Month: March 2024

The good news: we’ve made it to the fun part. The bad news: I stalled on this post hoping for lots of good show photos and there is precisely one that I liked enough to buy. Luckily there were lots of friends there so I have plenty of screenshots and some video too!

First off: the course. Presto ate it for breakfast.

To be honest, this was IMO a very soft Modified, possibly the softest we’ve run. Majestic is known for having friendly courses, so I expected something on the softer side (I entered this show because the timing was what I wanted, not because I expected a challenge) and this was definitely it. The only real question IMO was the big brush table bending line to the corner which came near the end of the course.

Anyway, I walked the course with Megan on Friday after showjumping. There were lots of instructions, mostly about straightness, keeping my eye up, supporting with my lower leg, and making sure that I’m pushing my crotch into the saddle more than my pockets. Supporting, not chasing. I also planned to make time on this one, compared to our slow lope-around the week before at Ocala, so I was keeping my eye on where my track and turns needed to be in order to save some ground.

On Saturday I ran XC at almost noon, which worked out great because it rained more overnight. Their XC field takes water really well (thank you Florida sand), but I still studded up a little bit more than usual. By the time we got to warmup the ground felt really good. I opened and closed his gallop a bit, jumped 3 jumps, and then went to the start box.

I was really hoping that things would start feeling like they were clicking again at this show, that we’d have our momentum back and feel more in sync again. He came out of the box like a little pro, and we hopped over 1, 2, and 3 out of stride. The first combo was 4AB, which was just two cabins that you could either ride on slight angles and do 4 strides, or ride them head-on and do a bending 5. We planned to do the 4, and that worked out easily. Next it was to a log stack which was potentially a little tricky, it had a pretty vertical face and was slightly downhill and in the shade. Just a little extra leg on to that one, easy peasy. I saved some ground in the turn to the next one, a brush roll that looked small and I knew he’d give zero thoughts about. I was correct.

Then we were to the coffin, which was shared with Training, we just jumped it the opposite way. Very soft coffin question for Modified, IMO, and one he’s seen so many times I think he could do it in his sleep. Pinged right through that. Then we had a big step table with mulch, again easy, and then another efficient turn back to the ditch wall. We had the smaller one, which he’s jumped as part of the Training course here before. From there we hopped over the big blue ramp (almost taking out KOC on the way, who had wandered in front of it) then it was down the hill to the water.

Here my objective was to jump smoothly through without losing any momentum at the jump in the water like he did last week at Ocala. I stuck my crotch to the pommel, supported with the lower leg, and he was brilliant here.

Right after the water we had the down bank combo – a rolltop, two strides, down bank, and then 5 to a skinnyish brush wedge. I rode positive and supportive into it and he was quite professional – didn’t do any kind of major wahoo off the bank. Still though, I knew the 5 would ride short for me and it did, so I just stayed back and kept the balance up and let him figure it out. He plopped over the wedge in the least impressed possible way.

Then we were galloping down to the bottom over the field, over the open MIM oxer (we shared the Training one… at his very first Modified we shared the Prelim one, so this one was considerably less terrifying) and to the next combo, the angled brushes. To be fair these were quite big, but the half-roll face and perfect two strides made it a lot friendlier. I just found my line straight through and it rode great.

After that we had a long gallop up the hill to the big brush table/corner combo. That table was big, y’all. I did not make direct eye contact with it because why. I rode the whole way up to it going “please let me find a good distance to this, please please please” and the gods were on my side because it materialized perfectly. Obviously with a table that big you do have to keep coming at it, it’s more of a gallop fence, but having a corner on a bending line after it meant you had to rebalance quickly and get their eye on the corner ASAP. Knowing that my horse would eat up the distance in the line, I bowed my bend out just a teeny bit more to give us a bit more room for the 6, and it rode great. I mean, he jumped the snot out of the table to the point where I might have a touch of whiplash, but it’s the first real effort he gave all day. Finally found one big enough to suit him, I guess!

From there it was a fairly simple gallop home – we had the picture frame which he’s jumped before but in the opposite direction, the trakehner which he’s also seen before, and then we cut through some trees to take out as many strides as possible before the last one, a friendly ramp.

We crossed the finish with 11 seconds to spare and a very confidence-building run. It was in sync, it was executed to plan, and felt very easy and textbook, which is exactly what I’d been wanting. I feel like he could have hopped happily around the Prelim, and that’s what I wanted to feel.

