Month: February 2025

Guys, guess what came?!?!

I cannot even begin to tell you how excited I am to have a Magnawave machine of my own. I’ll do an actual review of it at some point soon after I use it more (have I already magnawaved 3 horses and myself? Yes.) but it feels like a gamechanger and I’m psyched.

I got the Semi 10, which is a small, very portable little machine. If you were doing a big barn full of horses every day or running a MW business you’d probably want a bigger model, but for in-barn use on a handful of horses the size of the Semi 10 is really convenient. It’s still plenty powerful, but easy to carry and store.

I got a lot of attachments too, some of which I haven’t used yet. I think the butterfly loop and the XL Wave Wings will probably be the most-used attachments for the horses, but I sat on the MagEnergy Mat and did my back (I have scoliosis so my back is pretty much always tight/sore) and it was great. I haven’t used the MagEnergy Guard (the big black box that horses stand on to do their feet) or the large loop yet. Their time is coming.

I will say, I did feel glad for the 9000 videos and assessments I had to do for training to get my certification, because I was able to hit the ground running with no questions or fumbling around. Fun times. Zappy zaps for errybody.

Other than just that exciting arrival, things have been predictably busy. Presto had two training rides last week, flat and jump, and I had a dressage/poles lesson, a jump lesson, and yesterday we popped around a few XC things ahead of the show this week.

The dressage/poles lesson was really like 900 transitions on a circle, over poles at the trot and canter. After we warmed up we started out cantering around the circle, trotting before the poles, trotting over the poles, and then cantering again after. Then she spread the poles out and we trotted around the circle, cantered before the poles, cantered over the poles, and trotted again after. She made the poles in the middle raised, and it took us a hot minute to figure out all the feet…

but it was a great exercise for working on the timing of the aids, response to the half halt, keeping consistent bend, staying uphill through all the transitions, etc etc. We’re getting down to the nitty gritty detail work and it’s so hard and I love it.

Not sure what that says about me, really.

Anyway, we’re headed back to Rocking Horse this week, where we haven’t been in like a year and a half. Last time we went there was for an open schooling day, right before we figured out Presto had those nasty ulcers on the roof of his stomach, and it was NOT a good or productive day. He wouldn’t go near a ditch or down bank. So… fingers crossed he’s not harboring any worries or resentment about that day. Only one way to find out. I do think he’s gonna be a bit spooky no matter what, since he hasn’t been there in a while. He schooled really well yesterday though and felt plenty confident, so fingers crossed we can carry the good vibes forward.

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The changes in him are getting more and more evident, I think. He feels stronger and more mature. Granted, he’s still and probably always will be a very cheeky horse that loves to spook for sport, so I would never in my life say he’s predictable. Just more trained. Most days.

I also had some content shoots to do last week, particularly one for Riding Warehouse x LeMieux spring collection.

Y’all know matchy matchy isn’t really my own personal style (unless it’s black) but we always manage to have fun with these shoots. Michelle is in town right now and took the pics for us, and she got some really cute ones for sure. I gotta admit, the pink grew on me a bit by the end, too. Not a pink girl in general, but it was working for Tully.

Presto’s outfit was Dusk and Mimosa, a color combo more typically in my wheelhouse. He slayed, I think.

I’m also doing some content/testing for Gatusos horse boots, a brand I hadn’t seen before but is REALLY interesting. I’ll have a review coming soon for those as well.

On the nerdier side of things, I got the breeding data finished and sent over to the Aiken GrandPrix of Eventing Showcase for this weekend, so if anyone is watching the live stream hopefully the hosts will use their data sheets! It’s a little bit of a smaller field than usual but there’s a lot of quality and depth, and many of the horses are aiming for Kentucky in April so it’ll be a fun preview.

On a similar vein, this week Eventing Nation launched their very first podcast episode. It’s been a long time coming and there are some really cool plans on the horizon, so make sure you’re following! Sally did a great job on the first episode, co-hosting with Will Faudree.

