Author: Amanda C

Despite some of the preconceptions some of y’all might have about me, I have a confession to make: I’m actually very frugal. Anyone who has read this blog for very long is probably doubled over laughing right now, or rolling their eyes so hard they’ve fallen out and are tumbling around on the floor. Let me explain.

I love my money. I don’t really get paid that much of it, and the majority goes to Henry. Horse people know how that goes… it’s borderline obscene. There isn’t a whole lot left over at the end for equipment or clothes or any of that other lower-priority stuff that we all need, and it’s really not easy to get me to give that money away. When I need something new or feel myself wanting a retail therapy pick-me-up, as fun as it is to shop for something, I actually loathe the idea of spending my money. The conflict, of course, is that I hate crap. I have to really really like something to spend my money on it. My hatred of poorly-made, ill-fitting, uncomfortable, unattractive, unflattering, short-lived things that don’t work very well outweighs my love of gripping tightly to every dime. My life would be simpler if I was less picky.

My favorite word is “affordable”. To me there’s a big difference between cheap and affordable (love how it was explained here)… affordable means I can make the desired object fit within my budget, either by waiting for a sale or saving up money over time. Cheap means settling for a lesser option. I’d prefer to either try to ferret out the deal of the century (which I seem to luck into a lot somehow), or just save up my money for a while and to buy the thing I really want. Pretty much every time I’ve tried to settle for the lower-quality item, I’ve been unhappy to some degree. Hasn’t stopped me from trying, but most of the time I end up not really liking it and selling it, then I go back and buy what I originally wanted in the first place. Ultimately when that happens I end up spending more money than I would have if I hadn’t tried to be such a tightwad.

Of course, sometimes the item I like the most IS quite budget-friendly, which is a win-win. Having a higher price tag certainly is not the be-all, end-all indicator of quality, by any means, and some things are just plain over-priced. But I don’t like “fast fashion”, “disposable” items, manufactured god knows where by god knows who in god knows what kind of conditions. Ethical and environmental concerns aside, I also want my stuff to last. It ends up costing me less money in the long run if I only have to buy it once.

Every time I buy something, I factor in longevity. It can be the prettiest thing in the world, and initially do the job just as well as the more expensive item (the good ol’ “a shirt is a shirt” or “a saddle pad is a saddle pad” argument), but if it only lasts for a short time before needing to be replaced, then it’s actually the less financially sound option. Right now I’m saving up for new tall boots, because despite being majorly tempted by a few cheaper options, I just can’t bite the bullet on something I don’t love. I want the ones that I really want, even if it means waiting.

Once you get beyond all the practical reasons of the “buy once, cry once” mentality, you get to the more shallow one: well made, pretty things that work really well just bring me more joy. Quality and craftsmanship matter to me – a lot. And once you get beyond the aesthetics, it can even be a safety issue, especially with tack and equipment. I grew up riding with a very fastidious trainer who felt that small details like this were crucial to the overall picture of horsemanship, and he really left that ingrained in me. But that’s probably a psychological discussion for another day…

That’s not to say that I don’t own my fair share of crap… of course I do. Sometimes I buy things just “because”, or as an experiment, or because I’m having a particularly bad day and just have to. That stuff is usually pretty short term and/or frivolous, and sometimes you see me griping about said item on here later because I never seem to 100% learn my lesson. Bigger purchases are different, though, and the older I get, the more I’d rather just buy the higher quality item and be done with it.

At the end of the day, I figure I don’t spend the majority of my life toiling away at a laptop for nothing. I’m gonna treat myself and my horse (how’s the spa, Henry?) as much as I realistically can. That said – I know plenty of others who think I’m crazy and ridiculous, and I can respect that. I know not everyone sees it the way I do, and I don’t expect them to. You do you, girl.

How do you feel about it? Would you rather save up for what you really want, or are you ok settling for less if it means saving money up front? Do you pay attention to where your items are manufactured, and does it bother you to see something produced in a country that is known for terrible or non-existent labor laws? And, would you rather have a small selection of high quality items or a closet full of cheap options?

Most of you probably aren’t as Young Event Horse obsessed as I am, so you may or may not have followed the goings-on from Mondial du Lion this past weekend… also known as the 6yo (CCI1*) and 7yo (CCI2*) World Championships for eventing. If you didn’t see at least some of it, no fear, I’m here to show you the best part.

But first, for the data geeks that were asking about numbers and predictability after my post about the USEA YEH Championships, the World Breeding Federation for Sport Horses has actually collected some data about Mondial du Lion and how good of a predictor it is for future upper level success. Not quite applicable to our YEH program here in this country (yet) but a very interesting read, if you’re into that kind of thing. Some of the names of past participants might ring a few bells…

http://www.wbfsh.org/files/Survey_of_horses_in_Lion.pdf

If you don’t want to read the whole thing, basic summary is that the 6yo rankings don’t seem to be a very reliable indicator of future success, but the 7yo results certainly do:

There are probably several reasons for that, if we really delve down into it, but enough nerding for today, let’s get on to the best part: Lion’s XC course. Leave it to the French to make something super cool and interesting and artistic like this. If you want to see pictures of the full 6yo course, go here, and there’s helmet cam video of the 7yo course here, otherwise I’ve pulled out some of my favorite pictures of the different fences from both courses below.

Dragons, anyone?

