Author: Amanda C

As I mentioned in Monday’s post, we had two (count em, two) cross country adventures this past weekend as part of our “Knocking the Rust Off” world tour. Or Ocala tour. Whatever.

Sunday was the last POP show of the season, which is a bummer because I love the POP shows, so I wanted to take full advantage. These shows take place at Florida Horse Park an utilize the same jumps/courses as all the big recognized shows there, so their schooling show series is really a good bang for the buck. Plus they have a full 3-phase (starter through Training), CT’s, or let you do any phase a la carte. Yes, including XC runs. You can just show up, pay your $50, tell them which level, and out you go. It is the superior version of the sport if you ask me (and Henry).

They also offer an open schooling day the Saturday before every POP show, and typically those days are… busy. You really haven’t experienced an open schooling until you’ve experienced a POP open schooling. Typically it’s mass chaos, hence why I haven’t been to one in a while. But I really wanted to get Presto out and school a few things that weren’t on the Sunday course, so away we went.

The forecast was really terrible for the weekend. Rain was supposed to roll in around 10am and then it was supposed to just pour buckets for like 24 hours. Spoiler: the forecast was absolutely correct. But because the weather had so many people freaked out, this POP schooling was really lightly attended. We showed up at 8am as soon as they opened and it was the loveliest schooling experience we’ve had there.

Hillary brought Henry just for funsies and he was entirely too excited to be there. Bucking, I mean REAL BUCKING and yeehawing like the looniest dolphin. I was more amused by it than Hillary was. I jumped a bunch of ditches on Presto, then just ran through the waters, and jumped a bank combo then called it done. Henry was trying his best to drag Hillary all over the place so we switched and I jumped him over a few things and let him go for a little gallop to let off some steam. In the meantime I convinced Hillary to pop Presto over a couple things, and he was actually quite lovely about it.

After that we loaded back up and booked it home so we could make it before the rain hit. And when it started raining, it rained for real.

Originally they said we’d get 2.5 to 3 inches, but by the time it stopped 24 hours later we were at more like 6″. There was standing water all over the farm, it was a whole mess.

And then once it stopped raining the most ferocious wind swept through, and for the next hour it was just flying moss and lunatic horses. Even Argie got some wind up his butt and joined in the shenanigans.

I was very tempted to not go to my XC round. I was skeptical about the footing after SIX INCHES of rain, but my friend Emily is the organizer there and she said it was actually great since their soil is so sandy. Finally I was like ya know what, let’s do it, why not. I tossed all my shit into the trailer, loaded Presto up, and we rolled out around noon.

By the time I got there my trainer was already warming up her other Training level person, who was the last of her riders to go for the day, so I tried to boogie and get on quickly. If you’re doing XC rounds they don’t give you ride times, you just show up between 10 and 3 and work your way into the order. It’s really lovely. I got on, warmed up real quick, let the starter work me in, and away we went.

This is where I admit that I hadn’t actually walked the course.

The day before I’d walked around most of it on Presto while we were warming up, and I had jumped the mound combo and the water when we were schooling, but I hadn’t even looked at 10 or 11AB. Trainer gave me the rundown and said “yeah that hill combo is now a water combo, but the footing is fine”. Me: “hahahaha, ok”. Thinking she meant there were puddles.

Y’all. No. There was a whole new WATER FEATURE. Like the cabin at 11A was now IN THE MIDDLE OF A BODY OF WATER instead of at the bottom of the hill with the wedge at B at the top. Which I didn’t find that out until I turned toward the jump and was like WAIT WHAT THE FUCK, I THOUGHT SHE MEANT A PUDDLE. No time but the present to sit up and kick, I suppose.

Presto, for the most part, was a feral animal. He was actually quite good and bored at the jumps, but was looking around and spooking at everything in between them. Ya know. For funsies. We jumped a corner on an interesting angle because he was so busy staring at a bush. The stuff he jumped best was the harder combos like at the bank and the “never before seen” water.

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He did level out by the time we got to… well, the end. It was the end before he leveled out. But I appreciate that even though he was being the absolute biggest freakin goober, he was still doing his job. I’m definitely glad I went and did the round, he 100% needed it.

He didn’t even have the decency to look remotely winded or focused by the end, and his not-quite-big-enough Santa bonnet was a whole situation. I feel like his post-XC look was a real summary of how the round was.

It ended up being a really nice day, albeit a bit windy and gloomy. Still nothing compared to how gusty and awful Texas can be, that’s for sure. Plus like… where else can you load up at noon to go run a XC-only round just hours after receiving 6 inches of rain? That’s a luxury for sure.

Things are definitely starting to crank up around here with season right around the corner. I am equal parts excited about it, because there’s just so much to do here between January and April, but also dreading it because the population of Ocala just explodes, traffic is worse, schooling venues are way more congested/busy, etc. Pros and cons of winter season in eventing mecca.

