Month: October 2023

Happy Halloween! It’s my favorite holiday of the year, even though I won’t really be celebrating it today, we’ve got too much other stuff going on. We did get to celebrate it a bit last weekend though, at least Henry did.

Our local schooling horse trials at Florida Horse Park offer regular full HT divisions, CT’s, or a la carte – dressage, sj rounds, or XC rounds. Yep, you heard that right – you can enter for just a XC round. It’s not judged or anything, it’s basically just a more formalized schooling. Leave the start box and jump what you want, you just have to give them a general idea of what your plan is so that the chase cart can follow you around to make sure you’re safe. We don’t have individual fence judges at these, instead to decrease the need for volunteers they have a Gator with a volunteer that follows a safe distance behind you as you go around… it’s brilliant actually.

Anyway, I was feeling kind of stressy depressy early last week about Presto’s nasty hoof bruise and subsequent womp-womp to the rest of our season, and was like ya know what I need to do something fun. And what could be more fun than entering Henry for a BN cross country round and getting a costume? (well ok there’s one thing more exciting than that, which I did also do last week LOL OOPS but we’ll talk about that later)

He’s not been in a ton of work lately, mostly he’s just been coming back the last few weeks, so I figured BN was the best choice. That’s easy for him, and only like 3-4 minutes.

I was looking for decidedly HENRY themed costume ideas, and at first was looking at being a dolphin, but that costume seemed like it might be hard to ride in. Then I saw it.. Cookie Monster. Yes. Immediately yes. Done. I found a mega-cheap Cookie Monster onesie, grabbed a variety pack of cookie stickers from Amazon for $5, was gifted an old fanny pack from a friend, and bought packets of Chips Ahoy at the grocery store. Minimal investment, but the joy was great.

My trainer has been doing these Halloween shows for years so she’s well stocked with a variety of glittery hoof polishes and colored hair sprays, and she happened to have some that matched our Cookie Monster blue perfectly. I also had an old bonnet with the same color trim. It was fate really.

The absolute best thing about doing just an XC round is that they just give you a window of time in which you can show up in warmup, and the starter works you in as they can. These shows always just have you go from SJ to XC, so it’s a relaxed “whenever you show up” type situation for XC warmup. As a result, once I was ready and got on, there was literally only one other person in warmup. We trotted a little, cantered a little, chucked some Chips Ahoy at some volunteers, cantered a few jumps, and then went over to the start box.

Henry was so pleased. Like… so pleased. It’s been quite a while since we’ve left a start box for real, but he knew exactly what he was there for.

I had put him in just his side pull, which… a glorified halter is probably a bold choice for an ex-Prelim horse running a BN XC round, but nah, he was good. Of course he was, he’s Henny. I let him out a little bit in the back during one of the longer stretches and he opened up into a great gallop… ok def not BN speed but it was a schooling round and not timed. He came right back when I asked him to and was polite about the jumps, but he really did enjoy getting to gallop on a bit.

Before the water I circled around the photographer and tossed her a packet of cookies, which made her laugh. Spreading joy via cookies, true Cookie Monster energy.

Henry popped over everything with so much joy, it was really cute. Also, really damn fun. Just… really damn fun to be back on this boy doing what he loves most.

I love Presto with every fiber of my being and he’s worth all of his shenanigans, but it was also really nice to just have a day where there was no drama and no stress and no screaming or trying to climb on the trailer or putting a foot in the hay net or or or or whatever busy thing it is he’s doing that day. Henry is easy and an old pro about everything, and that makes it quite enjoyable. Having Presto makes me appreciate Henry’s good qualities more, just like having Henry also makes me appreciate Presto’s sheer athleticism and talent and ability more. There is no compare/contrast, they’re just different, and both fantastic horses in their own way.

It was great to spend a day out with my original BFF though, just having a great time together. He enjoyed it so much, too. I think maybe this is his calling – doing XC rounds at the schooling shows. His favorite phase without any of the other bullshit. It’s just sheer fun for the sake of fun, and isn’t that what this is all supposed to be about anyway? Sometimes it’s nice to step back from the workworkwork aspect of the sport and just have a 100% goofy fun time with your BFF. Thanks Henny. (and yes, of course he got a lot of horse cookies)

PS. Patreon people, you have the full XC video on your dashboard.

Well, I originally had a whole post drafted about Presto’s vet visit last week.

