Category: Uncategorized

Man… how are we back at Monday already? That did not feel like a particularly restful weekend, mostly because I was riding an emotional rollercoaster following along (ok, and weighing in sometimes) with all the discussion about this new MER rule, and the revision, and then the arguments about the revision, and then more details about how this all came about in the first place. Frustrated, disappointed, resigned, irritated, discouraged, disconnected, discarded… a lot of dis-.

I mean it makes sense that a lot of us are so emotional about this, because the potential implications are huge and we all feel passionate about the sport we love. To many of us outside of the east coast it looks like a Mt Everest that has been plopped directly in our path. Anyway, I read a lot of great things and I read a lot of extremely disappointing things, but I filled out the survey at least so… I guess we’ll see how the dominoes fall. All I know for sure is that if I see one more east coast pro rider say “ThAt’S wHaT mOdIfiEd iS fOr” I’m going to have an aneurysm. The Modified division pretty much does not exist outside of the east coast so that’s a useless statement. I’d have to drive 14 hours each way to get to the closest available one. Welcome to one of the challenges of not living in area 2 or 3. Want to help make the T to P move-up safer? Instead of making us burn up our horses with endless travel and a million T runs, organize a push to help make Modified available in every area. I’m also still not over the one saying that maybe if people want to event at Prelim or above we need to move.

ANYWAY.

In between being angsty at people on the internet, I did actually get a few things accomplished. The jumps that SO ordered for me (because he set fences for me once and hated my old semi-ghetto jumps so much that he literally went home and ordered me a couple new ones) finally came last week, although they required some assembly. Ok “some” isn’t accurate, they required all the assembly. Basically it just came as four PVC 4 x 4’s, 16 PVC feet, 8 tracks, 4 caps, and a baggie of screws. I kind of expected them to at least be pre-drilled, but no, it was all just cut to size. So, we built them ourselves. I guess I’m not really sure what I expected to show up, I never even thought about how they would ship standards (or not) but I was surprised that literally nothing was put together or pre-drilled. It gave the SO something to do though and made him feel like he accomplished something, which he did, since now I have 4 new standards. Now I can have more than one oxer! Exciting times indeed.

After spending so much time watching Ingrid and Piggy to cavaletti exercises lately I keep jonesing for those super cool square cavaletti ends that they use. They seem so useful, and so easy, and so stable. They’re also so expensive though. I saw a British company that’s coming out with some made out of a hard foam rubber type material and they look interesting. Still not particularly cheap, like 2/3 the price of the plastic ones, but it’s an interesting idea.

Kind of makes me wonder if I could find 12 x 12 x 4 blocks of the stuff and make a hole in it myself. I haven’t really started the hunt yet but it’s on my list.

Otherwise I spent the weekend checking some things off my list that have just kept getting pushed off. I finished the breeding info sheet for the Red Hills 4*, made Presto’s next vlog for the US Event Horse Futurity (will these vlogs ever take me less than like 6 hours to put together?), got the Baby Bets Contest post drafted and ready to roll (IT’S THAT TIME!), and organized more stuff that I want to sell. I’m more motivated to actually put in the effort to sell things now that I’m trying to pull more money together to keep Presto in training.

Aside from all that I also rode Henry plenty (I can’t tell if he loathes or loves being the center of attention once again… maybe both) and spent some quality time with my new spin bike. So far in the 5 days I’ve had it I’ve done 4 spin classes. It’s fun, in a really painful I-think-I-can-taste-my-own-lungs kind of way.

This week I’ve got a lot of meetings at work and I’m taking Thursday off so I can go up and visit Presto. The next item I need to start thinking about knocking off my list is the blog rebranding, which admittedly I’ve had precisely zero motivation for. It’s a lot of work, and it’s not even fun.

Hope everyone had a good weekend, and eventers if you haven’t filled out the survey about the new MER rule proposals yet, no matter how you feel about it, please please please please do so! This will probably be our only real chance to weigh in and it’s only fair that we all give our opinion.

So, the day that I finally decided to send Presto off for training, I may or may not have possibly sort of perhaps freaked out and bought a spin bike.

It’s not anything fancy like a Peloton, I definitely don’t roll that deep, it’s just a very basic no frills Amazon special that no one would ever fawn over but it gets the job done. It finally showed up on Wednesday and honestly since it had been 3 weeks since I ordered it (one and a half of which was the winter storm subreality from hell) I had forgotten about it. Surprise! It was pretty easy to put together at least, and she’s got a really nice spot on my back porch where I can look out at something besides a wall and get a nice breeze.