When they were first planning this episode and posted publicly asking for questions for Will, I thought I was being funny by submitting a bunch of marginally unhinged questions about Mason (Mama’s Magic Way). Y’all know I stan Mason big time. But anyway she actually asked him all my insane questions and now I fear that I’m forever immortalized in EN history as a Supreme Stalker Deluxe. Will did say I could have Mason’s autograph tho.

Worth it.

Last week was a bit of a relaxed one around here, by our standards.

My trainer was out of town, so we had the week at home to ourselves with no lessons or training rides. I figured it was a good opportunity for a little mid-season semi-break-ish/refresh, so Presto did a lot of hacking and long and low stretchy flat days (and a dressage day and pole day just to remember we are indeed a semi-trained animal). I’m not sure how much Presto really enjoys staying home and not going on adventures, but it’s good for his stomach to have a little break from all the trailering he does all the time.

The break also happened to fall over the boys’ scheduled annual dental appointment, which worked out well. The dentist thought Henry looked fine to wait another 6 months (a win for a horse with previous dental issues), Presto got done and looked pretty routine with nothing remarkable, and Rubes… well… it was her first time seeing him and let’s just say I wish I’d had her come sooner. His mouth was a situation. Ramps and hooks galore, lesions all over the back of his mouth from his teeth, and his whole jaw was just completely locked.

I chose to tackle all his aftercare in the order that I did (stomach, feet, chiro, joints, massage, teeth) partly because all of my horses get their teeth done at the beginning of the year anyway and partly because he wasn’t showing any signs of a major mouth issue. He eats great, is an easy keeper, doesn’t drop food, and has shown no particular issue with the bit or had any overt sensitivity near his jaw/tmj. Like… sure he’s a tight and tense animal but he’s an OTTB and there’s a whole lot of potential reasons for that (including stuff all the other aftercare has addressed). So I prioritized things as I saw them and started knocking them off one by one. Naturally, though, horses specialize in making us second guess ourselves in hindsight. Should have started with his mouth.

Basically the dentist described it as the mouth being the first in a line of dominos, and that when the mouth is locked in place like his was, the rest of the horse has a hard time moving as it should, too. That horses with mouths like his are often “a chiropractic nightmare”. She rattled off a laundry list of issues that can be caused by that, and it was like ticking boxes. Yup yup yup. Him to a T. She went on to say that he had zero anterior posterior movement of his mandible and that would have prevented him from being able to properly lift his back, and that he likely had headaches and sensitivity/pain in his TMJ pretty much constantly. Awesome. I feel terrible for not having done the teeth sooner.

She worked on him for quite a while, saying she’d do what she could all at once but that this was going to take time to fix entirely. She asked if I had any kind of PEMF (I was like “funny you should say that, my MagnaWave gets here next week!” She was DELIGHTED to hear that.) and suggested a few days off with bute, then riding him as long and low as I can get him to go for a while as he starts to loosen back up. She’ll come back in 6 months to keep working on it.

I got back on him for the first time yesterday and… yeah. He definitely feels better. The tension is notably reduced, his ability to properly bend left and right was immediately better, and he’s seeking the long and low more readily. His head doesn’t feel like he’s just sticking it in one place and holding it there, I have more options for moving him around. It will take time to totally iron everything out through his body but there is a significant noticeable change in how he feels under tack.

So that was… an experience. An expensive experience, but a fruitful one. I’m going to have him chiro’d again soon, and when the Magnawave gets here he’s gonna be the PEMF king.

In other Rubes news, we officially got our acceptance to the 2025 RRP Makeover! I was waiting for the acceptance emails to go out before I launch his The Bleu Team initiative (more to come on that) so now I’ve got some work to do to get all that stuff ready to go. I’m hoping it’ll be something fun for all the Ruby Bleu fans.

Also – last week Henry turned 18. EIGHTEEN. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?