 

Or fallen chess pieces

 

Or a cutout heart (next to a tree with hearts, of course)

 

Just a horse jumping a violin, nbd

https://www.instagram.com/p/BL3O1vxDYEV/?tagged=mondialdulion

 

Giant spider = nope

https://www.instagram.com/p/BL3_oQPDCeT/?tagged=mondialdulion

 

The giant watering can is friendlier-looking

 

Giant human form, which definitely looks a lot more like art than a XC fence

https://www.instagram.com/p/BL5hDjODzga/?tagged=mondialdulion

 

And of course, we can’t forget this one from last year:

 

Congrats to YEH graduates Fleecework’s Royal and Betawave on their completions in the 7yo class. The fact that our US-bred horses can hold their own against the very best young eventers in Europe says a lot about the quality of horse that we’re producing here.

While the pony is not 100% magically healed after his 30 day stay at the rehab place, can we take a minute to appreciate how good he looks?

He’s up to 25 minutes in the aquacizer now, 5 days a week. He goes on the walker twice a day for about an hour total, and then gets handgrazed. All of that combined has kept him fit and sane despite no riding or turnout. I can tell he’s kinda grumpy and bored and tired of everyone’s bullshit, but he’s not being stupid or wild at all.

Even the vet commented on how great he looks. We’ll see how he feels under saddle when I finally swing a leg back over, but it makes me happy that it doesn’t look like he’s lost a stitch of his conditioning despite the down time.

We won’t talk about how hairy he is. Good god, he grows butt hair so thick a polar bear would be jealous. I’m already itching to clip it off. Soon. Soooooon…

Good news, though: I think we found a “halfway house” barn that can accommodate his myriad of special needs (that have literally become a long list of bullet points, because Henry) for the time-being. Looks and sounds promising… we shall see how it goes. It’s mostly a western dressage/trail riding type of place but the owner was super nice and seemed undeterred by all of our high maintenance requests.

They have multiple people onsite 24/7 to keep an eye on him, so he can be brought in if he starts acting stupid. It definitely wasn’t overly fancy but it was clean and well-kept and they just put new sand in the arena so it’s nice and cushy. It’s less than 20 minutes from my house and way cheaper than keeping him at the rehab place for another month or two, which my badly damaged wallet is happy about. Fingers crossed that it works.

Ah, intuition. I said on Friday that for some reason I had the nagging feeling that we wouldn’t get the all clear, and I was right. The good news is, we took a 90% sound horse and turned him into a 95% sound horse. He’s definitely better. Unfortunately, he’s still not 100%.

We took more rads of the injury site and compared them to the original ones from a month ago. The tiny crack was gone and he’s laying down good bone on top of it, but it’s still in the process of healing.

Luckily the external wound track on his injury has closed up, so we were able to do more diagnostics that we couldn’t do last time for fear of introducing infection to the bone.  We blocked that area to see if it would make him 100% sound, but it didn’t.

Oh, and we had to pause mid-exam to put a shoe back on because of course he pulled it and then proceeded to be off on the barefoot foot when we jogged him. Thank goodness for a vet that used to be a farrier.

The only part of Henry’s regular maintenance that we haven’t been able to do throughout all of this is inject his left ankle. Again, last time he didn’t want to stick a needle anywhere near that wound, especially not one that was going into a joint. So, short of blocking our way up the whole leg (which would probably take a crew of four people because he is AWFUL) we figured it was worth a shot to do his maintenance injection in the ankle, give him a couple more weeks, and see if that brings him the rest of the way sound. If so, great. If not, we’ll have to do some harder diagnostics because we sure can’t find so much as a pimple anywhere else on that limb.

The vet doesn’t think it’s necessary for him to stay at rehab any longer. He’s cleared to start easing back into turnout and riding, but with a lot of specifications, mostly because that bone is still healing and there’s still a chance that it could turn into a sequestrum if we aren’t careful.

He doesn’t want Henry to go straight back into his usual 12-22 hour a day turnout, lest we put too much stress on all that new bone. He’s not allowed to gallop around a lot in turnout for the same reason, so if he DOES start acting dumb, he has to be brought in. And, more specifically, he can’t be ridden on a hard surface for at least the next couple months, until all the bone settles. He also wants the leg wrapped and/or poulticed after every ride for the first few weeks.

So, this creates another problem for me. I don’t really want to keep him at the rehab place if he doesn’t need to be there, because $$$. Plus they don’t really have much in the way of turnout, nor is their ring finished yet. But the specifications that the vet outlined are pretty impossible for our normal barn to accommodate as well… it’s a small private barn, and there are times during the day when no one is there. He runs around a lot in turnout with Halo, and it’d be impossible to always have someone able to bring him in when they get started. The ground is also pretty hard out there since we’ve not gotten much rain in a while, and it’s the type of soil that gets very hard when it’s dry. Henry is just way too high maintenance right now for that situation.

The vet gave me the names of a couple people with suitable facilities that might be able to accommodate us for a month or two until he’s totally healed. I’ve got some calls to make today, and probably some begging to do. Fingers crossed we can find someone able to take us on for a little while. The adventure continues…

Tomorrow is Henry’s 30 Day checkup for his “I’m a moron in turnout and also a total sissy about pain” injury.

Best case scenario: the bone is all healed, he’s sound, and he can be eased back into normal turnout and work. I sure as hell hope that’s the outcome, but I dunno, for some reason I’m not feeling outrageously optimistic.

I don’t have any particular reason to feel that way. I haven’t seen him trot since day 14 of rehab, where he looked perfect one direction but still ever so slightly funky the other direction. But the direction where he looked funky was the one where he actually looked best at the beginning of all this. WTF, horse. Granted, I didn’t have a lunge line and was judging just what I could see with him at the end of the lead rope. Plus its been two more weeks since then. Maybe he’s magically better?

So I guess I’m cautiously optimistic that we’ll get the all clear, and really hopeful, but not necessarily willing to put my money on it. We’ll see…

Come on Henny, let’s get back to the fun stuff.