Presto got an entire container of cookies for his double clear, plus a post-bath roll in the sand, as is tradition for him at Majestic.

Overall I’m really pleased with the progress we’ve made over the past few weeks – it feels like we’re not just back on track but also making improvements in areas that I’ve felt “stuck” on for a while. Now we tuck in and do some homework over the next few weeks before the next one!

Ok, well, I was waiting for recap posts until show pics were posted but turns out they left dressage about 5mins before I went in, and Presto casually loping over Modified didn’t make for any SJ pics worth buying. XC pics aren’t posted yet, hopefully some of those are good. But for today’s portion of the show recap: screenshots it is.

First and foremost, the weather was ick. Like big big big ick. It rained BUCKETS the night before and the morning of, just a torrential never ending deluge. I’m not sure I’ve ever been less enthused to braid and head to a show. Especially because I had multiple friends in town, plus people here trying Argo… it was a lot going on for my brain and it wasn’t super focused on showing. Especially not in the rain.

But, ya know. We’re eventers, we do the damn thing even when it’s soggy and we have no enthusiasm, mostly because we’ve already paid our entry fees and there ain’t no getting it back.

I had Megan coaching me again at this show. She didn’t have anyone else entered so I told her I didn’t really need her until SJ course walk time. Dressage warmup is fairly standard for us by now. Luckily by this point the rain had slacked off enough to where it was more of a heavy drizzle. Granted, we were already super moist, and it was still raining enough to constantly be dripping off my helmet or smearing into my eyeballs. I was very much in “let’s get this over with” mode.

The footing in the dressage rings at Majestic is notoriously not great. They’re grass, but uneven and rutted and tend to be slick no matter what. You may remember this is the place where we had the test last year where Presto legit almost fell down multiple times. I always stud him a little extra for these rings, and I pulled out some bigger ones for this day in particular, having a feeling it was going to not be great. Truth be told, I got in there and mostly tried to avoid the worst spots. I’d rather have a less accurate test and keep my horse out of the muddy corners, so that’s what I did. I definitely left plenty of points on the table when it came to boldness, accuracy, and geometry, but I mostly just wanted to ride a safe and quiet test and keep my horse confident on his feet. It was nothing to write home about, but fine. We scored a 30 to be tied for 4th.

After that I hunkered down in the truck for a while to try to dry off a little bit. Ya know when you got juuuuust wet enough for it to seep through to your bra and underwear? It was like that. Showjumping honestly couldn’t come soon enough.

Megan got there about an hour later, and we headed over to look at the course. It had a couple wonky turns, mostly the one from 1 to 2, but otherwise was standard fare. She reminded me to put my eye on the inside standard through the turn, and then shift my eye to the takeoff as we came out of the corner. She also said I needed to make sure to keep riding him forward, because the footing was really deep and sticky in front of a few jumps, and a little bit of balanced momentum would be helpful. She didn’t want me to get bogged down and backwards (it’s almost like she knows me or something).

We watched a few go and you could definitely tell that the footing was playing a part. It had mostly stopped raining but it was WET WET WET and the takeoff spots in front of some of the jumps were getting deep. Some of the horses dealt with it fine, others seemed to really stick off the ground and require a lot of encouragement. I wasn’t really sure what to expect – Presto has been lucky enough to always jump on pretty good footing. The part I was most concerned about was all the standing water/puddles scattered throughout the course, especially the giant lake in front of fence 2. He’s got a tendency to want to jump over puddles, or at the very least he gets a little “stuck” going through them. I knew I’d have to be ready to ride more positively forward through those spots than usual.

He was a bit of a situation in warmup. Last week at Ocala someone almost ran right into us (and a few other people) multiple times, which freaked Presto out a bit. So when we got into showjump warmup this weekend he was wanting to prop and spin when horses came directly at him. That was super fun. I was trying to avoid traffic as best I could, while also keeping him on the better ground, while also trying to get him positively through as many puddles as possible, while also warming up. By the time we had jumped our last warmup fence he’d stopped wanting to spin so much and wasn’t being as dramatic about the puddles, so… small wins?

Once we were in the ring I trotted him directly to the big puddle of standing water in front of jump 2. That was my biggest area of concern, considering it was already a fairly sharp turn and not a very long approach. He peeked at that puddle but went through it fine, so off we went to the first jump. He was good, but it was just kind of like riding a whole new horse. He was being super genuine about it, but you could tell he wasn’t accustomed to jumping out of that kind of muck and was trying to figure it out. The turn from 1 to 2 rode really well though, I kept riding forward and he mostly ignored the big puddle.