My vet did a thorough lameness exam, flexed a bunch of stuff, palpated him from top to bottom, and even uploaded some jog video into an app that analyzes the evenness of the gait. The findings? Nada. Joints felt good, flexions were good, and the app said he looked about as perfectly even as they get. Superb news. Fantastic. Wonderful. He got a chiro adjustment just because it had been a while, we got the seal of approval to continue, and away we went to make a plan.

And then.

And then the horse fucking horsed, man.

On Friday he was galloping around his turnout like an idiot (He does that sometimes. Ok he does it a lot.) and when I went to get him he had pulled a shoe. He was already looking footsore walking up to the barn so I magic cushioned it, wrapped it, and kept him inside for the rest of the day and overnight.

The next morning he was quite lame. Like lame enough for me to call one of the local clinics that has weekend ambulatory vets. I felt like it was most likely a hoof bruise but the fact that he had been running around so much made me nervous about the soft tissue and bone… I wanted to make sure he hadn’t really DAMAGE damaged it. Three-legged is not something anyone likes.

The vet that came out didn’t have an xray machine in her truck, but given where he reacted to the hooftesters (medial, front quarter) she was less worried about structural damage. Still, she said if he didn’t look improved in 4-5 days, have someone come back and xray it.

If possible, the next day he looked even worse. He was 110% convinced his footie was majorly broken, and he felt really sorry for himself. Monday was basically the same. I didn’t love it. I didn’t love it at all. I texted our regular vet to see if she had time to come look at him and xray it, and she came yesterday (so now we’re at Wednesday) morning.

He did seem improved yesterday morning, in that he was weight bearing again and only had a moderately horrifying limp on a flat surface in a straight line. He was definitely better with a hoof boot on now. The thing I noticed most is that turning left (so when he would weight the inside of that toe) was when he went really gimpy, which did point to that same area of concern the ambulatory vet had found on Saturday.

My vet immediately noticed that he did seem more subdued in his personality than normal, which is never a great sign with him (if he’s not being A Scene, it’s cause for concern). He had a really strong pulse down to that foot, and hooftesters were positive to the same area – medial toward the toe. We opted to take xrays just to make very sure he hadn’t Fucked It, and luckily everything was clean.

It is indeed a nasty bruise, which may or may not turn into an abscess. We just have to wait and see. The vet said it could be 2 weeks until he’s improved enough to start riding a little bit again, or it could be 2 months. It just depends on what the foot does and how quickly it heals. I personally cannot deal with Presto on stall rest for much longer, so yesterday afternoon we fashioned him a mini-pen inside of a smaller paddock up top, and put him in the pen and Henry in the paddock. As long as he stays quiet he can go out there for at least a few hours a day in his boot.

So with that, our fall season is over. A bummer for sure, but I’m glad the damage doesn’t appear to be any worse. The vet thinks it will prob be January at best before he’s back competing. Honestly, that’s fine. He was gonna get a vacation in December anyway, so I guess he just… pushed it up a bit. We’ll regroup when he’s ready. Plus I just spent a whole season’s worth of entry fees on vet bills instead, so… yay.

Fucking horses.

I don’t often share the stories I write for Eventing Nation here on my personal blog, but since it’s Le Lion weekend (or Maryland 5* weekend too I guess… but LE LION!) I feel like this one is worth the share.

It’s pretty rare to see a junior rider entered at a young horse world championship, especially one from Texas. I’ve known Quidley since she was a kiddo on a pony, running BN, so it’s been fun to follow her journey with this horse. How freakin cool is it to have a horse running at Le Lion at her age, especially one she’s brought up the levels herself?!?

I hope you enjoy Quidley’s story. Le Lion is live streaming for free all weekend if you feel like following along!

https://www.mondialdulion.com/en/#

Howdy from Le Lion: Seventeen-Year-Old Quidley Kellerman Takes on a World Championship

I’m going to stop leading off my Monday/Tuesday update posts with “last week was busy!” because its starting to annoy even me.

In our quest to continue making sure Presto is feeling confident about drops into water again, we took him back to the original “scene of the crime” (aka where he landed funny and the issue started). This time I didn’t lunge him over anything first, we just did a little warmup, hopped up and down the regular banks from small to large, popped over a couple ditches, then went and did the banks into and out of water from small to large. I opted to put him in his dressage bridle to encourage him to be extra bold and boy did he have some utter delight at taking me for a dolphin spin all around the XC field. Whoa was a suggestion.

He was super good though, he’s back to his normal method of locking on and taking me to everything, no hesitation whatsoever. I did decide to go ahead and have the vet out this week to give him a thorough once-over anyway, just to make sure there’s not something physical that we’re missing. He’s felt great, honestly, but I’d rather be overly cautious and cover all our bases than have any kind of question marks remaining. I mean, ya know, why not give the vet all our money, it’s fine.