I’m so not ready to accept the fact that he’s a full fledged senior. Old enough to buy his own cigarettes, or vote (really could have used him in the last election tho tbh).

He had a fun birthday week though, getting to pony some of the coming 2yo’s around the farm. Aka wield his authority with no mercy, and exert his superiority over the youth. His absolute favorite things.

It’s also hard to believe those kiddos are almost 2. Since we didn’t have any foals last year they’re our youngest currently on the farm. NOT FOR LONG, THO! As of tomorrow our first mare of 2025 will be at 320 days, which means we’re only a few weeks away from the kickoff of Foaling Season. I am equal parts super ready (because baby horses, duh) and definitely not at all ready (because foaling season is scary AF and no one gets any sleep).

We did get some WiFi cameras up and working in the barn though, thanks in large part to my brother. I am delighted to have the cameras in there, it should make foal watch much easier than it was last time.

We’ll also be able to give Patreon members access to the cameras so they can check in whenever they want, or help foal watch (there’s no such thing as too many eyes on the cameras). That’ll be a first!

I’ve chosen to keep the Baby Bets contest limited to Patreon this year as well, since it’s just a lot easier for me to keep track of things there vs when it’s public and I end up with DM’s on multiple platforms, emails, comments here, etc. There are seven (SEVEN!!!!!!!) foals coming this year and I’ve already got a lot on my plate, so it makes sense to at least try to set myself up for success by making it as simple as possible. The contest IS, however, open to all membership tiers, so if you’re a member, please check your dashboard!

Once again I feel as if I’m speaking to the void, with everyone viewing and no one commenting (does no one like show recaps anymore?), but I shall deliver on the fun part today anyway. Good news: media abounds. Although I did forget my helmet camera entirely. Whoops.

Since I had an early dressage time on Thursday and it was a one day show, I went over to the Horse Park on Wednesday afternoon to pick up my packet and walk XC. I wanted to get an initial impression of it (and find my way, sometimes meandering aimlessly) on my own, and then figure out if there was anything I felt like I needed to walk with Ellie. Really, we’ve run Modified at the Horse Park several times by now, and an early season course won’t be as technical.

Overall I thought the course was pretty friendly. Definitely questions we’ve done before, and a few big/max jumps but it wasn’t anything crazy. What you’d expect for an early season course, really. There were two things I didn’t like:

1. That stupid new trakehner. My horse has been here enough times to know there’s never been a trakehner there, and it’s randomly plopped in the middle of a giant field with the water (aka distraction) on one side and warmup (aka another distraction) straight ahead. I figured if there was a place for him to do his little prop and spin maneuver, it would be there for sure. My guess was he’d clock the trakehner from far away, dismiss it because it’s little and innocuous, focus on something else, and then be surprised by the trakehner at the last second.
2. The location of a few jumps was right next to or off of fencelines with jumps/equipment, which are also historically famous things for him to spook at. Particularly 2 and 3, and then 6A. Lots happening off to the side on the approaches to those.

So I walked just those parts with Ellie really quickly before the jumping phases, and she gave me her thoughts on how to best approach things with Sir Sometimes Spooksalot. Basically, keep the stick in my left hand, keep him bent slightly left, and really send him out in front of my leg right from the start. He’s also just not really the type of horse where you can put your knuckles down in his mane and just let him cruise between the jumps. I have to constantly be moving him around and occupying his mind to keep him focused on what he’s doing rather than whatever demons he thinks he sees in the distance.

Ellie came over to meet me at warmup and we started out cantering politely over a little table, then opened up and sent him galloping over a bigger table and then a skinny. The jumps were pointing towards the treeline, so she had me landing and really sending him forward towards the trees, getting the “go on towards the spooky thing” programming installed right from the start. I got a bit deep to the skinny a couple times so she had me send him forward through the turn, then give him 2 strides where I just kinda sat chilly and let him reset, then straighten, close my leg, and send him forward again. That worked exceptionally well, since the turn itself works as a little half halt.