Honestly it all went well until the triple at the very end. I just… missed coming in. Plain and simple. I was a couple strides too late looking at my takeoff spot, so when I did finally look I saw the perfect half stride coming in and didn’t have enough time to fix it. So we had the rail at both A and B. Totally and 100% my fault, I was too slow with my eye. Trying to retrain where I’m looking takes a lot of conscious effort that I haven’t quite mastered yet.

I was really happy with how he was otherwise though. Pretty rideable, and he kept trying for me despite it being a bog. It was character-building for him I think, good for his education to have to jump on footing that isn’t so ideal. He definitely felt like he improved from start to finish in how he handled it, which is all you can really ask for.

All we had on Friday was dressage and SJ, so we were done for the day after that. I left Presto at the trailer with Hillary (his BFF babysitter extraordinaire) so Megan and I could run out and walk XC. I’ll be honest, I was mostly just really really really looking forward to going home and putting on dry clothes. More about XC tomorrow!

Presto and I had another show this past weekend, but before we just jump straight from one show recap to another, I should probably fill in a little bit more about what else has been going on. Plus I need to stall a little bit in the hopes that show photos might be posted in the next couple days.

First and foremost, our intrepid young hero officially turned seven. SEVEN. Can you believe it? Time is starting to feel like it’s flying by. He is, dare I say, a Real Boy now. Well… on paper anyway.

He celebrated his birthday in proper Presto fashion, with a gathering of friends, a birthday outfit, and a pinata full of cookies that he smashed to absolute bits, much to the delight of the crowd. He also got an FEI membership for his birthday from me, which he seemed less enthusiastic about.

In other news, Argie boy has continued to prove what an exceptionally good egg he is. He’s had several more friends come take him for a spin now, and he’s been well-behaved for all, but he does seem particularly adept at caring for the less-experienced or timid rider.

A friend of a friend flew in last week to try him, his first official sale trial, which was a really nice older woman looking for her first horse. On paper you probably wouldn’t pick an 8yo OTTB that’s been off the track for 6 months, but he really loved her, and she loved him too. He was an absolute saint, so well-behaved for her and her trainer. He’d be in a trainer program so I think it would work fine, but she’s got a few others to try (that are, admittedly, probably better-suited on paper) so we’ll see. There are other people interested in him too, and he seems to gain new fans pretty quickly.

My friend Stacy is in town from Texas and she’s ridden him twice now (out of the whole herd, he was her pick) and also loves him. He’s just so kind and pleasant, and ok perhaps a bit of a leg workout.

If she wasn’t at capacity for horses she said she’d be buying him (and perhaps jokingly may have asked her husband if he would consider offing the grumpy elderly retired one to clear up a space… don’t worry, he wouldn’t), which seems to be the consensus of most people that swing a leg over. She thinks he’s the perfect type to take a timid ammy around the 2’6″ while also trotting around the crossrail classes with the kiddo at the same show. She’s right, he is. This horse will be absolutely worth his weight in gold to someone, and he will probably consume a relatively grotesque amount of treats in the process.

Henry got to come out and play last weekend on the day of Presto’s party, when all his friends were in town. He gained a new fan I think, because obviously he’s also perfect. He told me that himself.

As I mentioned, this past weekend was another horse show, which I’ll post about later, and I also go to go to brunch at WEC with Michelle, her husband, and Stacy to watch a Grand Prix. McLain Ward won. Everyone be shocked. It was fun though, I’ve never gotten to sit up in the VIP bougie seats area. Can’t beat that on a Sunday morning.

This was the last week of winter circuit at WEC, which means my extra retail income will be driving out of town to head back to Texas. I’m equal parts sad and relieved – sad because the extra money is nice, but relieved because I’m freakin exhausted. Season is basically just four months of running myself ragged, and that’s one thing off my plate again for a while, albeit to the detriment of my wallet. But I did manage to sneak in one more fun purchase thanks to my employee connections… here’s a hint:

You’ll have to wait and see what it is!

Last week I experienced every social media manager’s worst nightmare: my facebook got hacked. Not just hacked, but the person linked my facebook account to an instagram account that went against terms of service, so my whole facebook account got banned. Booted. Disappeared. Unalived.

Superb.

