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I did casually drop at the end of my last post (like two weeks ago… sorry!) that we were headed to our first FEI. I didn’t talk about it much publicly because I didn’t want to jinx it, or make it into a Big Thing (it was a Big Thing, I admit), plus I legit was so busy leading up to it that I truly didn’t have as much time to devote to thinking about it as I would have preferred. I didn’t even learn my dressage test until two days before. I can’t decide if that was the better approach, because I had less time to overthink, or if I would have rather been able to focus on it a little bit more. Either way, didn’t matter, it was what it was!

I was mostly very worried to commit some kind of FEI rule-related sin and get myself eliminated or in trouble for something stupid. I know USEA/USEF rules and procedures inside and out by this point, it’s old hat, but FEI is a very different ballgame and I am brand spankin new. I hate feeling brand new. I rolled into the Florida Horse Park on Wednesday for in-barns with Presto’s passport and a thermometer, raring to go. It did help that the show vet is also my normal vet, and the organizer is a good friend, so having familiar faces around all the “official” things all weekend made me a little more comfortable.

We sailed through in-barns in just a few minutes, getting his TPR and a general once-over. Although I did have some anxiety when they took his passport and put it in a box with all the others. I dunno why it didn’t occur to me that they would take those and hold them hostage onto them for the duration of the event, but that thing was a PITA to get and letting it out of my sight was stressful. Either way, we were quickly released to head over to the designated FEI-barn and get settled in.

Arena familiarization started at 4, so Megan (with her 2* horse… having my coach stabled right there in the FEI barn next to me was nice at least!) and I swung aboard right at 4pm to head over there. Presto has been up in the dressage rings at FHP a lot by now, but they were more decorated than normal, with an extra judge’s box and bleachers, so I figured I should take the opportunity to get him in the ring and let him see things. He didn’t give a shit, I think he was confused about what the heck we were doing schooling in the dressage ring. I didn’t ride him for long, just ran through a few different sections of the test and then called it a day.

After that he got a bath and a few last minute grooming touches to prepare for the first jog on Thursday morning. I did do something I have literally never done before for this show… I hired a braider. The reasons were many: 1) it took something off my plate and gave me more time, which brought my overall stress level down 2) Presto is a turd to braid and I usually end up extremely annoyed with him by the time I’m done, so it helped my mental state 3) I saved a lot of money on my entry by winning it in an online fundraising auction, so I figured I could justify this particular luxury.

It was worth every penny, btw. Is this how the other half lives? I love having a beautifully braided horse that I didn’t have to braid.

Anyway. Thursday started early, since the 1* jogged first. Presto got his Ulcergard around 5, he got braided, I fed him, handwalked him for a while, and then groomed him again. He had a little baby heel grab on his white foot, with a teeny bruise, so that was just fucking great. We jogged him up on the asphalt road just to double-check how he looked (great), then I went and got dressed. I was near the top of the order for the jog, so once they started I didn’t have to wait very long.

And well… the ground jury had no mercy at that first jog. They sent like 8 horses to the hold, and mine was one of them. It was an absolutely heart-stopping moment. To be fair, he jogged much less enthusiastically for the actual jog than he did earlier that morning, so I don’t think his 15yo hunter pony impression helped his case. The vet in the hold thought he looked fine, but he was the teeniest little bit tender on that bruised spot when she pushed on it with her fingers. She told the ground jury what she found, we jogged again with more enthusiasm, and then were accepted.

But I’ll be honest, any excitement or wind I had in my sails before that… it was gone entirely. I hated it. Hated every second of it, suddenly felt very overwhelmed and out of place and like I didn’t belong. My brain spiraled hard and I never really came back from that, emotionally. Someone told me that with the new awareness surrounding the social license to operate stuff, FEI officials have been told to be extra stringent, which is possibly why they were sending people to the hold left and right, but I dunno. I know my horse is sound, I would withdraw him in a heartbeat if even for a moment I thought that he wasn’t fit to compete, but I was mortified to end up in the hold.

Either way, that part was done and dusted. I didn’t do dressage until that afternoon around 2pm, so I had all day to sit there and marinate in everything that had happened and beat myself up about it. That was great. I just felt absolute dread settle into my stomach and it never really left. I guess the perk of that is that there’s no room for nerves? Heh. Super.

Presto doesn’t need a long warmup for dressage (especially when it’s 90 degrees… my god Florida really turned it to BAKE) so I got on him like 20 minutes ahead of my ride time. Which was honestly still more time than I needed. For as much of a monkey as he can be about literally anything, he knows what phase is first and always marches into warmup and goes to work like a pro, wasting no energy on the boring part. We did lots of transitions, worked on keeping the left side straighter and the right side more bent, keeping more sit in his canter, and then walked for a while. When the horse before me went to the ring they allowed me into another ring, an actual dressage court, to finish my warmup. I mostly just confirmed all the sizing and location of my 15m circles in there, ran through my test again in my head, and then it was time!

Also, side note, I think I’m gonna do a separate post about all the outfits involved in this weekend, because some of these things deserve their own discussion. Stay tuned for that. For now though, let’s admire the teal For Horses shad. It is magical.