When I was going to the gym all the time, spin was my absolute favorite thing. Well ok, tied with swimming. It’s a lot harder to have a pool at home though. Spin was the only actual class I would take though, being an anti-social crowd hater and introvert… I have to REALLY love something to do it in public at all. And I don’t know why but there’s something about swinging a leg over a bike that makes me really “ride or die” (this was true when I competed in triathlons too) and suddenly I become competitive AF. Mostly with myself. I used to prefer sitting right in front of the class instructor so I could force myself to match them as exactly as I could. I am not like this at all with running, or yoga, or… most other things in the world. I have a lot of quit in me when it comes to those things. But on a bike I’ll go until the bitter end and push myself past my limit with little to no prompting.

I’d kind of forgotten that aspect of myself, until I did my first class and swore I could taste my lungs. Now, I’ll admit that I’m also too cheap to get any kind of app. And I don’t own an iPad or anything, so I just set my little phone on the bike to do classes. I’m not really into paying for it, so I found a few youtube channels with instructors I like and added a bunch of their classes to a list for myself, and just play the videos on my phone. So far I’m plenty pleased with that. I don’t really need the competitive nature of being in a virtual class with others, since I’m seemingly perfectly happy to try to kill myself on my own. Anyway, all of this to say that I’ve kind of gotten sucked into a youtube rabbit hole lately, and this is only one of the ways. Aside from the spin classes, most of it has been for horse-related content.

I posted Piggy March’s youtube channel a couple weeks ago and it remains a fun one for me. I like how she talks through the exercises she does and explains what she’s trying to get out of it, or how she troubleshoots.

I’ve also branched off into a couple other people’s youtube channels, especially Courtney Cooper and Cathy Wieschhoff. There are some useful tidbits in there, no matter what discipline you do. I love educational things like this, and seeing different people’s perspective on things. Never know what new things you might pick up!

For non-youtube stuff, there have a been a couple interesting things posted lately. For those who missed the first USEF Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion meeting and discussion you can replay it here on USEF Network. They covered a lot of great topics and I learned a lot. Definitely worth the watch. I think you do need a fan membership to watch USEF Network, so if you don’t already have one you can get a free one for the year with code SCOTTSDALE21. You’ll want it anyway before the LRK3DE coverage starts!

One other interesting one – USEA has been posting more educational videos, especially around the YEH and FEH programs. These programs and how they’re judged can be super confusing to outsiders or those that are new to it, especially because YEH is judged differently from regular horse trials, but unless you’ve attended judging symposiums you might not know quite what they’re looking for. The one most recently posted is about judging gaits, which is interesting not just from a YEH or young horse perspective, but from a general dressage perspective as well. You can hear a lot of the discussion about what scores they would give each horse for each gait and why. Definitely interesting!

Have you seen any good educational videos lately that are worth a share? Drop them in the comments!

I dunno about y’all, but my social media is ablaze with people debating the latest extraordinary rule changes put forth by USEA. If you haven’t seen them you can read about them or watch the video discussion.

There are some big ones put forth here, most having to do with safety. Like the 5 or more rails equals compulsory retirement at Training level and above. I’ve already talked about that one. I still feel the same way I did when I first heard it.

There’s one not listed on the website though that was discussed in the video – raising the number of required MER’s from 4 to 10 (or fewer depending on the rider’s classification… which, rider classifications at the national level would also be new. FEI does something similar, so it’s not a completely new idea). Most “normal” folks or non-upper level riders would fall into the unlicensed category, and that would mean 10 MER’s. If you aren’t aware, an MER is:

When achieved at a National Horse Trials an MER is achieved by completing the entire Horse Trial and scoring. – not more than 50 penalty points in the Dressage Test; and – No jumping penalties at obstacles on the Cross Country Test unless specified otherwise, and not more than 90 seconds (36 penalty points) exceeding the optimum time; and – not more than 16 penalties at obstacles in the Jumping Test. – 25 penalty points received for Dangerous Riding will not achieve a National Qualifying result. Exceptions to the qualifications noted below may only be approved by the Credentials/Grading Committee.

So basically you have to have 10 runs with a dressage test under 50, a clear XC, and no more than 4 rails in stadium (which, you’d be eliminated anyway if you had more than 4…). I was and still am very much in favor of raising the number of required MER’s. I thought 4 was definitely not enough. But is 10 too many?