He came out of the box great, and pinged right over the first jump. I closed my leg and said “let’s get on with this thing” and opened him up to fence 2. Ellie said to not be afraid to “dare him” a little bit in the beginning, that it was more important that he be thinking bold and forward than have me too preoccupied with getting the perfect distance and have him end up underpowered or drop behind my leg. So I put on my bad bitch galloping pants at two and he pinged over it like a little (ok big) champ.

I kept him bent slightly to the left and busy all the way to 3, which included passing a truck and a flatbed that were on the treeline. To his credit, he didn’t even look at it. We jumped 3, and he was immediately so locked on to 4 that he did a little stumble through the footing change (there was a small depression/sandy spot there) and popped me out of my right stirrup. I was already too close to 4AB to go fishing for it, so I just jumped through the combo without it. He was superb. Clicked into heat-seeking missile mode, for sure.

Then we hopped over the log table, which again came up nicely out of a forward stride, then slowed down and rebalanced for the crater question. Here’s where I wish I had remembered my helmet camera so you could see the terrain. We jumped the skinny and had a couple strides on level ground before going down the steep hill, hanging a left and going back uphill, then over the corner. Again he was really super here and it rode great.

From there we had a little gallop over to the MIM table, which Presto has jumped so many times at T and M here at the Horse Park, but he always gives it lots of space just to be sure. This thing does tend to ride spookier than you’d anticipate, not sure if it’s the dimension or the plants or what. Either way, he jumped it fine, just… expressively. Like did we have to be 10′ in the air, probably not. Alas, there we are.

Then we looped back to the right towards the coffin. My only concern here was the potential for distraction as we made the turn, since we passed very close to 4B. He came right back though, and he was focused. I made the turn like we’d practiced in warmup, packaging him but keeping him forward through the turn, giving him a couple strides to himself to balance and half-halt as we came through the turn, then leg back on and forward to the MIM rail at A. I have to say, for as many times as we’ve jumped through this coffin by now, I think that may have been his best yet. Yet again I wish I’d had my helmet cam, he pinged through like it was an easy gymnastic (and jumped the shit out of the brush at C, because he still doesn’t brush through brush).

After that was a little gallop back out into the field toward the first water, but first: the trakehner. And man, I called it. Like I predicted the exact playbook of how it went down. He clocked the jump from far away, dismissed it as a little log and put his eye up towards warmup, and then like 4-5 strides out he went WHOA WHAT THE and did a little mini hesitation. As soon as I closed my leg he surged forward again and jumped it, but he was definitely surprised to see a giant hole in the ground where there has never been one before. That’s why we gotta pay attention, son.

Making it past that was a relief, not gonna lie. I’m always leery of the smallest, simplest jumps on the course with this horse. The rest was big or technical enough to keep his attention.

We turned right and headed toward the first water, which was the house with 5-6 slightly bending strides to a skinny. Y’all remember when he kinda struggled to understand jumps in the water? He’s got them down pat now.

I always feel a little better if the jump IN the water comes at the second water or when there’s a jump before it to give us a related distance, but he was super bold and – dare I say – professional through here. Easy peasy.

@breed.ride.event

I dunno what your average 40 year old does with their time, but here I am galloping farm animals over houses in a pond. #horsegirl #equestrian #eventer

♬ original sound – breed.ride.event

After that I very nearly did a booboo and turned a little too early to head through the treeline to the other field and the next jump. I had turned and found the jump and went “well this is def not where I’m supposed to be” and had to kind of weeeaaaave my way back to the left to come through the trees in the right spot. Heh. Whoops. Guess that’s what I get for only walking that part once (I think I turned in the wrong spot when I was walking too. I’m consistent?). It cost me a little time but Presto didn’t even break his rhythm, and he jumped the log oxer really nicely out of stride.

