Author: Amanda C

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.

Perhaps the most important part – what did we eat and what did we buy…

Let me go ahead and disappoint you right off the bat. I spent a grand total of $42 at the trade fair, and the overwhelming majority of that was a gift for Bobby. I know, wtf, he’s such a tool, why am I buying him anything? I dunno, pity I guess. But otherwise I couldn’t find too many things that I just had to have.

Anyway, let’s back up a bit. Michelle (with 2 L’s. You’ll see why I say that in a minute. Why is everyone named Michelle?) and I got into Baltimore before noon, picked up our rental car, and headed north. Naturally we had to stop along the way at some hole in the wall place for lunch, where I got this giant plate of sodium.

After that we headed straight to one of Maryland Saddlery’s consignment shops (WE DON’T HAVE THOSE HERE) to poke around. Let me just say, they have a really impressive collection of randomly weird stuff.

Despite my best efforts, I walked out of the store with absolutely nothing. Twas a sad day. I totally would have bought these gorgeous Sarm Hippique paddock boots if they were my size, but alas they were juuuuuuuuust too-small enough to be impossible. Damn toes.

After that we were off to my other friend Michele (one L)’s house in Newark where we were given a proper greeting by a particularly friendly little monkey dog.

Thursday and Friday were pretty much totally consumed with judging. But besides giving us a place to stay, Michele (One L) also got us the hookup on a VIP parking pass and lunch tickets, so Michelle (2 L’s) and I majorly lucked out on that one. We got front row parking and free fancy-people lunch both days.

Despite long, exhausting days, we still managed to stuff our faces appropriately every night. We’re troopers like that. Can we just take a minute to appreciate UDairy Creamery and their giant cookie dough chunks? Look at it.

After we were done with the YEH workshop on Friday, Michelle (2 L’s) and I walked the 3* course. Well, part of it. We quit at just over halfway, because too tired. She’s only been to a couple of events before, and definitely not one of this level, so it was greatly entertaining to see her reactions as she walked up to some of these fences.

Saturday was our only free day, so we showed up early to watch the 2* and 3* XC. Michele (one L) was able to join us that day, and we all descended upon the trade fair together.

I pretty much immediately dragged One L over to the Eponia booth. I’ve followed this brand on Instagram for a while and thought they had some cute stuff… riding clothes, tack, etc. I knew that One L in particular needed a new dressage bridle and likes the PS of Sweden styling, but didn’t want to spend that kind of money. She said she wanted a 2-tone bridle so that it would match both of her saddles, and bam, there it was. Black with dark brown padding, rhinestones on the browband that pretty much perfectly matched her horse, and they had it in his size. Five minutes into the trade fair and I had One L dropping money like it was hot. Let’s just take a minute to appreciate how right I was though, it looks awesome on her horse.

There were a few more things in the Eponia booth that I was sorely tempted by but just couldn’t quite close the deal with my more practical inner self. She’s such a buzzkill.

We wandered around inside the tent to visit the smaller booths, and I bought Bobby his official FHI gear. They didn’t have anything left in my size that I liked, so I guess I just wasn’t meant to buy anything for myself there. Next I dragged One L and Two L’s right into Mango Bay, where they both proceeded to buy things while simultaneously convincing other shoppers to buy things too. We are a powerful force.

I kept waiting to stumble upon something really fascinating that I’d never seen before, but the only “new to me” thing I really saw was one half pad and it was a little weird.

Otherwise I mostly just kept circling back around and petting the Voltaire monoflap in a way that seemed to make the rep a little uncomfortable. Sorry, guy.

As far as fun splurges go, the trade fair was a bust for me. But convincing the L’s to buy stuff was almost as fun, since I didn’t have to spend my own money. My wallet is relieved.