Author: Amanda C

I kind of hate posting this list because I love most of these things, but I have so much stuff that I’m not using right now, it’s borderline obscene. Plus I need money for another thing I apparently “need”. So just… buy it now while I’m weak and then we’ll never speak of it again.

-PS of Sweden Olympic Revolution flash bridle, brown cob with rubber lined reins. I HAVE SO MANY BRIDLES, I’M PRACTICALLY AIMEE. – SOLD

-Ogilvy dressage half pad size Regular, white with black binding and light blue piping. Excellent condition. Had to buy a gummy for the new saddle, so this beautiful creature doesn’t get used anymore. (has anyone else ever noticed how one purchase often dominoes into several other side purchases? just saying.) – SOLD

-Total Saddle Fit black calfskin dressage leathers. Only used for about a month. I punched one half hole, otherwise like new. I like my webber style ones better because I, like my horse, am a delicate flower. – $50

-Finn Tack ice boots, pair – SOLD

-Ice Horse tendon boots, pair, NO ice packs (they hold regular ice packs, easy to toss new ones in). Don’t even get me started on Henry’s complete and utter disdain for all the NICE ICE BOOTS I’ve bought for him over the years. – $40 sold pending payment

-Cheltenham gag with rope cheeks. I’m not sure wtf was possessing me when I bought this, because I would probably die if I ever used it on Henry. – $30

-Smartpak fleece dressage girth, 28″. What kind of horse can’t go in a nice soft fleece girth? HENRY. – SOLD

-navy lycra shoulder guard, horse size. It was a bit tight on Henry’s Incredible Hulk shoulders, so I’d say it’s better for either a narrower horse or a horse in the 15-16h range. – SOLD

-3 navy pads: 2 roma square monoflap style pads SOLD, 1 PRI XC shaped pad SOLD

-TTouch Liberty neck ring (this is kind of a PITA to ship because of it’s shape, so either local sale only or buy other stuff to make it worth my while to wrangle it into a box) – $10

-navy Weatherbeeta 1200D sheet 81″ used 2x (Princess Henny can only wear HUG blankets, sooooo…) $50

-Animo long sleeve polo light blue size I-42 (34ish bust). I love this shirt but I am too fat for it. Forgot to get a pic of this, but can get one if you’re interested. SOLD

-PS of Sweden wool quarter sheet cob size, navy. Much like my Animo polo, this hasn’t fit Henry’s fat ass for 2 years. It’s time to admit to ourselves that it will never fit again. *sob* SOLD

-54″ leather girth with elastic on each side. In great shape except for some wear at each end where my terrible leg has rubbed off a bit of the color. It’s the one in the pic above, but I can get a better pic if you’re interested. SOLD

 

Paypal only, please. Shipping not included. Not negotiable, I already put the prices at what I would take. Whoever pays first is who gets it, sorry but I can’t hold things.

I have a pair of old, seen-better-days Ariat Monaco field boots that I’d give away to a good home if you pay (These are SPOKEN FOR!). They would need a good cleaning and some repairs (mainly zipper). 8.5 regular tall (and they are quite tall).

We’ve also got furniture, if anyone is local. Nightstand, coffee table, end table, dining room table and chairs, fancy accent chair, lamps, etc. Like literally a whole room full of random stuff.

And I’m selling one of my road bikes, a Specialized Allez.

Apparently I’m a hoarder?

 

Literally dog days…

For real though, it’s HOT. May was relatively mild, as far as Texas goes. Like, it was definitely hot but you could still breathe, for the most part. We got incredibly lucky the weekend of the show, it was only 90 and there was a breeze. For June that’s about as good as you can possibly hope for. But I think that was our last hurrah for good weather because this past weekend was like living in an oven.

And with that, I’m officially switching to early morning rides.

Saturday I was in the saddle by 7am and it was downright pleasant, all things considered. Low 80’s, decent breeze. I actually had a pretty good dressage ride, and, GET THIS: Henry’s very first ride where I’ve been able to go start to finish with spurs AND a dressage whip. Every once in a while I carry a whip but inevitably have to drop it at some point when he starts worrying and turns into a ball of tension (because obviously he’s beaten with dressage whips on a regular basis?). I never even thought about actually touching him with the whip but it worked great to get him forward in front of my leg. We’ll find out this week if that was a fluke. Odds are 50/50.

Sunday we were out there early again, and I popped him through a little gymnastic. He was unimpressed with that idea.

It was even hotter up in west Texas where Presto was; they hit 110 on Saturday. Turnout time is becoming shorter and shorter as it becomes just way too unbearably hot for the babies to stay outside.

This is about the time of year where we start scaling things back… our “off season”, if you will. Most people have a winter break, we have the opposite. I’m switching my work schedule around so that I can ride at dawn, and since we have no shows on the docket until September, we’ll be focusing mostly on flatwork for a while.

I sure wouldn’t mind a little rain though, my fields are getting hard. Granted, we may or may not get rain for the next few months, so we might end up having to ride in the arena more.

The one perk of spending more time hiding inside in the AC is that I’m finally getting to go through all of my stuff and get things cleaned up/cleaned out/ready to rehome. Which I did a lot of on Saturday. Which means you know what’s coming tomorrow.

Everybody knows what a snob is. The first image that comes to mind is some well-to-do, hoity-toity girl that thinks she and everything she likes is better than the common plebeian simply because it’s fancy and expensive. But what about the flip side of the coin?

What about the people who are super, um… frugal, who think that they’re better than people who spend lots of money simply because they don’t spend as much money? The internet has dubbed it reverse snobbery and, from what I see at least, it seems even more rampant than snobbery of the traditional variety. Examples, you demand? No problem.

