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A couple weeks ago I was scrolling through my facebook feed when my eyes caught on an article from Heels Down titled “Belly Bands are a Dumb Trend”. Meant to be attention-grabbing, obviously, and I suppose it worked because I stopped scrolling. It was a very confusing title to me because 1. I had no idea they were a “trend” 2. I tend to disagree with the idea that they’re dumb. I own one, after all.

So I opened the article and the gist was that people use belly bands because they’re trying to hide spur marks, and if you’re such a bad rider that you leave spur marks, maybe you should work on your horsemanship. This just compounded how perplexed I was. I agree with the latter part, but strongly disagree with the former.

I mean, first of all… have you seen a belly band? It’s literally this hideous chonk of black elastic that is, quite frankly, a freaking upper body workout to even put on. There’s nothing semi-attractive about it, nor does it make you look cool. It looks like a dang hernia belt. Or a girdle. People DO look at you more closely, to try to judge why you’re using it. You’re not standing out in a good way. If they’re trendy then I guess I’ve totally missed that boat, because I don’t know a single person that uses one without reason or just to look cool. It doesn’t, and it’s a PITA.

My real problem with the article started here:

“Some may even be prone to rubs from riders’ boots or girth-fit alone. But there are options out there for managing a problem like this. Most of them come down to proper education and horsemanship.”

See, I do own a belly band, and have used it with great success. I have a horse who gets extremely sensitive skin in the summer, and just about anything will give him a rub. Like his halter. Or a saddle pad. Or my leg touching him. Or looking at him funny. The horse was getting rubs and I wasn’t even wearing spurs. Let me repeat: not wearing spurs. But I do ride him for long periods, he does sweat a lot, and those two things create the perfect environment for skin irritation.

I tried to use one of those spur pads with the extended sides and he got rubs from the edges of the pad. Congratulations, now he had MORE rubs. I tried wearing two other different pairs of boots to see if that would make any difference, but no dice. I tried slathering the area in Vaseline before rides to reduce friction (yes, I voluntarily made my horse more slippery). I had the vet look at his skin, I treated it with products, and always carefully bathed all the sweat off. None of that fixed it. So I bought him sheepskin pads, picked up a cheap used belly band to put over top, and voila – my problems were totally solved. The existing rubs healed, and he didn’t get any more. Once we got past the sweatiest grossest parts of the summer I was able to stop using the belly band and it’s been hanging in the tack room since. Will I need it again next summer? I’d be thrilled if I don’t, but probably. We’ll see. If I do, I won’t hesitate to reach for it. So, given all that, I am very interested to hear what other options exist (according to this author) for managing a horse like this, particularly those pertaining to my alleged lack of horsemanship.

The article goes on to say that a belly band is a quick fix solution, and maybe you need to learn how to make your horse be more forward and light off your leg.

Girlfriend.

If I get my horse any more forward and light off my leg, he will take up permanent residence somewhere in the stratosphere. That animal is so sensitive I have to be really tactful and deliberate about how I use my leg. I’ve spent years working on getting him to accept the leg and allow me to actually use it appropriately. Trust me, I ain’t squeezing his guts out the whole ride. But you DO have to put your leg on a horse and be able to ride with your leg as an active aid… I can’t just ride around with my leg off his sides as a solution to prevent rubs.

Are there people out there using belly bands to cover something up? Of that I have no doubt. Truth is, people can misuse even the most innocuous pieces of equipment (like sponges. people have literally abused horses with sponges.). If you’re using a belly band to prevent a particularly severe spur from leaving a mark so you can skate around the blood rule then you’re not that bright in the first place, because a belly band dulls the effect of a spur. If that’s your intended usage you may as well take the dumb-looking elastic girdle off and use a duller spur. I do agree that they should not be legal in competition for any sport (they already aren’t legal for some competitions) – I have never used mine in the show ring and would never want to, because see above comments about how freaking ugly it is. Taking it off for one day or just for your class shouldn’t be a big deal if you’re using it for legitimate purposes.

But I do think it’s incredibly small-minded, and if I’m being honest, a bit ignorant, to lambaste the product and all the people who use it just because there are a few people who also misuse it. Particularly when it’s a product that’s intentionally designed to protect a horse’s skin. By that logic there must be something wrong with all my sheepskin pads, too. Digging deeper into the article, it seems like what the author truly has a problem with is the misuse of spurs, and we can absolutely find common ground there. Shoot, the only spurs I even own are those teeny tiny little roller balls, and given my history on this blog I think it’s pretty clear that I would never defend rider-induced blood on a horse. What I just can’t get behind is the leap from “abuse of spur” to “belly bands are dumb” and roll them up in the same conclusion: people who use belly bands have bad horsemanship. That’s the point at which I admittedly get lost. And yes, I definitely have a real problem with someone questioning my horsemanship because I use a product that has actually worked to make my horse more comfortable.