This is a tough one for me. When you’re on a budget and/or have to travel a long way to get to an event, 10 MER’s could easily be two years or more. Granted, that was exactly my own trajectory – 2 years at Training before moving up to Prelim. However, I did NOT have 10 MER’s after those 2 years. I had 6. If you counted unrecognized (which here are at least run over the exact same courses that the recognized shows do, and timed) I would have had 10. Of course USEA doesn’t count those, so they wouldn’t have gone toward the total. I would have had to do a 3rd season at Training before we could have moved up. But then taking three years would not meet the “within 24 months” part of the requirements. Endless loop.

Is it the end of the world if people can’t move up the levels? No. Is it adding to the expense of an already expensive sport? For sure. If this was in place when I was moving up would I have tried to run my horse more often than was really ideal for him? I don’t know. Or would I have ended up diverting my money away from unrecognized shows, extra jumper shows, etc? Possible. Would any of that have been for our overall betterment? Probably not. Or maybe I never would have even tried for Prelim at all, my interest waning and turning to something else instead. Hard to say what you would have done or what would have happened in different circumstances.

If you’re on the east coast, where you can pop into a recognized show for the day, spend less than $300, and get your choice pretty much any weekend, it wouldn’t be as difficult or as expensive. But in the rest of the country, where it’s a 4-day endeavor (or more) to show, there’s maybe one a month, and it costs 3 times what a one-day would… 10 MER’s is massive. I have to admit that when I was thinking “more MER’s” I was thinking 6 or 7. Also, what if for all 10 of those MER’s you’re BARELY meeting the requirements? Does hitting the magic number 10 automatically mean you’re safer?

You can also use Modified as part of your MER’s, which would be great except we have NO MODIFIED divisions offered down here. None. At all. That’s not an option for us unless we drive to the East Coast. Again problematic for the rest of the country.

Some other potential cons: It makes it more expensive to bring young horses and sale horses up the levels, which will probably in turn make their prices higher. The cost could discourage ambitious amateurs from really trying to give it a go and/or make it feel impossible, thus not worthwhile to even try. What impact could it have on unrecognized horse trials? Would it make people not even want to “waste” their time at one, needing so many MER’s, or will it drive people away from recognized events entirely and more toward unrecognized? Or away from eventing entirely?

Then again, if all of this really DOES result in keeping horses and riders safer, I can’t argue with that. I’m not confident that it will, because they haven’t shown a lot of in-depth detail on the data behind how these decisions were made. It’s hard to trust or put a lot of faith in numbers or statistics without knowing exactly how they came to be. Maybe if they shared more about this it would help people understand how they came to these conclusions, since it is such a BIG change.

As for the rider classification part, I have no issue with that. It does make sense to me that Phillip Dutton shouldn’t have to have as many MER’s as I do. That’s totally fine with me, and the “unlicensed” label doesn’t bother me the way it has others.

For me personally I think I’d rather see something like 6-7 MER’s, and a reverse qualification like “get eliminated at X level twice in X period of time and you have to move back down and requalify”. Then again, maybe the damage is already done in that elimination. I can see both sides of this, for sure.

I don’t know, this is a hard one for me. Seeing such a drastic rule change was a surprise to me, especially one that would potentially go into effect so soon. There’s some good discussion happening here from both sides of the debate if you want to see more points and opinions. I remain on the fence.

I probably just dated the hell out of myself by using a Yellowcard reference in a post title but come on, you know they were one of the best bands of the late 90’s, early 00’s. They had a VIOLINIST. That’s hard to top, and it’s why they were 100% my favorite band at Warped Tour (2000? 2001? 2002? I forget).

ANYWAY.

Henry is back to living the Only Horse life for the first time since 2018. Well, he’s not alone of course, he has Quinnie, but he is the only one that I’m riding or doing anything with. I can’t quite tell if he thinks this is a good thing or a bad thing. On one hand, more attention equals more cookies, and that’s definitely a good thing.

On the other hand, more attention equals more riding, and he keeps swearing that he’s semi-retired. Even though he’s wild pretty much all the time and gets a lot of joy out of yeehawing his way through everything we do.

I’m amused by it, and happy that he feels good enough to be a dingus, so it’s fine. He did manage to get a week and a half off thanks to the winter storm but on the plus side, before the ice started, he finally got to wear his PS of Sweden quarter sheet. Which… his butt has expanded a little and it’s kind of more like a cape, but whatever.