I started putting together an excel sheet of all the shows between January and April and it’s just kind of mindblowing. I still haven’t put in any of the actual h/j circuit shows (just the various jumper schooling rounds shows) or hunter paces or anything like that and it’s already up to 58 things. It will soon beginneth.

Now that Presto is back in full swing it feels like we’re ramping up, too. Last week we got another jump lesson, another dressage lesson, an XC school, and ran a XC round at a schooling show.

Mostly things feel rusty. Maybe me moreso than him. I hadn’t jumped a full course in months and… it kinda felt like it. I get annoyed and frustrated with myself but the truth is that this stuff is really hard to maintain at “peak” if you aren’t consistently and constantly practicing it. Presto was really good though, and he’s jumping with more power off the ground, which is nice to feel.

Our dressage lesson was all about the lateral work. The last lesson was very canter-centric but this one was all trotting, and all shoulder-in, haunches-in, leg yield, and being able to go quickly and correctly between the three. His leg yields at Modified level have gotten quite solid but at Prelim they come up quicker and are steeper, so we’re upping the ante on those. Shoulder-in I feel like we’ve usually got pretty solid… sometimes he gets a little stuck in the base of his neck but it’s gotten fairly easy.

Haunches-in has been more of a struggle. At first for him, because he is naturally kind of a wide-behind, weaker-behind type of horse, and he never quite gives 100% effort. Now he’s definitely getting it, and it’s getting much easier for him, but I do have a bit of a hard time feeling it on him. Henry was such a compact horse that you could feel every part of him quite easily. Presto is so long and so big and things take much less of a full body effort from him that feeling subtle differences with his hind end are much more difficult. So me having someone on the ground to say “yes that’s it” is helping me log that feeling in my memory as being the correct one. As with all programming though, it’s a process.

We’ll talk about all the XC stuff from last week in another post, this one is getting long already.

In other adventures, Argo got his feet done by my farrier for the second time.

He’s really insistent that he only grows toe, but we’re slowly but surely getting those angles up so he can have a chance to grow some heel. It’ll take some time. He does have quite good hoof quality though and has done totally fine being barefoot behind. No excess wear, no tenderness.

Argo also got a visit from the bodyworker again and she said he felt much better than when she did him a few weeks ago. I’ve been maintaining a good stretching routine with him both on the ground and undersaddle, and his body is beginning to lose some of that tightness. Again it won’t be overnight, considering he spent 5 years racing his way into the tightness, but I’m pleased with any kind of consistent progress. I only rode him a few times last week but he’s continued to show incremental improvement from ride to ride. A bit more supple and a bit more forward and a bit more straight. He’s been hacking a lot too, because I’d really like to get him out foxhunting at some point this season so we’re starting to take the steps to get him ready for that.

@breed.ride.event

Argo is the best boy 💙 #ottb #thoroughbred #exracehorse #ottbsoftiktok #ottblove #equestrianlife #horseriding

♬ original sound – @.homa_best

Last week Strax also got to spend his first couple days working as a tack shop dog. He thinks it’s kind of boring, but he went along with it. He’s looking great post-neuter and says he’d prefer a job with a little more action, please. He also isn’t sure why he got yelled at for barking at every kid that rode by on a scooter.

I had a new article hit EN last week, if you haven’t seen it here’s a link. It’s about blood percentage in the event horse and why the traditional way of calculating it (via pedigree) is potentially wildly inaccurate. I’ve actually had a fun time writing this series of articles in conjunction with Etalon… one more article to go (I’ve got the interview for that one on Friday).

Speaking of Etalon, our Patreon group had a private Q&A webinar with the founder last week too! It was the first time we’ve done anything quite like that but I thought it went really well. It was educational and fun and everyone had really good questions. If you weren’t able to attend live, the replay is on your Patreon dashboard. I’m gonna look at other potential Q&A/webinar type opportunities so if anyone has suggestions or desired topics, let me know!

10 years ago today I bought a $900 “project horse” off of Facebook sight unseen. At that time Henry was a green OTTB that’d had some things go a bit sideways in his training, but I thought I could fix it and sell him on. We mostly succeeded in the fixing it part, although it took time, but I never did make it to the selling him part.

Instead, over the past decade he’s pulled me solidly out of the h/j world and into eventing, we’ve gone for a victory gallop at AEC’s, he’s taken me up to Preliminary level, competed all across the southern half of the US, made my old dreams come true and inspired entirely new ones, taught Presto a whole lot about life (usually with his teeth), been the Steady Eddie babysitter for all the greenies, carried friends around XC, and put me in my place more times than I can count. He’s even the entire reason I started this blog all those years ago, to catalog his journey. There are so many things that never would have happened if not for Henry.