We landed turning and burning for the loooooong gallop to the next fence, the big collapsible table. So much frangible technology at FHP, we love to see it. That table is big but I heard Ellie in my head telling to not be afraid to dare him a little bit, so I kept rolling and what do you know it came up beautifully out of stride and he jumped the ever loving shit out of it. Again, wish there had been a photog there. The way he powered off the ground was chef’s kiss. I think he was having fun, too.

From there we had the second crater combo, the house on the top edge of the crater, then down through it and back up out over the skinny on the top of the crater. He was really easy through here, I barely even had to steer. After that was the skinny brush chevron in the middle of nowhere, which was really just begging you to come at too hard and fast and risk a runout, so I steadied and rebalanced and made sure he was straight. In hindsight I probably steadied and rebalanced considerably sooner than I needed to, and gave him way more straight strides than were necessary. I think I can be a little bolder with things like that and not waste so much time.

Then we had the second water, which he jumped through great, the bending line combo which he popped through looking very unimpressed, and a gallop over the last.

We had 2 time penalties (totally my bad with the errant path and the unnecessarily wide turn) which dropped us from 5th to 10th, but I was super happy with him. The jumps (aside from the trakehner which he swears just appeared out of the ether) all felt really easy, and at no point did he feel like he was contemplating a spook and spin or falling behind my leg. He stayed up in front of me, stayed balanced, and when I put my leg on, he went. At the same time he was also super rideable, which was great, because this was my first time running him XC without the curb strap on his bit. The changes in him are starting to become evident (at least to me?), and it’s exactly what I’ve been wanting to see and feel.

And we were back home for Presto to be rolling happily in his sand pit before 4pm. That’s the kind of horse show experience I can get behind. Long live the local one-day.

It was a hot day (as you can see from the lather on him in the pics) but Presto handled the weather great, his TPR came down fast, and he was cooled down within a couple minutes of standing under the hose. I always run him in FLAIR strips but especially when it’s hot like this, and I also tried Gallagher’s Water to see if it would encourage him to drink more (he did drink, but he was undecided as to how much he liked the GW. Jury is still out.). Either way, considering how frisky he was the next morning, I don’t think his long show day took much out of him, which is also great to see.

Next on the docket: Rocking Horse in a few weeks!

This is only getting broken up into two posts because I have SO MUCH media. Everyone say thank you to Leigh, XpressFoto, and Hillary for carrying the show recap in its entirety.

As I love to do during season, I entered the Thursday one-day division rather than any of the weekend divisions. Is it usually way more competitive because all the pros show their horses on Thursday to have more time for clients on the weekend? Yes. But ya know… I’d still rather be in and out and done and dusted in one day and just not get a ribbon. I’m very good at not getting ribbons, I have years of experience at it. (humble brag)

Anyway, my dressage ride time was quite early – 8:18 as the fourth horse of the day in the ring. Florida Horse Park is about a 45min drive, plus I needed time to park, groom, tack up, and put studs in since we were in a grass ring. Thus I had to leave the farm around 6:15am to make sure I wasn’t rushed. That meant I opted not to braid (let’s be real, I wasn’t gonna braid anyway, this was just an exceptionally convenient excuse). The day before I had spur of the moment decided to clip Presto again, and he got a bath, so… good enough, yes?

Like I mentioned, we were down in the grass ring, separate from the main arena with 3 other dressage rings. The perks of this were that we had our own warmup area, so at no point in time were there more than 4 horses in there. The downside of it was that I own the nosiest, most wants-to-be-in-the-chaos animal on the planet, and he kept staring up at the other rings wondering why he was being punished with quiet, calm, and relative solitude.

Either way, he warmed up fine. My trainer couldn’t make it that early, which was no big deal. I’d had a lesson the day before and she told me how to warm him up and which buttons to make sure I could push. He was a little sticky in the first two trot-canter transitions to the right (our bugaboo of the week, it seems) but then we got a couple good ones. He was in front of my leg but obedient, and felt pretty good by the time it was our turn.

We went in the ring and it started out pretty well, with an 8 for the first centerline and a 7.5 for the trot lengthening, right off the bat. As we went along tho, Presto started to feel a little… taller. And like his attention was beginning to wander up the hill towards the other dressage rings. He held it together until the second leg yield, during which he decided he should send out an emergency SOS call in the form of a high pitched scream as he tried to crane his head to look up the hill. Still, he halted well, and the free walk was fine up until the last few steps when he decided no horse could possibly endure these horribly serene conditions any longer, upon which he jigged. He never jigs.

And then it was time to canter and do the canter lengthening to the right. And well… yeehaw bitches.

He flipped that freak flag of a tail up in the air like an Arabian and away he went. It wasn’t cute.

I managed to wrangle him around something resembling a circle and then back down to trot within like 5 meters of where I was supposed to (a miracle really) and then had to canter the other way. Luckily I was able to keep the lid on him a bit more in that direction.

Luckily after that all we had left was the trot up centerline, which was quite perky but straight (another 8) and then halt/salute without getting murdered.

So that was… a thing we did. Kinda frustrating because again we were riding in front of the judge that always loves him, so taking those 5’s and 6’s in the middle were an ouch. We got a few 8’s tho to counterbalance, and she was kind enough to see through the yeehaws and give us a 7 on harmony (she thought I handled it well), so we ended up with a 31.

Granted, in a very competitive division like that, anything not in the 20’s leaves you down the leaderboard.

Sigh. A little disappointing because without the Fuckery it would have been a good mark, but that’s horses. Especially horses like this one. If he can’t be part of the chaos he’ll just make his own.

At least he’s cute in his new bridle. And honestly I love all my weird colored jackets because the sea of black and navy is so boring, but I can’t help but love how the black jacket looks on him. The sparkles on the pockets and collar coordinate with my boots and saddle pad and saddle too, so like… sparkle slay, even if black is basic. It’s still my favorite color.

After that we had a long 4 hours until showjumping. Presto hung out at the trailer with his hay, and I watched some Intermediate rounds and got a look at the course. As is standard around here, there was like one actual related distance outside of the combinations. If you don’t like long bending lines and rollbacks, don’t come to Ocala.

Then I popped over to XC to meet Ellie. I’d walked XC the day before and just had a couple questions/points of concern, so she looked at those with me and gave me her advice. Then I popped back over the trailer to get on and head to SJ warmup.

He was really super in warmup. I won it for sure. Every distance came up perfect, he was jumping phenomenal, and didn’t even try to yeet me when some other horses in the ring had a fiesta. I was delighted.

I wish I could tell you that we went in the ring and had the same winning vibe, but we did not.

Well, okay, one of us did. It wasn’t me.

The first few jumps weren’t so bad, but then I had too much time to think (always bad) and decided that pulling was the answer (it never is). We ended up underpowered and I buried him to a few, including both doubles which he then had to try extra hard to get out of cleanly.

Bless him tho, he did. He jumped his little guts out and was just the best boy despite his rider not helping much at all. Redemption from his feral dressage interlude, I suppose. All forgiven.

I managed to figure out how to put my leg on and finished up alright, heading back to the gate feeling a bit embarrassed and calling it “hot garbage”. Ellie perhaps more professionally said “the beginning and the end were good you just got too underpowered in the middle” which I think is just a nice way of being like “yeah the warmest of garbage” but ya know, tomato tomato.

It was a clear round though, bless him, and entirely because of him. One of these days I will learn my lesson about going the fuck forward, but it was not that day.

If you’re forcing me to look on the bright side, I suppose the good takeaways are that 1) he really is jumping better than ever. That’s indisputable at this point I think. 2) Clearly he’s plenty confident, because he can do his job just fine without my assistance. Those are good things.

Tomorrow, the fun part…

Just baaaarely squeaking a post in here this week! 😅 It’s been even busier than normal, with three friends in town visiting over the past week and half, lessons, a horse show, and all the usual work stuff. I’ll save the horse show recap for next week so that hopefully I have lots of media (blessed be Xpress Foto and their All Images package, plus Leigh and Hillary took some media too!) but there’s still plenty to update on other than that.

Last week I was actually managing to do a good job of fitting all the horses into my rota, but that didn’t continue through this week. Nonetheless, I got Rubes back in the groove and he seemed happy to be back to work. He does love having a job and a schedule, so I’m trying to make sure to have time for him consistently, but sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t. This time of year is really a struggle, time-wise.

Either way, the good thing about him is that he doesn’t lose any ground in his training if he has a few days off here and there, he always picks right back up. He might be a little scooty and fresh the first day or two, but the education remains in place. Thank you, thoroughbred brain.

Henry also got a few rides, which he seemed delighted about mostly because getting ridden means you get more cookies.

Of course, as soon as I start riding him again he manages to hurt himself. I was feeding the other afternoon and Rubes came galloping and bucking down the fenceline, and Henry tried to follow suit in his own turnout but managed to lose his footing and fall down instead. He’s a little off now, but I can’t find any heat or swelling or anything obvious. He’s a bit tender to palpation over his muscles, so my guess is he tweaked something. Good job, old man. You can’t run around and buck like the youngsters anymore. I really wish my MagnaWave was here already because that would probably really help, but hopefully he’s feeling better in a few days.

Presto got his feet done last weekend and then this week we had a jump lesson and then a combo training ride/dressage lesson. It remains equal parts exciting and slightly depressing how good he looks with Ellie… maybe someday I’ll get close to replicating it. At least we know it’s in there?

Presto has been really really good, although he can be an entirely different ride from day to day, especially when it’s particularly hot or cold. I’m having to learn how to be quicker and more intelligent about how I adapt my ride to suit the horse on the day and in the moment. Sometimes I’m good at that. Other times I’m not.

I ended up bodyclipping Presto again on Wednesday because it’s warmed up so much here. It started out with me saying “I’m just gonna touch up his head before we leave for our lesson” which is always a lie and never actually ends as just a touch-up, but I have yet to learn. He had just enough hair to look slightly mangy, and since it’s been hot I was like ya know what… why not… and before I knew it, there went the clippers down his butt and I was committed. Luckily his legs didn’t have much regrowth so it was mostly shoulders, head, and butt. Still though. Why do I do these things to myself the day before a show.

I’ve been working at HITS a lot, and really enjoying the grounds. It’s got a more chill vibe than WEC, and last week I was able to catch the end of the Grand Prix while I was grabbing lunch. It’s definitely easier to spectate there and feels more relaxed/friendly in general.

In other random doings, I may or may not have decorated our new frozen semen tank. Now she’s FABULOUS.

I legit cannot WAIT to see the faces of the various vets, techs, and AirGas workers when I pull up with that thing. She’s certainly memorable and unique, you have to admit. She’s done a bit viral on TikTok too, with the video finding its way to the cattle breeding crowd. You gotta read the comments, they’re gold.

@breed.ride.event

When you get a new frozen swimmer tank and just have to decorate it. 🦄 #horsegirls #equestrianlife

♬ Pink Pony Club – Chappell Roan

I hope other people decorate their jizzloos too. The world needs more levity.

Our Cashmere semen wont be here until next month, so for now it remains empty, but hopefully not for long!

Otherwise, things have been as business-as-usual as they ever get around here. I’m still swimming, but lately I only seem to be managing 2x per week instead of 3. Which is not surprising at all.

At some point during season I’ll struggle to get over there at all, but I do really enjoy my swims and think it’s definitely been beneficial for my riding. My core is stronger and my cardio is better.

This weekend will be mostly working without much riding, so maybe I can get caught up on a few things. I’ll definitely have a show recap for you next week!