Anyone else ever used a belly band? Do you think they’re covering up a bad rider or a lack of horsemanship, or is there a legitimate use? Where do you stand?

Somewhere around January 1st I thought “Boy, wouldn’t it be nice if I could go the entire month without spending hundreds of dollars on vet bills…”. And then maybe 2 minutes later I realized that the boys were due for their shots and coggins. And then maybe 2 minutes after that I figured we might as well go ahead and check Presto’s mouth to see about those wolf teeth too, if I’m going to start riding him anytime soon. Oh, and he probably needs a float.

Okay, so… maybe next month. I think by this point I haven’t gone a single month without paying the vet something since like… May? April? Come on, February, don’t let me down.

Anyway, the vet came out last Monday to do the shots and coggins, which was easy. Except Presto had a meltdown when I left him in the crossties and tried to paw his way to China, thus began 4 subsequent days of Camp Dontbeanasshole where he was put in the crossties and ignored for the entire time I was mucking stalls. Naturally he never threw another fit again, and indeed barely moved a muscle in any of those sessions, because they always save that kind of behavior for when we have company over.

We checked his teeth on shots/coggins day and they did indeed need a float, and he did indeed have two wittle wolf teeth prime and ready for removal. I was happy to see that his wolf teeth were so little (ie normal sized) because his mother’s were so big that it took almost an hour to get them out, and that vet asked if she could keep them because she’d never seen any so big. Because if anyone is going to have a horse with anything freakish, it’d definitely be me.

Presto’s tooth appointment was yesterday. We started with the power float, and he had a couple decent size points in there, but they didn’t take long to smooth down. When the vet was satisfied with the teeth, he went and got his little wolf teeth extractor tool and essentially just… popped those suckers right out.

It took less than 5 minutes, and they are totally the cutest wittle baby wolf teeth ever. While the vet was in there he noticed that Presto had a couple premolar caps that were about to fall off, so he literally just tapped them with his tool and out they came. Those were much more impressive looking, at least, and really cool. There are a couple more caps that will be ready soon he said, but not quite yet. He’s shedding these baby teeth like a machine, and right on schedule.

As we were finishing up, the vet asked me how old he was again (“2yrs 10months 5 days”, it’s totally normal to know that btw) then looked at him and said “he’s huge”. To which I reasoned that technically he’s only like an inch taller than Henry and he’s basically 3 now, so ya know, it’s not that bad. I tell myself that all the time and after a while it totally works. I did say that I’d held off putting a few rides on him because of the timing of his most recent growth spurt and he looked at him again and said “Yeah that’s probably a good idea. He looks like an Ethiopian Warmblood.”.

I died.

That’s probably the most accurate description I’ve heard of Presto yet. He’s definitely very gazelle-like at the moment, maybe mixed with a little ibex and Somali wild ass.

Presto came out of his sedation well and ate his dinner normally. His mouth is maybe a little sore but it hasn’t seemed to slow down his consumption at all. And with the wolf teeth gone, we’re hopefully finished yanking things out of his body (hey, it’s almost a year to the day since he got his cojones chopped!) and he’s made the right of passage into being a real boy. Or a real Ethiopian Warmblood. Whichever.

Next stop, his 3yo birthday! Which reminds me… which birthday hat does he want?

I can’t quite decide…

It’s been probably a solid decade since I’ve had a riding horse who wasn’t getting at least two body clips every winter. This is Texas, it can still be 80+ degrees in the winter (it was last week actually), and it’s difficult to have a horse in full work that isn’t going to die of heat stroke if they grow a lot of hair. As has become usual by now, I clipped Henry for the first time in early October – it was still 90+ degrees so he was DYING – with a plan to clip him again in November. He grows so much coat that only clipping him once, at the beginning of Fall, tends to leave him with a winter coat about the same as that of most other un-clipped horses. If not for the fact that I leave his legs and a saddle patch untouched, by November you would never know that he’d already been clipped. He grows a really thick, long coat.