Like all the great ones do, he’s taught me a lot about myself, horses, and life in general. I suspect he’s been a grumpy old man since the day he was born, but I think it’s just part of his charm. He’s not fancy or particularly athletic and his X-rays are shit, but in my eyes Henry is and will always be a legend. He’s stuck with me forever, so hopefully he deems me worthy enough.

This morning we celebrated our decade-long partnership by going for a ride during which he dolphined from one end of the field to the other and strongly considered running away with me after jumping a brush box. He’s still got all the jokes. Never change, Henny, you absolute king.

Thanks to all of you for being part of our journey. Here’s to hoping we’ve got many more years ahead of being sassed by this opinionated dad bod.

It might be the holidays, but somebody lost his jingle bells.

I will not apologize for the lameness of that opening line.

Anyway, Strax got neutered last week. So far, knock on wood, he looks fantastic. The hardest part was getting him out of the vet clinic with the cone on his head – it took him 7 tries to make it out of the door successfully, while the entire waiting room laughed at his misfortune. Bless him, he really couldn’t master that thing. I ended up getting him one of those inflatable donut things instead, which has worked way better. Trazadone is a joke though, he’s been parkouring like a lunatic. Luckily his incision looks fantastic, and it was tiny, and he’s shown zero inclination to mess with it, so… fingers crossed it really did go that smoothly.

It’s also very nearly season here in Ocala, which means we’re basically in pre-season mode. The h/j pre-circuit shows have already started at WEC, and Luxe EQ is already here.

Which means I’ve been logging a few hours here and there, either doing inventory or actual retail. It’s a nice supplement to my income and between me and the two other workers we’ve made the hours quite flexible, so it’s definitely not a bad gig. I like all the pretty things and the WEC hot chocolate.

I also got a couple lessons with Presto last week, trying our best to get back into a regular swing of things. On Monday we had a jump lesson, and he was really really good. Trainer had set up a course in the arena that also has a couple bounces on the short sides that can be either ridden alone as a circle or sprinkled into the courses, which she also had set up last year. And last year, the exercises were a lot more difficult for us. This year you can see a marked difference in his rideability and his power… it felt pretty easy and I was really pleased with him. We didn’t get video though, which was a bummer.

Argo is continuing along on his schedule, still working on the basics. The progress remains incremental… a little more swing through his back, a little more steadiness in the connection, a little more desire to stretch over his topline. Just like 1% every day, but it adds up. So far he’s proving relatively simple, if a bit lazy.

On Friday Presto and I had a dressage lesson, our first in like 3 months. I do a lot of flatwork with him at home, pretty intense and demanding and structured, but lord above we did a lot of canter work in the lesson and my abs were SCREAMING.

He’s just really big and a lot of horse to ride as far as general mass goes. He’s long. He’s big. He’s thicc now too. If he was in Europe he’d probably be described as a “man’s horse”. And he has a lot of power but generally kind of wants to offer about 80%, so it’s still an effort to coax 100% out of him. You can see the change in him even from the spring/early summer as far as his balance and his ability to carry/sit but we’ve still got to work a lot on keeping him in front of the leg. He’s fun to ride though, even if I sometimes feel like I got hit by a Presto-sized bus.

On Saturday Holly came over to take Argo for a spin.

I was kind of curious to see how he’d go for someone else. He’s still not that many rides in – maybe 15? But he will be intended to be a sale horse eventually, so I think having other people get on him regularly will be a good thing for him. Plus it helps me see how he goes for other people and if I need to re-install or move any of the buttons I’m putting on him.

He was really good for Holly, but really spectacularly lazy that day. Argo is snoozy by nature, and I don’t necessarily want to take that quality away completely because I think it’s a benefit to his marketability, BUT he does still need to go forward when asked the first time. Holly doesn’t have as much leg as I do to be able to wrap ’em around, plus I think he was kinda like “I don’t know her, maybe she doesn’t know how to find the go button” and proceeded to feign a bit of ignorance. She did find the go button eventually but it took some doing. She rode him well though (especially considering she’s used to riding an actual pony!), and he was very well-behaved, so I was happy with that.

On Sunday I took Presto down to Three Lakes for their pre-season XC Open Schooling day. They host two shows every spring but I have never been there, so it was new for me. It was a little bit Stable View-esque with the wooded areas, and the rest was open and next to, as the name would imply, lakes. Presto was a little wide-eyed about the giant bodies of water at first, but was actually quite well behaved.

I think part of that was because when we got there, it was already a scene. I had come by myself, with Hillary as my ground person (bless her, she did so much walking) but there were several larger groups there with trainers. In the first 5 minutes we were there, two people fell off right by us. There were a lot of questionable things happening. Presto was like “well since the scene is already here, I guess I don’t have to be one” and proceeded to be one of the most level-headed animals on the property.