I’ve also ridden him a little in one of my leather bits. Aside from a few sporadic rides here and there, he’s hardly worn a bit at all in like a year and a half. He’s just a lot more pleasant to ride bitless. He didn’t object much to the leather bit though, at least for Henry (if he doesn’t like something YOU WILL KNOW IT). He chomped on it a little, which is pretty normal for him with any bit, but it was probably one of the best first responses I’ve ever gotten to a bit from him. I still prefer riding him bitless but it might be something else to play with going forward if/when we ever make it to another event and have to dressage. Why did it take me so long to get in on this leather bit thing?

I also finally got around to playing with the knockoff Equiband system that I bought for him months ago.

When he first picked up the trot there were many emotions. He was quite displeased. There was some leaping and cantering in place and then an attempt to just run away from it. He started to settle after a few minutes though, and I did feel him engaging a bit more. He never quite stopped being mad about it, but maybe over time and with more use he won’t object quite so much. It’s funny because I used it on Presto a couple times and Presto never even flicked an ear about the dang thing. Leave it to Henry to bring the drama, per usual.

For his first ride back after the winter storm passed he got roped into ranch horse duty and we rode all around the property looking for tree or fence damage. If you’re gonna look like a ranch QH, you may as well do the job of one.

Yesterday we started back to our cavaletti exercises, and this weekend I’m going to set up a gymnastic. I’m really trying to get his strength and fitness built back up a bit before the super hot weather comes again and he won’t be able to do as much. At this point his gut is outweighing his topline. Maybe it has something to do with his cookie consumption? Neh, that can’t be it…

While I definitely miss seeing Presto’s goofy face and ridiculous antics every day, I have to admit that when the winter storm hit I was kind of relieved not to have another horse in the barn to worry about. Especially him, because he makes a freakin mess in his stall when he’s stuck inside, and usually something in the barn ends up broken. He seems to have weathered the storm just fine up there… I ended up Priming him a blanket liner, and all reports were that he was definitely a bit stir crazy, but otherwise eating and drinking fine. They luckily did not lose power or water.

While it was a relief that I had one less horse here to deal with, on the other hand it’s kind of a bummer that it cut into our already short training timeline with Megan (who, unrelatedly, made the Emerging Athletes list again this year!). He’d only been up there for a few days when this whole mess first started, and of course it lasted way longer than it was forecasted to. Annoying, but what can you do? None of us can control the weather.

Megan was on top of it though, and got in as much work with him as she could. He’s had some groundwork sessions and a few rides, and she’s given him a good report card. She says he’s talented and she enjoys working with him, and she seems to understand and enjoy his monkey personality. On Sunday she sent me some video of her riding him and y’all. I am shook.

I think I had to scoop my jaw up off the floor.

She said what she’s really been working on is getting him more supple through his body, especially his rib cage, which tracks 100% with what I was feeling too. She’s a more correct and stronger rider than I am, so I think she’s able to “explain” it to him much more clearly than I could. He’s still kinda wobbly and loses track of his hind legs sometimes, because ya know… he’s a baby… but for such a short amount a time I think she’s done a great job at starting to help him put things together. Especially at the canter, which I was struggling with.

I especially like how quick she is to reward him for any little try – a nice little release and touch on his neck, which you can see him responding to. A few times when he gets a little frustrated or confused she just keeps quietly asking, and rewards him the second he starts to figure out the right answer. It’s very positive and very quiet, which is what he needs and what I want to see. So far I’m super impressed, honestly.

As hard as it was to cut the cord and send him off, I think it was the right choice. He seems to be thriving, and seeing her ride him and make him look so fancy and legit brings me just as much joy as if I were riding him myself. Probably even more so, because I feel like the quality of the education he’s getting is better. I keep looking at some of these clips going “This is MY horse??? This is that goofy little beanpole that smooshes balls? IT CAN’T BE!”. Seeing him with a pro in the saddle, you can really start to see his quality and the horse he will eventually be.

Now I find myself wanting to figure out a way to keep him with Megan for longer. I think this is a good match, and I’d really like to see what she could accomplish with him given more time. A good early foundation would serve him so much better in the long run. I just have to figure out how to swing it financially. We’ll see. Might have to get creative. Is there a market on the internet for pics of gross dirty farm girl feet? I could totes sell those…