And then he hurt himself, so I held off on the second clip. If he wasn’t going to be working, there wasn’t much point in taking the hair off. And then I started riding him again, but not enough to really NEED a clip, and then before I knew it we’d gotten to the end of December and he started shedding. He’s hairy enough to where he really could use less hair when I’m riding on these warmer days, but he’s not struggling, so for now I’ve decided to just leave it.

The main motivation behind that decision? Blanketing. The complication of clipping is of course all the subsequent required blanketing, and blanketing is really really REALLY tricky when you leave the farm at 5:30am and don’t get back until 3:30pm. It could easily be 40 degrees when I leave in the morning, but 70 degrees by the middle of the day. Trying to blanket for that becomes nearly impossible, and obsessing about has already driven me relatively insane.

I have always felt like horses handle being a little chilly much better than being overly hot, especially Henry in particular. I’d much rather he be a little bit cold for the first couple hours of the day than to be standing under a blanket sweating for 6 hours. It’s also been beaten into me from an early age that it’s Very Bad if a horse is sweating under a blanket. They’ll be wet to their core, the blankets will be wet, and if I can’t get them dried off completely, they’ll end up way colder once the sun goes down. It’s not a cycle I want to opt into. Naturally, if they’re shivering then they’re TOO cold (and I will stand there for an obsessively long time staring at them to make sure they aren’t) but generally if they aren’t clipped, then most Texas days it’s better to err on the side of no blanket.

This would all be a lot easier if I could just work for home or be independently wealthy and not have to spend all day at work… then I could just take blankets off or change them throughout the day as needed. Unfortunately that’s not possible, so instead I drive myself absolutely bonkers trying to make the best decision every day.

Presto and the older mare are easy – they’re so freaking hairy I think it would have to be legit arctic for them to even notice, and they’re both pretty hardy. They don’t wear anything unless its really cold, and gonna stay really cold, and/or there’s a possibility that they might get wet while it’s also cold. Which is rare. The yearling got his coat a lot later than the others, but he puffed up quite a bit in December and is now sporting some really impressive 6″ goat hairs on his chin. I’ll put a blanket on that one before I put one on his other two pasturemates, but I also have to be careful because he is by far the most active and runs around so much that he makes himself hot once the day starts to warm up.

Henry is the trickiest one. When I was debating clipping him again I thought long and hard about it, imagining what I’d do in all these scenarios if he was clipped. I also considered doing just a partial clip of various styles. But really there’s just no good answer when the temperature swings so much between turnout time and noon most days. Since I already agonize way too much about how to dress the horses, I decided to not add any more stress to that unless I absolutely have to. He’s not going to any important shows, and he seems ok temperature-wise in his work for now. I’ll just keep trying to shed him out a bit, and if, once we get through February, he seems like he’s getting too hot or taking a while to shed out enough to be comfortable, I can always just clip him later.

The ability to do blanket changes might be one of the very few things I miss about the other barn… the worker was always happy to go pull Henry’s blanket off for me mid-morning. What I’ve noticed I’m NOT dealing with though, for the first winter in… 5 years? No little ulcery minor gas colics, and no skinny Henry. I’ve always had issues with him in the winter, keeping his weight on and battling some other ulcer symptoms. I think it had to do with increased stall time and not enough forage, mostly. But the ground at this farm is nice and sandy so it’s extremely rare that they have to spend much time cooped up, they get a longer turnout time every day, this is probably the best quality pasture he’s ever had in the winter, he’s got more turnout space and moves around a lot more, and I’m able to give him more hay at night than he’s had before. He’s never looked this good in January, and – knock on wood – no tummy issues. He’s also eating the least amount of grain ever for this time of year… I’ve been able to cut it in half, which I’m sure also really helps his stomach.

Aside from the blanketing turmoil, keeping the horses at home is quite possibly the best thing ever. I probably won’t stop fretting about blanketing decisions on a daily basis though… it’s my newest hobby and I’m real good at it.

Henry and I last jumped in early November. And then two days later he did… whatever the hell he did, and was mysteriously and disturbingly lame for almost a month. As soon as I paid a million dollars for xrays and two vet visits and those ridiculous glue-on rubber shoes he was totally fine, so now for the past 7 weeks I’ve been slowly and carefully legging him back up. Am I being ridiculously slow about it? Maybe. But I’d rather err on the side of caution and take the time to get him properly fit and conditioned again. A month off doesn’t seem like much, but we’d been in the middle of legging him back up to regular fitness (it was a long hot brutal summer that he really could not participate in very much) when he hurt himself. A half-fit horse that gets a month off ends up losing a lot of strength and fitness by the time all is said and done. It’s not just the cardio, it’s the muscles and tendons and ligaments that have to be ready for the workload too. There is only one Henry and I cannot replace him.

