Author: Amanda C

I have literally been XC schooling more times in the past two months than in the entire previous two years. Have I mentioned Ocala doesn’t suck? Just checking.

I’ve had some introspective thoughts lately on how my relationship with Presto has been in such a transitionary phase over the last couple months, but that’s a post for another day since it’s gonna be a lot of me rambling about philosophical things. I’ll get there. For today, let’s just talk about our last big adventure – we went to Majestic again on Sunday! Basically if Steph is going schooling somewhere, I’m in. Miles are what we need right now, and we all learn a little bit more about each other with every outing.

With all the lessons and schoolings Presto has had over the summer, he’s getting very easy to take places. He loads well, he doesn’t put up much fuss (maybe just some light screaming) and he comes off the trailer pretty well. I mean is he dead quiet? Definitely not. If this horse was dead quiet I would take his temperature (I have actually done that more than once). But he’s not a deranged feral idiot.

Well ok when I first get on he may or may not be sporting an Arabian tail, and it may or may not take 5 minutes to work it’s way down to normal. It’s not bad though, you just have to really put him to work and get him to focus. Granted he’s been to Majestic several times now so that venue has perhaps lost some of it’s excitement for him. When I unload him there on the day of the horse show and there are horses and trailers galore, it will be a different story. That’s what neck straps are for, amiright?

But he warmed up pretty well, and we popped over a couple Novice and Training warmup jumps, then our little group headed out to the field. Our first area of focus was by the ditches, and we put together an N ramp, a T brush rolltop thingy, and the N half coffin. He jumped the snot out of the T brush (do we need to give the brush an additional 6″ of clearance?) and thought the rest was boring.

Then we went over to the banks, where we jumped down the N combo that we did last time, down bank to a house, then kept going through the trees to jump the BN trakehner (our first trakehner, aw), turned around and jumped back over the N trakehner, then back over the N bank line the other way, house to up bank. He got slightly feral back in the trees because 1: we haven’t really jumped any of the stuff back there yet, so there was *novelty*, 2: there was a man mowing, and 3: it’s closest to the road, which is fairly busy. So ya know… every step I could feel the hamsters coming closer and closer to the edge of their wheel. I had to really leg him up to the BN trakehner because he wasn’t even looking at it until the last second, he was too busy debating whether or not he should pretend to spook at the mower. And then at another point he spooked at a jump we were cantering past and strongly considered running away into the sunset. I feel like this is going to be how every cross country course goes with him for a while… the jumps aren’t the hard part, everything else is because he’s just kind of an excitable chaos machine. You have to ride every single step and constantly keep his brain focused.

That little feral moment did lead to the best part of the whole schooling though, when this award-winning commentary was captured on video. I laughed extremely hard when I heard it.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRuJetQb/

Steph had me jump the N trakehner again and then hang a left to jump a Training bending line. Idea being that if we made it a little harder, he would have to pay more attention. She was correct. Honestly he gets a little easier to ride when there’s more for him to do rather than just cantering a bunch of single fences.

After that we wandered down and jumped the T chevrons around to the T tire jump. I thought he might look at all the shadows under the chevron and didn’t really give a second thought to the tires, but naturally he did the opposite – didn’t think much of the chevron and thought the tires were terrifying. I mean, he jumped them, with encouragement, but he tried very hard to leap sideways through the bush instead. Not totally the right answer, but at least it was still a forward effort? I do like that about him, he always wants to go forward.

Then we jumped the N corner, just to jump a corner since we hadn’t done that yet. At that level they’re still small enough to where it really just jumps like a table, but ya know. Baby steps.

We capped it off with the water, coming up through the N way – house to water to up bank to chevrons – and then cantering around and back through the water, out over the T rolltop. Easy peasy.

He’s funny because throughout the course of one XC schooling it’s really like riding 3 different horses. You get the semi-feral one in the beginning, then a really lovely one, then he starts to get tired (mentally or physically or both) and requires a lot more leg and encouragement. Thanks Presto, always keeping me on my toes.

Overall though – super good boy. With every outing I feel like we definitely learn more about each other and are building on that partnership. It takes time, but it feels like things are definitely going in the right direction!

We’ve officially made it through our first Florida hurricane!

Well ok we got very lucky last week with Ian… all those last minute bumps to the east made all the difference for us up here in Ocala. We went from being directly in the middle of the storm’s path to just barely getting the edge of it.