Thus far it’s been entirely irretrievable despite my best efforts. Ever tried contacting Facebook/Meta? BEST OF LUCK. It’s infuriating. I can’t even appeal it online because it won’t allow me to go past the point of logging in. So now it’s just… gone.

Which at first made me mad. Now it’s just become incredibly sad. That account had 15 years of pictures and videos (most of which I don’t have saved anywhere else), and posts and comments, and connections and friends, and groups and community. Just… poof. All gone. Every day I think of something else I’ll probably never get back and it’s upsetting all over again. Honestly it even feels like a blow to my reputation in general, because there was just so much history there and so many connections… now if someone looks me up there’s just nothing much to find. That’s something I can’t back.

Not to even mention the issues it’s caused with my work. I manage or run several business pages, some of which were also impacted. After a few days of getting absolutely nowhere I gave up and created a new facebook account, so I could at least reconnect the business pages and do my job while I tried to retrieve my original account. But now it seems like that new account might just be my only account.

It’s weird to feel like you’re in mourning over something as seemingly silly as a facebook account, but here we are. Turns out it was more important than I thought.

I briefly considered just taking that as my cue to exit facebook, and only use the new account to access the business pages I need and the Patreon group. But the truth is, I do actually need it in my line of work, and I do really enjoy it. The groups in particular. So I’m rebuilding, slowly but surely, trying to find all my old groups and friends. Except I’m scared to send out friend requests because the first time I tried, several people reported the new account as fraud. Also a lot of groups won’t let me join because my account is too new. It’s beyond frustrating.

So if you’re looking for me on facebook and it appears that I have gone POOF… I did indeed go poof, and teleport to an entirely new location. You can find me here.

The best thing about shows during winter season is that XpressFoto is in town doing the show pictures, and their All Images deal is cheaper than buying just a few single photos by themselves, so… there’s LOTS of media! After we talk about the course, anyway.

The course opened for walking on Wednesday at 3pm, so I was there at like 2:50, ready to rock and roll. Hillary came with me, and I was glad for a walking buddy as I mulled over approaches and lines and strategies. My regular trainer was out of town at Carolina, and Megan was lined up to coach me day-of, but she wasn’t there for my first walk on Wednesday. Which is fine by me, because I liked having time to look at things on my own and consider my options.

There were a few things I wanted a second opinion about after my initial course walk – mainly the line from 5 to 6 (it was offset and wonky), the coffin combo (I hated it), and the second crater combo with the corner (I was pretty sure what the best line was through there, but wanted to double check). So on show day Megan walked those with me after dressage, I solidified my plan, and we were all set. For the most part it felt definitely doable, but there was also plenty of work to do in the combos where you really needed to be on your line and committed.

After we finished showjumping I went back to the trailer, put his boots on, gave him some water, put on my vest, and off we went to XC warmup.

Now, remember how I said that Presto had been quiet all day? Like to the point where I really thought the heat was bothering him? Turns out that was A LIE. We got to XC warmup and Presto lit up like the Fourth of July. Turns out he was just saving himself for the fun stuff. I can respect that. Even when he’s trying to run off with me and squeal and crow hop his way around warmup like a lunatic. He was a bit rank. Kind of funny how well he’s figured out the game by now.

Because of that, he got to come out of the start box and do the first part slowly, just to make sure he understood that he still had to be rideable. As you can see from the map, the beginning was winding and felt like it was jump jump jump jump in rapid succession. Really straightforward jumps for the first few though, standard fare to get you into the flow. He was quite respectful about all of it, and had his ears pricked just as hard as they possibly could be.

The first interesting thing came at 5, 6, 7.

The wagon was offset to the brush in such a way that if you wanted to jump both of them straight-on, you’d have to do a wonky little S curve in between the two. Obviously you need to be straight to the brush into the water at 6, since you had to land and bend left to the skinny in the water at 7. So if you wanted to straighten the approach to the brush without having to wind all over the place, the solution was to jump the wagon angled a bit from right to left, which then created more of a bending approach to the brush.

I feel like I had a hard time explaining that, so I drew a picture. I know, my graphic design skills are top tier.

Presto was superb about that… I made the turn, found the line, and it came up nicely. When we jumped the brush into the water he did do his patented little leap step that he loves when he’s feeling full of himself, which caused a bit of a misstep, and I had to really be like “Hi hello you’re not done, there’s a skinny for you in here, get to business”. He was like OH OKAY, GOT IT. It’s the first real question he’s seen since last fall, and I think he needed it to remind him that Modified is harder and he has to stay on task.