But now we’ve worked our way back up to a 5 rides per week schedule, and I’ve slowly been lengthening his conditioning days and asking for more in his dressage rides. It’s funny, this is the first time in my life I’ve ever had an actually “made” horse (ie not green or seriously remedial in some way) and god is there ever a lot to be said for that. The first day of pushing all the flatwork buttons was a little rusty, but after that everything came right back as if nary a day had gone by. On Thursday we did a bareback dressage ride and tossed in all his fun tricks – half pass, shoulder in, haunches in, 10m circles and figure 8’s, lengthenings at the trot and canter, counter canter zig zag, halt to canter, simple changes, etc. He did it all. I mean he spooked a lot, and it wasn’t always particularly correct, and I couldn’t get him within 10 meters of C because some kind of imaginary creature lives over there now, but hey. Close enough.

And my abs were SCREAMING the next day. Totally confirmed my theory that we should be riding bareback more often, because nothing quite murders my core like bareback dressage.

So after having had no problems throughout all that, I decided he finally seemed ready to jump again. We got a little rain on Friday and Saturday, which softened up the ground to absolute perfection, and I dragged some jumps out into the smaller flatter pasture, set them small for him (nothing over 2’9″) and in we went.

Naturally, Henry snorted his idiot head off at the coop. He’s only seen it 500 times before, just not in that exact spot. I honestly have no idea how he’s such a good cross country horse. But after a few laps of trot and canter he settled down, and after we’d warmed up I pointed him at the barrels. Where he proceeded to take off from at least a stride away and land bucking. I laughed. I can’t help it, he’s ridiculous.

Once he’d jumped a few warmup fences he leveled out, so we walked, I went and set my phone on the fence and pointed it at the coop to try to get some video, and then we did two courses.

We didn’t do much, maybe 20 jumps total. We both still remember how, thank goodness, although my eye is a little off. He didn’t seem to mind, he mostly just seemed happy to be jumping again. It’s definitely his favorite thing.

For as silly as the GluShu’s looked they stayed on really well and seemed to do the trick, so I have no complaints. We were able to transition him back into regular steel shoes (with a leather rim pad) over a week ago and all seems fine so far. I spend so much time obsessively watching every step he takes that he probably thinks I’m an even bigger stalker than I already was, and he’s not wrong. I can’t help it.

Henry looked good coming out of his stall this morning so fingers crossed he feels good this afternoon and we can keep marching along back toward his regular workload! It was definitely nice to be airborne again with my favorite. It feels like home.

If you didn’t follow the inaugural US Event Horse Futurity on facebook in 2019, you really missed out. The training vlogs were fantastic, and it was so educational to see how different trainers approach different issues, and how the horses progressed throughout the year. I developed a bit of a fangirl crush on Maya Black, someone I didn’t know a whole lot about before the Futurity.

You see some of these upper level people running around the big stuff with older experienced horses, but it’s such a different ballgame to see them with young horses and get a front row seat to watch how they train. It’s an entirely separate skillset. Some of the trainers were exceptionally good at knowing when to take the pressure away and just hack out or give time off, and knowing just how much they had to prepare without pushing the 4yo brain. It’s an art form that’s fascinating to me (and extremely applicable to real life), and the Futurity brought it to the public eye in a way that is rarely so accessible.

Anyway, if you missed it, the winner of the 2019 Futurity and the second place horse at the YEH Championships overall was Double Diamond C, by Diacontinus. Y’all might remember Diacontinus because I was stalking him a little in Germany in 2017 at Bundeschampionate, plus his sire is Diarado, who is also the sire of one of Presto’s half brothers (Manny).

This week the Futurity posted the 2020 entrants – 11 new baby event horses throwing their hats into the ring to be crowned the next winner. It’s an interesting group, with a couple stallions, a few trakehners, a variety of warmbloods, some tb x wb crosses, a little 15h guy, and even a few dressage-bred horses. It’s a whole new collection of rider/trainers too, so we’ll get to see even more insight into how different people approach the process.

It’s a little too early for me to pick a favorite, since the Futurity has just starting posting pictures and videos of the horses on their facebook page, but if we’re going by pedigree I’m particularly interested to see how Galway, Protego, and Exmoor Xena come along.

Anyone else been following along and looking at the new entries yet? Who’s your early favorite? Did you glean anything useful from the 2019 vlogs?