Naturally though, we had prepped for it just the same. The biggest concern was the wind, since high wind means downed trees, and downed trees mean downed power lines, and no power means the well isn’t pumping water. There have been times in the past where it’s taken a week or two to get power back after particularly strong storms, so I was crossing my fingers and hoping that wouldn’t be the case, but also preparing for the worst just in case it came to fruition.

I moved all the jumps, took everything out of the barn aisle, started hoarding water, moved vehicles and trailers away from trees, got extra feed, prepped the stalls with extra bedding, covered things that shouldn’t get wet in case it was raining sideways, etc. Some of the prep I had already done over the weekend, other stuff I did Tuesday after our regularly scheduled farrier appointment.

On Wednesday morning the first little edge of the rain reached us, so I brought everyone in. The horses really aren’t inside much unless the weather is bad, so usually they just come in and see it as a nice opportunity to stuff their faces with hay and take a good nap. And then there’s Presto.

Always a delight. I was not too enthusiastic about the idea of him being stuck inside for a long period of time, mostly because he is walking Damage. I did toss Presto and Henry out in a paddock in the afternoon while I cleaned their stalls, just to let them chill for a minute, and that did seem to decompress his brain a little bit. Everyone stuffed their faces with hay pretty much the entire time (although to literally no one’s surprise, Presto broke his hay net within the first 2 hours).

It rained pretty much all day Wednesday, but never particularly hard. The wind started to pick up in the afternoon as the meat of the storm approached, and it was forecasted to be at it’s worst overnight. Still though, with all those little shifts to the east, we went from projected gusts of 80mph to gusts of no more than 40mph. You could hear the wind howling all night, and every now and then something would ping off the house (little sticks blown out of trees, I discovered) but really… it was less violent than most of the summer afternoon thunderstorms we get here.

The rain had stopped by Thursday morning around breakfast time, but the wind was still gusty. I made a lap of the property to check on things and it was really just a lot of blown spanish moss and sticks all over the place, with a couple small branches down here and there. Definitely nothing major. I ended up turning the horses back out by noon, since all of us were tired of them being cooped up inside by that point.

Of course, the temperature had also dropped about 25 degrees, so they were all super full of beans when they got turned back out.

The wind died down gradually throughout the day, and by bedtime on Thursday it was basically all past us. By the time all was said and done we got less than an inch of rain – far better than the original forecast of up to 12″! I feel really bad for the areas to the south that got hammered by the storm, but I will admit that at the same time I’m selfishly glad we were spared from it.

Well, mostly anyway. Friday morning we woke up to this.

Can you believe that? We made it through that entire storm and then hours later a bigass tree fell in the front pasture, taking down the power line. I guess maybe the wind was holding it up lol. Luckily since the power companies had so many crews on hand in the area and there had been so little damage, they got it fixed within a few hours. We ALMOST made it through with no damage.

All total the horses were only inside for about 28 hours, and we only missed two days of riding. Granted, now I’m having to move everything back out that I had originally moved inside, empty all the hoarded water containers, etc. Still, I much prefer a wasted effort like that to some kind of massive cleanup! I’ll take that any day…. not everyone was so lucky.

Alright, continuing on our series sBs inspection coverage… last week Quinlee got her own post, and this week we’ve got the yearling colts, Patrick and Percy.

Patrick is probably significantly whiter than the last time y’all saw him. You could tell he was going to gray quickly since he was already a steel color as a weanling, but boy he has wasted no time. He’s well on his way to white, just like his sire.

And Percy, last time you saw him, was still a very awkward looking dude. If you remember, he’s the one that had an extremely rough start – red bag delivery, dysmature, almost didn’t make it at birth, etc. He’s definitely been playing catch up for his entire life, but he’s looked better and better as the months go by. Still very awkward, especially compared to Patrick who I think might be the prettiest yearling in the world, but remarkably better.

To absolutely no one’s surprise, Patrick earned the top score of the day, with great comments. Hard not to like a colt like this one.

After both boys had been inspected in hand, we turned them loose together so the judge could see their gaits. Since they live together we thought it would be easier and less stressful to present them together, and the boys seemed to agree.

I thought the judge did a good job too of seeing through Percy’s awkwards and giving him a good score. Some day he’s gonna grow into all his various body parts and be a good-looking horse.