• The girl who says she would never spend 5k on a custom saddle because her $250 ancient PDN is just fine, and anyone who spends that much on a saddle should learn how to ride instead.
• The girl who says she only buys $40 breeches (and only has two pairs of them at that) because she’s a real rider, and real riders care more about their skills than they do about what they’re wearing.
• The girl who says that anyone who pays $25k for a beginner novice horse is stupid, period, end of story.

All 3 of which I’ve seen within the past month.

Look, I’m horse poor. I get it. I can pinch a pinny so hard it’ll give Lincoln a black eye. And I will flat out tell you that of course I’m envious of people who have the means to go to every horse show, buy new saddles all the time, go to Europe and buy a new horse every couple years, etc. But it’s their money, and they can do whatever they want with it. If I think I’m somehow better than them because I try to do the same things with less resources, that’s still snobby, just of a different variety. I’ve been guilty of it plenty of times in my life, but really I should be thanking these people for helping keep this industry afloat because lord knows my broke ass ain’t.

It’s an even more ridiculous viewpoint to take when you look at the fact that we’re all equestrians. We’re all involved in an elite sport that features walking money pits. To think that you are somehow better or more authentic than someone else simply because you spend less money on your particular walking money pit is a hilarious joke.

There are a million roads people can take in this sport, some of which are lined with a lot more dollar bills than others. It’s easy to look at the person on the fancy horse that they dropped a shit ton of money on and be resentful of that, but honestly… if I had that kind of $$$, I would spend it the same way. And you better believe that if somebody turned me loose in Luxe EQ with a big bucket of money, I would be the proud new owner of approximately 100 pairs of expensive new breeches in about 5 seconds flat. To try to pretend differently would be absurd.

The fact that someone has less or has more doesn’t make them better or worse, it makes them different. The fact that someone likes something different from you doesn’t make them better or worse, it makes them different (ok maybe it makes them different with a wrong opinion… 😉 jk…). The fact that someone chooses to spend their money differently than you doesn’t make them better or worse either. At the end of the day, as long as everyone is having fun and treats their horses well, who the hell cares how much or how little money they’re spending?

This sport is hard enough as it is… maybe we’d all be a little better off if we accepted that just because a path isn’t ours, doesn’t mean it isn’t perfectly valid? What are your thoughts on reverse snobbery?

 

It’s true that these kids have been friends since pretty much the day Presto got out of the hospital, but the older they get, the cuter the bromance becomes.

Sadie grew up as an “only foal” in a herd of predominantly mares. The only other horse I saw her play with for a long time was her mom, who really just stood there and took the abuse that is a baby being rambunctious. Watching these two colts interact and have fun being babies together is pretty awesome, especially because they’re basically inseparable.

 

They seem to spend most of their time in close proximity, whether it be playing in the sprinklers, snoozing, biting and chasing each other, or just exploring.  If you want a picture that contains just one of them, you’re probably gonna have to zoom in. When they went up to the vet clinic last week, Liam and Presto neighed for each other, pretty much ignoring their moms. These dudes are very much BFFs.

Rory has been in with them for a few weeks now, and at first her dam wouldn’t let her go anywhere near those hooligan boys. Now she’s relaxed about it a bit, and while Rory definitely isn’t “one of the guys” yet, she’s at least started to socialize with them some.

Despite how it may look, Presto seems to be the instigator of the two. You would think that if you’d been a bit sickly you would not go out of your way to pick play-fights with the baby equine version of The Incredible Hulk, but noooo… Presto seems to live for it. He likes to plan little sneak attacks and then quickly vacate the premises when he realizes he’s out-matched. Sometimes I look at pictures of them playing and start to feel a little sorry for Presto, until I remember that there’s a 99% chance he brought it on himself. The kid has no fear, I’ll definitely give him that!

Not long after Presto got home, Michelle went out to check on them one night and found them both asleep side by side. They’d been separated for a week or so and seemed genuinely glad to be back together. If that’s not cute, I don’t really know what is. Two baby peas in a pod, these nuggets.

On one hand this a bromance that I never want to break up. On the other hand, once they’re weaned they’ll be going their separate ways in life no matter what, because that’s just the way things go. But for now they get to enjoy being babies, and the very bestest of friends.

Hope y’all got your fill of Henny the XC Horse yesterday, because today we’re doing a total 180!

As you heard in the show recap posts, my long time friend and new blogger Michele was in town for a few days. This meant, of course, that I simply had to talk her into taking Henry for a spin, because I love sharing him with my friends. What’s not to love? And honestly it didn’t take that much arm twisting to get Michele to agree.

I will say, Michele doesn’t give herself nearly enough credit as a rider. She always talks on her blog about how she’s timid, doesn’t like a big or fast horse, etc. But what she’s not saying is that she has an excellent seat, solid leg, and great hands. Henry went super for her and seemed to like her a lot (or as much as he can like anything that isn’t XC, anyway). You would never know that she’s used to riding a much different type of horse.

She kept telling me she was worried about ruining him but I kept reminding her that if I hadn’t ruined him in 3.5 years, I was pretty sure she couldn’t do it in 20 minutes. Plus I kinda feel like if I’ve done my job right, he should be pretty rideable for most people. He really is a pretty quiet, simple horse if he’s just doing basic stuff… he can plod right around like a lesson horse if you want him to. After a few minutes of getting acclimated to him (and a bit of peer pressure) she cantered him a bit and even hopped him over a crossrail. It was so cute I almost couldn’t handle it.

Michele even said that when she came back (ha, she’s a glutton for punishment, coming back to visit me again) she’d jump him more and maybe even jump my little coop out in the conditioning field. I think Henny gained a new fan!

Of course, what’s not to like about a horse that can zoom around a Training XC on Sunday like a beast and then plod politely over a crossrail on Tuesday? Henny, you da best, even if you do have the most remarkable resting mare face.