Mostly I had just wanted to get him out somewhere new, school the ditches and water, and knock more rust off. He was really exceptional, jumped all the ditches like a good boy (and even served as a lead for another horse that was having a problem), did both waters, and jumped some other stuff along the way like an angled brush and a combo of corners. It was a good day, even if driving an hour and a half each way to an XC schooling felt very far and ridiculous (yeah I know, Texas Me hates Ocala Me).

Tonight we’ve got a special equine genetics webinar for our Patreon group (members, the link to join is on your dashboard!) and then my days are mostly filled with various work projects and a couple more Presto lessons this week. This weekend we’ve got more XC schooling and then I’m gonna take him around a Training XC round at the schooling show on Sunday. Chipping away at the rust before season starts for real!

Somehow I’ve managed to fill up December with article assignments, copywriting gigs, tack shop inventory, and retail commitments. Tis the season. But I’m exceptionally grateful for the freedom to (for the most part) make my own schedule, since I’ve now got 3 riding horses. Just FYI horse gods, that is not a complaint, I am enjoying having 3 in the rotation, please don’t curse me. I ordered a calendar white board to help me keep everything straight so I’m basically just waiting to be smited at this point.

Presto is back to his full-time schedule now. I need to find a day this week to get him out to gallop, but we’ve got a jump lesson today and he’s been giving me some REALLY good work on the flat. I’ve been trying to ask him for more – more quality in the gaits, more prompt responses to aids, harder movements, more accuracy. He is, after all, about to be 7, and he’s feeling so incredibly strong now. The difference in his physical maturity over the last year is just incredible. Now my job is 1) keep it up 2) make sure to keep directing all of that ability into something good. That horse is clever, and juuuust lazy enough to where he’d easily become a large, heavy, dull, gallump of a horse if I didn’t always hold him to a high standard. He requires a lot of mental and physical strength on my part, but he remains one of the most rewarding horses I’ve ever ridden. When I raise the bar, he meets it. I’ve never had one quite as capable as he is. It’s fun. It’s work, but it’s fun.

Soon we’ll start looking at some jumper rounds for him and get back out to XC schooling. We had a nice little break, but it’s time to crack on.

I’m also really enjoying getting to know Argo. He’s a genuine, sweet, good boy. Lazy, yes. Not always the sharpest tool in the shed, perhaps. But he’s just an easy horse to have around, he catches on fast, and he’s low drama. For a 1k facebook purchase, I’m really pleased with him.

We hit the December 1st RRP mark (horses aimed for 2024 RRP can’t have had more than 15 rides before December 1) with 9 rides under his girth, and it really just gave me a good idea of what we’ll need to work on and what he might be best at. Those rides mostly helped me make a plan for him, and now we can hit the ground running, so to speak.

Priority number one is to really continue to focus on resolving all the body tightness he came with from the track. Racing consistently for 5 years will take some kind of toll on even the most sound horses, and with him it shows up in his musculature. When he came he could barely bend his neck around to touch his sides, and his walk step was very short. His neck, shoulders, and lower lumbar were just absolutely rock hard. Between the chiro and the bodywork and daily stretching and riding him in a purposeful, targeted way, there has already been a ton of improvement. He can now reach around and touch his stifles easily and I’m seeing an increased range of motion in his shoulders. Every time I get on him I feel a liiiitttle bit more swing and suppleness in his body. Slowly but surely making progress, and it’s fun to tailor his schedule and rides around goals like that… seeing and feeling the progress is always rewarding.

I’ve also been making sure to ride Henry every other day, with the goal of keeping him loose and strong. Kind of a mixture between Presto and Argo. He does lots of lateral work, transitions, and long and low, and he’s been feeling really good.

I’ve also been working a bit with Michelle’s 2yo filly Pippa, just doing some Baby School basics with voice commands, intro to lunging, and some basic desensitizing. She’ll learn to wear tack and then go back out for winter, but so far she’s been really good.

Some of the fun Black Friday spoils started to arrive too, including new sheepskin girths from Engel. Well… I ordered the black one, and Hillary ordered the brown one, but I like them so much that I’m gonna order a brown one for myself too. They have a sale all the way through December that makes them only $100, which I think is a steal. They’re really similar to the Mattes but significantly cheaper and the horses all seem to love them. Y’all know I’m a sheepskin fan. Cover everything in it, let’s go.

I noticed too that Presto and I managed to cling to the USEA leaderboards for Training and Modified, despite a) not having run Training since April, b) missing the fall season. We only ran 4 Modifieds. There are perks to being in the old lady “Master” division I suppose, even though I feel like that’s rude to do to someone at age 39. I am the Master of nothing. I’m not even a real adult most days.

But hey, I’ve never found myself on a year end USEA leaderboard before, so I’ll take it. Thanks Presto, you’re the sauce.