After that we only had one let up fence, a ramp, and then we were at the coffin. What I didn’t like about this combo was that the Training line went straight through and was the obvious path to catch the horse’s eye. Both courses had the same A and B, but Training just went straight ahead 3 strides to a brush at C, whereas we had to jump the ditch and do a YOINK to the left three bold strides to a brush skinny at C. I knew Presto would lock on to the Training C and I’d really have to make sure to get him off that line and onto the Modified line. Megan said to open my rein over the ditch, put my eye on it, and “just get it done”. Grit, it’s what’s for eventingdinner.

One thing helped me out a little bit here – there was a truck sitting in the trees to the left of the coffin, and as he took off at the rail he kinda slid his gaze slightly to the left. It worked out for me to get his focus to stay left, opening my inside rein over the ditch, and as soon as his feet touched the ground from the ditch I really closed my leg and was like THAT ONE OVER THERE, GO GET IT. His focus shifted to it immediately and he was superb over the skinny.

Then it was a hop over the collapsible table… I always love to see the frangible fences out there.

And on to the first crater combo. These two Law Firm Ocala jumps were new to us, we haven’t jumped them before. The first show where they made their debut last year, I remember them being a bit spooky for several people. The faux books on the front side of the first jump are a lot to look at, especially since you headed from light to dark with a downhill landing. I rode positively to that one, but Presto didn’t even give it a second glance. He jumped it and landed with his ears perked, looking for the next. By this point in the course he remembered that things can be harder and come up quicker, and he was eating up the challenge and looking for the next. Exactly what I wanted to feel, him getting sharper and more clever.

He popped up and over the mound out of the crater and locked right onto the hanging log. I got him there on a bit of a gap and it was on an angle but he was like I’VE GOT IT NO PROBLEM and off he went, no questions asked. After that we had a quick turn to the right to jump the trakehner. This was another thing he’s never jumped at the horse park before, and it’s right in a tree line in the shade, with a big dark ditch. It’s a spooky AF trakehner. True to form though, he didn’t even seem to notice any of that as he pinged right over, looking for the next.

I finally let him gallop a bit after that, since we had a long stretch to the MIM oxer (which he jumped out of stride like a little champ) and let him keep rolling a bit on the way to the next crater. He came back pretty nicely before the first jump, and I could feel him looking for the question he knew was coming. We jumped the house down into the crater on a slight angle so that we didn’t get hung too far down the slope, then turned to pop up the steep mound over the log.

And y’all… this mofo locked his eyes on that skinny and bounded up the side of the mound like a rabbit on steroids, leaving one out to the skinny. I think in his mind he was like I KNOW WHAT I’M DOING WOW HERE I GO but in reality it wasn’t great because we had 4 quick bending strides after that to a corner. I had to really work the brakes and the steering wheel to get to the corner, and as soon as he realized there was another element he literally threaded his body through the flags on the corner to make it happen. It was a superb cross country horse moment in that he tried his absolute guts out to put us through the flags like he knows he’s supposed to, but also… his overenthusiasm is the reason it was harder than it should have been. I don’t think he was particularly deterred though. Does he get extra credit for the exceptional effort even if he’s the cause of needing to make said exceptional effort? I’m not sure. Either way, next time we will try to be a bit more conservative up the mounds (at least I will… no promises about him).

After that the hard parts were done! We just had a few more until we were home. I really expected him to start feeling a little heavy by that point since 1) hot AF outside 2) he’s not at peak fitness, just coming back to the level. But no. I mean I’d run him pretty slow for the first 2/3 but still… he was plenty full of running, if he’d been allowed.

We galloped over the box, then came down the hill to the second water. By this point he was so full of himself I think it could have been on fire and he would have jumped it. He was positively GLEEFUL through the water, out over the skinny, and then over the last two tables to the finish.

We finished with a buttload of time faults that dropped us way down the placings, but that was the plan in the first place. My main goals for this show were 1) let him see some more challenging things again to get a feel for where we’re at before planning the rest of the season 2) maintain the rideability 3) get us back in sync 4) keep a balanced gallop the whole way around. All of those things were accomplished, so I’m super happy with that. He was so freakin happy to be back out, and he definitely needed to be challenged a little bit. Most of all though, I was just so relieved/elated to be sitting back on my super happy boy XC Machine again… he felt just like the Presto I know and love. All in all, a great day!