Anyway… the test went pretty well. I didn’t particularly “go for it” in any way, I mostly just tried to make it accurate and keep the rideability. Neither of my lengthenings were particularly bold (which the judges did not like lol) and overall I think I could have pumped a bit more flair and energy into him, but it was a solid and obedient test. Megan and I were thinking it’d be closer to the 30 mark, but it scored a 33. They really wanted more boldness at this level. Fair enough.

Either way, I was pleased with him, and it put us 10th after the first phase, which wasn’t bad at all considering the company.

Since dressage for the FEI divisions ran over two days, Friday was a day off for us. I spent it walking and handgrazing Presto (who was really not pleased to be stuck in a stall), walking my XC course a couple times, and we also had a very very short jump school. Like literally 5 jumps. They allowed us to book a time in one of the grass rings with a steward present so we could jump school if we wanted, and I mostly just took the opportunity to make sure I was clicked into my forward-thinking XC ride. We got that done in like 10 minutes and then went for a long hack.

That night we had the FEI rider meeting where they went over what the vet box procedures would be following XC, and we got free food and ice cream and trivia. Hillary and I and one of the TD’s were on a trivia team (the smallest team, I might add, everyone else had 4-5 people!) and ended up second. I’m still certain that Kyle Carter’s team cheated somehow. But we won a little Triple Crown goodie bag anyway, so I guess I can let it go.

And that takes us up to Saturday, cross country day! Stay tuned…

Well, whoops. I started drafting this post last week and then never had time to come back and actually finish typing it. I feel like that might just be how things go for the next month or so.

Between all the regular horse stuff, having people in town to visit, and the beginning of breeding season, I just don’t find myself with a lot of time to sit down in front of my computer. Or by the time I do, I have lots of other things I have to do before I can get to the blog. Such is life, I suppose.

Now that Michelle is back in town we’ve been keeping pretty busy with scanning mares, organizing all the breeding equipment, making sure we have everything we need, etc. A lot of the mares are in their transitional period right now, just coming into their actual breedable cycles, so we’ve been checking them often and keeping a log so that we can track where they are in their cycles. And there are a lot of mares on the docket this year to try to get bred, so it quickly becomes pretty time-consuming! But hopefully in a couple months we’ll have lots of preggos running around. Fingers crossed.

We haven’t actually scanned Fey yet, we’re taking the slow and positive route of getting her used to the stocks, the equipment, and all that stuff. Once they learn that the stocks are a good place (lots of cookies!) they’re much happier to come in and stand much better for all the scanning and stuff. The end goal is that by the time we actually scan her she’ll be happy and confident in the stocks. The less we have to sedate them, the better, obviously.

The first day we just let her look at everything, led her through the stocks a few times, and then led her through a few more times, pausing to stand for about 10 seconds before walking out. Yesterday was her second time, and she walked right in a few times and stood for a bit, then we walked in and shut the door behind her, then finally capped it off by walking in again, shutting the door, and then putting up the chest rope. I only asked her to stand like that for about a minute, she got some cookies, and then that was it. She’s been quite good about everything so far. Granted, she is REALLY food motivated, so the cookies-as-bribery thing works pretty well on her.

The next step will be actually scanning her, which we’ll sedate her for the first time. She is relatively terrible about shots, so we’ll have to work on that with cookies too.

So far we’ve only actually bred one mare – Peyton, last week. That was my first time helping with the actual breeding part, so it was kinda fun. Fingers crossed those British swimmers do their thing… we’ll find out in about a week.

It’s been kind of weird not having any foals on the farm this year, it’s the first year with no WTW foals since she started breeding. Taking a year off was the right choice so that everything could settle and reboot after the move, but I think we’re all definitely missing the babies.

Granted, we do have a couple fluff butts on the farm at the moment, in the form of baby Sandhill Cranes. Maybe instead of Foal Friday we should have Fowl Friday?

They’re really cute and fun to watch. Last year this pair only had one baby, but this year they have two! I’ve been calling them Fluff and Floof, but they’re growing so fast that I fear they won’t be very fluffy for much longer.

On the riding front, things have been chugging along pretty much like normal. Well, okay, we’re majorly in a “step it up” phase where we’re asking Presto for more. More effort, more rideability, more suppleness, more precision, etc. Which also means that I am solidly in a learning curve phase right along with him. It’s a bit awkward at times, as expected when you’re in a growth phase, but it feels good too. It feels like progress. Or ya know… it hopefully will eventually. I can already see some change in him though, and he does feel more rideable. I mean, do I always make the right choice? No. Sure don’t. But I have more choices available to me.

Last week we had a jump lesson over at Majestic, and then this past weekend we had a flat lesson. I think we’ve got more jumping lined up this week, and hopefully early next week we’ll be able to squeeze in a flat lesson with Peter Gray again if we can make our schedules work.

And then next Wednesday we’re off to our next show, which is also our first FEI. This will be a totally new experience for both of us, and I’m already super anxious about making sure I do all the FEI stuff right. At least that’s kept me from getting nervous about the competition itself, although now that I think about it I should probably learn the dressage test. