So. I guess I owe you guys an update. 😅 I swore I’d done one on here like a week and a half ago but scrolling has proven that to be false. I post stuff on Patreon or our fb group and then my brain checks the box and I forget to ever mention it on the regular blog entirely. This is what one would call a Whoopsy on my part. Anyway, let’s catch up (once again). This is gonna have to be a bit of an abridged version, because it’s been like 3 weeks and ain’t nobody got time for that.

First and foremost, all of my horse-baby making juice has arrived! I ordered a dose of Cashmere frozen a few months ago and then a dose of Nice de Prissey in Spy Coast’s Valentine’s Day sale (bc duh what else would you buy for Valentine’s Day). Cashmere is the Plan A for this year, but if we’re unsuccessful with that I felt like Nice de Prissey is a solid back-up choice. I’ve officially got both doses in our tank here at the farm now, so as soon as the mare is ready to go (probably still a few more weeks), we’ve got the swim team lined up and ready for duty.

We’ve bred a few mares already so far this year (four? I think we’ve bred four?) but only one is far enough along for her black dot check yet. And, drumroll please…

We’re off to a good start, with Fey officially in foal to Future Guilty Pleasure (that one will be for sale!). We’ve got more to check this week and next, and a lot more still left to breed, so keep your fingers crossed and send us some good “black dot” juju.

In also-exciting news, look who has decided he’d like to rejoin the roster.

I’ve been struggling with some on/off foot lameness with him basically all winter but knock on wood he seems to be feeling better now. Just in time for the hot weather that he doesn’t really tolerate. Way to go, Henny. He seems delighted to be back to some kind of work though, probably because it means he gets more cookies. I’d love it if he’d stay sound enough for me to ride him at least a few times a week so I can work on more of the flatwork stuff that I also work on in my lessons with Presto. I need polish and finesse, y’all.

There’s also Rubes, who is coming along nicely on the flat and will start jumping a little bit soon. He went on another off property adventure and was a little bit better than last time, but he really struggles to keep a lid on it when he thinks something fun is happening. I’m not yet convinced that eventing will be for him, but we’ll keep plugging away at the off property adventures and see how that evolves.

At home he’s been really fantastic and his flat work is coming along nicely. He’s nailed down the leg yield, is getting pretty good at the stretchy trot, and can do some shoulder in. He tries super hard but it’ll take time to keep building the strength.

As far as Presto goes, he continues to sail along in his program.

We keep asking for more and making the jumping stuff more technical, as we push the limits of both his and my comfort zones. Most of the time it goes great. Sometimes one or both of us make a mistake. Such is the way of life when you do hard things, and everything about this sport is hard.

I’ve been feeling a bit stuck and frustrated as far as my own progress compared to Presto’s… I can see why well-funded amateurs competing at the mid to upper levels tend to have multiple competition horses. How the actual eff do you get to be super proficient at this when you only have one horse doing that kind of stuff? It’s so difficult to keep the skill level up to where it needs to be to compete at that level when you’re jumping like once a week and cross country schooling once a month. I feel like this is the real limiting factor to most amateurs, much more than talent or desire. Saddle time spent working on particular skills is a hard thing to come by. I need to win the lottery. Or even just find like… 40k sitting on my doorstep, no strings attached. Or a second semi-talented, already-going-at-some-level horse standing in the paddock with a bow on it. All scenarios seem equally likely.

My nihilistic brain really wants to fall into a spiral about it because I’m 42 this year and feel like my window for actually being good at any of this is passing me by. I have to try to redirect those thoughts. I’m so delighted to be doing any of this at any level, much less in a place like this and on a horse this nice. Like, what an absolute fuckin dream. Still tho… who doesn’t want to be better at what they devote 100% of their life to? It’s natural, I think. One can be incredibly grateful for what they’ve made and still dream of more. It’s what keeps us working as hard as we do and sacrificing as much as we do.

Last week we went XC schooling, intending to just pop through a few things ahead of Ocala International. The timing wasn’t ideal, but it was what we could make work. And what was initially going to be an easy day ended up being a bit of a hard one, when first I was struggle-bussing really bad (SIGH) and then he was having a hard time understanding a line of extremely angled shoulder brush skinnies and we had to break the exercise apart and then put it back together. Either way, I ended up being on him for a while.

The ground was hard, it was hot, we jumped more than we wanted… just not ideal prep for a horse show two days later. I packed his feet and magnawaved him and he had a day off before the show, but he just didn’t feel as good and fresh as he normally does. He was a little behind my leg and holding tension behind the saddle in dressage, and it resulted in several mistakes and just not his normal standard of work. In showjumping I spent the first half of the course struggling to get him up and out in front of me at all and then I felt like he wasn’t leaving the ground with his normal power. He jumped clear, but it wasn’t like… a great-feeling clear, if that makes sense?

We had cross country the next day and he was feeling much more his normal self, for sure. He’d perked back up, and we decided to just put my dressage bit on (rather than the beval bit) and see if that encouraged him to keep coming into my hand a bit more. It did, and he was being really fantastic, but I picked my way down to nothing and absolutely BURIED him at a huge table and Presto rightfully was like “mom I don’t think I can safely jump from that” and put on the brakes. He was right, if he’d tried to jump it he would have absolutely had to climb over it in a way that would not have been great. 100% my fault.

After that I got him back out in front of my leg, remembered how to ride forward, and the rest of the course was fantastic. It was a big legit Prelim and all the hard stuff felt easy, so I was really happy with him. There were a lot of problems at the combos and he sailed right through them. Just kicking myself for making such a stupid mistake at what is really a “gimme” fence. The frustration ‘(with myself) is real.

It wasn’t the best show by any means but we definitely learned some things (mostly what not to do) so… onward and upward. This is really the extent of the recap you’re gonna get because I don’t have a lot of media, mostly because I was also Press Officer for the show which left my schedule very busy. I don’t even have course walk pics because I just zoomed around it once on a bike. I did end up buying the full XC video but I don’t have it yet.

The extent of the video I have so far:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Breed.Ride.Event. (@breedrideevent)

Anyway, yeah… last week was BONKERS. On Wednesday I got a FEI course preview from the course designer (benefits of being the press!) and he talked me through all the combinations and had me walk a few of them. That was really fun.

Then Michelle and I popped over to the OBS sale so that our breeding season intern could experience it. I feel like if there’s a thoroughbred sale happening when you’re in Ocala, it’s a must-see, must-do type of thing.

That night I went with a bunch of the show officials to drag bingo at a restaurant in downtown Ocala, and I’m still trying to unpack all of that. It was a really fun time, but wowza, I dunno that I was prepared.

The next morning was the show for me (the prelim HT ran Thurs-Fri) and Kerri my favorite groom met me out there earlier in the morning to braid Presto for me. I don’t want a single person to ever give me shit for not braiding my own horse, because let me tell you what a luxury this was after decades of always doing it myself. I have a janky finger that never healed right after a baby horse broke it, Presto is a turd to braid, and I just don’t freakin want to, ok? There have been multiple times in my life where I have braided more than a dozen horses in a day, so if I want to pay this nice lady to come braid mine while I get all my dressage shit ready, I feel like I’ve earned the right. I do everything else myself. Give me this one thing.

I had to write press releases at the end of every day (Thurs-Sun) covering the FEI divisions, so those days I didn’t end up wrapping up all my work until like 8pm. I got home, got my horse taken care of, shot off interview texts to the leaders, and then got to writing. Michelle was also out of town for those days so I had extra to do at the farm with the mares and foals, plus needed to get stuff plugged into the EN Kentucky form guide and wrap up some things for Ride iQ’s Kentucky stuff over the weekend. Oh and we inseminated a mare on Saturday night, because why not throw that in there.

It was a lot. Not in a bad way, (I fucking love my life here) but in a drinking from a firehose and now I’m tired way.

Luckily we’re headed to Kentucky tomorrow and I’m super excited to have a few days of fun in the Bluegrass! It’s my first little vacay since we went in 2023!