Overall a good day for the colts! Next week, the fillies…

It’s Hurricane Initiation Day here in Ocala – horses and farm are battened down and ready to go. If you’re a Patron I’m posting vlog updates there periodically, so check your dashboard! Otherwise I figured I’d keep it light here, because… ya know. Balance.

Last week after we went XC schooling I was texting with Steph, and she sent a fairly perfect Presto GIF response.

Which made me chuckle because about 6 years ago there was a blog hop going around about “what character is your horse” and I picked April Ludgate for Henry. I have been compared to April for YEARS by several different people, and Henry and I have really similar personalities, so it fits. But when Steph sent that GIF I started thinking about it and I was like oh… Presto is totally the Andy to my April.

Originally, when Presto was still a wee lad, I compared him to Buddy the Elf. He’s older and more wizened to the world now, so he’s lost some of that completely naive exuberance. Now he’s a confident, but still extremely goofy dingaling. The more I went through Andy GIFs, the more it fit.

Every time he gets off a trailer

Last year after his MRI

His general outlook on chaos

When he tries to impress his friends

Basically any time he tries to do anything

In basically every lesson

Every single time he sees me coming with night check cookies

Last week at the sBs inspection with him being a supreme goober in the background

God I really wonder if he thinks this is the expression and thats why he uses his feet for everything..

In our jump lessons when I make him leave the shade to go do another course

And then of course, our relationship as a duo

Hello from sunny-and-beautiful-at-least-for-a-couple-more-days Florida. As you may or may not have heard, there’s currently a hurricane pointed…. directly at us.

I mean, the good news is that we’re far enough inland to not get the bad hurricane shit like storm surge or the super extreme wind speeds. The bad news is, right now we’re in the spot to get all the rain and storms in the north east quadrant, so it should still be a lot of wind and rain. Right now the forecast has wind speeds up to 50mph and rain up to 9″, but it’s still changing a lot day by day, so we’ll see.

For us the wind in the storms is the biggest threat. It takes out trees, which takes out power. After one particularly bad storm a few years back, the power was out at the farm for 2 weeks. We’ve got a well, so no power means no water. Obviously that’s problematic on a farm with 40+ horses. I’ve been stockpiling water as much as possible (no empty container is safe from me) and we’ve got enough feed and hay for at least a couple weeks. We also got groceries, water for the humans, and topped off our propane. I’m hoping that since we’re prepared, it’ll be unnecessary. Growing up in New Orleans means that this isn’t my first rodeo with hurricanes, and I’m also still carrying the trauma from when Texas froze over and we had no power and water, so. Yay?

Shame about that hurricane, because otherwise it’s been just gorgeous here. Highs in the mid-80’s, sunny, and not really all that humid. I’ve been trying to keep all the horses worked in anticipation of missing some days this week, and they’ve all been pretty darn good. Presto’s persona of the week (I swear he shuffles through them like a deck of cards) was “half-dead lesson horse”. Like he kept trying to go to the shade, stop dead, and put his head like a foot off the ground as if he could not possibly go one more step. Which is of course a complete and total lie, as evidenced by the yeehaws when the neighbors rolled up with a trailer full of cows. I dunno how it’s possible to be this lazy yet this chaotic all in one horse… he is a case study in contrasts.

I did a course at home yesterday that was 3′-3’3″, the first time I’ve done like complete full courses on him by myself with no adult (er, professional) supervision, and he was super. Like 10 cookies. He’s getting more rideable, and he’s completely not at all bothered when I make a mistake. Which I do plenty.

I also did at least pretend to do some due diligence and look at the Novice dressage test. Which, ok I will admit that it’s been like 6 years since I really looked at one of these (ok I did do a N test with Henry last summer but I couldn’t tell you a thing about it) but like… this is interesting.

I don’t hate it (aside from the first turn from centerline to then go directly across the diagonal, and that 10m half circle onto center line – bc hello I ride a limousine) but I feel like my brain remembers Novice tests being like 20m circle, cross the diagonal, 20m circle, canter, 20m circle, walk, cross the diagonal, trot, canter, 20m circle trot, halt, boom done. Like when in doubt you just made another circle or crossed the diagonal, extremely basic. This one is quite different. Legit had to pull up a video to make sure my brain was understanding a couple parts. I think I like it though?

Otherwise this week we’ll be doing more hurricane prep and battening down the hatches around here. Fingers crossed Ian turns away, or at least isn’t too angry by the time he gets here…