I haven’t entered our last two planned events for the year (Rocking Horse M and TerraNova 1*) yet because as of right now I’m still on the fence. If he schools well today and gets an all-clear from the vet tomorrow, then we’ll have the conversation, but as of right now I’m holding off. I do think that 1) assuming we’ve done our due diligence to rebuild his confidence, and 2) if the vet thinks he looks good, it’s in his best interest to go back out and run ASAP. But I also don’t want to spend the entry fees and then have to scratch, so I’ll decide sometime this week.

This past weekend was a fairly quiet one on the horse front. On Saturday there was a big community horsey tack sale at Tack Shack of Ocala and omg y’all I was not prepared for that level of insanity. Hillary and I both have plenty of stuff for sale, so we thought this would be a perfect opportunity to get it out. 10×10 spots were $15 and first come first serve. We got there at 6:30am for setup and the line was so long we had to wait almost an hour just to get in and get our spot. There were hundreds of people there. Tents set up as far as the eye could see. It was NUTS, I’ve never seen so much horse stuff in my entire life.

A lot of it was junk, or old, or just not stuff I’m interested in (a lot of western stuff and home decor) but there were also a lot of hidden gems. Tons of blankets and coolers and fly sheets, horse boots, bits, saddle pads, saddles, show clothes, tack… just… so much. I walked around the whole place twice and still didn’t see everything. It was majorly overwhelming. We sold a bunch of shit though, and I found a few good deals. I got a lightweight wool cooler, some woof boots, a cool stud wrench tool, and a nice plastic stud brush/pick thing for $50. I also found a basically brand new full set of Arma XC boots that Hillary and I went half and half on ($15 each) to have a pair of schooling boots so that we don’t have to use our nice white ones.

The people set up next to us had a George Morris talking action figure (I asked if he said “I’m a pedophile”… warning, only some people will be receptive to this comment, apparently plenty of people still like GM regardless) which I really regret not buying, it would have the absolute best/worse White Elephant gift. It was horrendous in the best way.

It was a long day – we packed up around 3 when the crowd started to dwindle – but a fruitful one. I still can’t get over how crazy that was. You gotta love Ocala.

This is it folks, the last edition of Foal Friday for our 2023 foal crop. We’ve been doing this since Rihanna was born in February, so I feel like we’ve really stretched it out as long as possible this time around.

On Monday sBs (the Belgian Sporthorse studbook) was here to get everyone’s registration stuff done, so we brought all the foals up to the smaller front paddocks to make them easier to access. They’ve never been up there before but everyone handled it like a champ and they were all quite well-behaved for having their hair pulled for DNA testing and standing still to have their markings drawn for their passports. After the sBs folks left we went out to take formal pics of them one last time. Here’s how everybody is looking now!

Rihanna is the oldest at almost 8 months now, and she is a also our chunkiest member despite having so much Thoroughbred blood. She’s a laid-back girl that loves snacks and naps and Rue is her BFF.

As you can see, Rue is already incredibly gray heading into her first winter – she wasted no time with that! She’s a bit more sensitive than Rihanna, but also very clever… you can almost see the wheels turning in her brain sometimes. My favorite feature is her very square bottom lip that looks just like her dam’s.

Rhett is a spicy little meatball, but also really darn cute. He’s sensitive but also very friendly both with humans and horses. He’s the social butterfly of the group for sure, and also a big-time Momma’s boy. He might be the most sad about being weaned.

My not-so-little Andykins! I love this dopey kiddo so much, he’s sweet and smart and just kind of a total dude. He’s down for whatever and doesn’t get upset about much. His mom is quite dominant, which has had the effect of making him quite submissive, but I think that’s his natural personality anyway. He’s a no fuss kind of guy.

Miss Lucy is emerging as our definite alpha mare of the baby herd, despite being the youngest. She is SASSY and quite sure of herself, the world, and her place in it. She is also turning gray, like Rue, but as you can see she’s been much slower about it – she’s currently more of a pinkish shade.

Next week we’ll wean the three younger kiddos – they’re all 6 months old now and it’s time! It will be interesting to see how their herd dynamic shakes out without the mares as a factor.

Unfortunately we don’t have any foals coming in 2024 so this is the end of Foal Friday for quite a while. We’re going to try to go hard and heavy at breeding in the spring though, so maybe I’ll do some other kind of series that chronicles all of that process? We’ll see!