this large and young in a ring that small. I didn’t plan to really ask for much lengthening at all, and wanted to just keep the test generally as boring as possible.

Which we did manage to accomplish. He stayed quiet and relaxed the whole way through (although he did take a strong peek over toward XC when we were trotting down that long side) but I definitely didn’t “go for it” at any point. I had a couple accuracy mistakes where I was just a step early or a step late for a couple of things, but otherwise he was quite obedient. Scores ranged from 6 to 8, with mostly 7’s, and comments about showing more (the judge was correct every time he said that, I didn’t show much of some things on purpose lol) and keeping Presto’s wayward hindquarters under control (yes this is my eternal struggle at this point in time with his training, he is a massive giraffe).

I’ll always be happy with a boring test, and it sat us on a 30.0 after the first phase, which gave us a 9 point lead.

We weren’t able to walk stadium, so after dressage we sat by the ring and watched some rounds to learn the course and see how it was riding. The giant ring at FHP always makes it feel like courses are forever long, even though they’re not. I feel like they do a good job of making the courses very different every time too, I’ve yet to jump a similar course.

Naturally as soon as I got on to go warmup Presto clicked into SJ warmup mode, which is to say that he switched over from boring to feral. SJ warmup is where he brings out his spooky personality, and he immediately started looking for a good excuse to spin and launch himself into the air. He chose a man that was just standing there trying to enjoy his frozen lemonade on a hot afternoon, who looked very much like a deer in the headlights when Presto was like WHAT IS HE DOING I THINK I SHOULD TURN INTO A WACKY WAVING INFLATABLE ARM-FLAILING TUBE MAN ABOUT IT. The man kindly asked me if I wanted him to move and I said “no you’re fine, thank you though, he’s not actually scared of you, he’s just being himself.”. I distracted Presto with harder flatwork until he forgot about it, and we managed to keep all 4 feet on the ground when we were supposed to.

The round itself was just “fine”… I didn’t ride the first half forward enough so we got deep a few places, but Presto has been jumping so much better through his body (and is so deeply unchallenged by 1 meter) that he easily compensated. Once I actually put him out in front of me more and let him go more forward it smoothed out and was a lot better. I dunno y’all, I’m just kind of slow on the uptake sometimes.

Thanks to Presto (perhaps less so his pilot) we managed a clear round and stayed on our dressage score to retain the lead. I was pleased with him – I’m always pleased with him when he shows signs of maturity like that – especially since there were plenty of rails falling all day in all the divisions. He’s a good boy when it matters.

Then it was a quick trip back to the trailer to put our extra stuff on for XC!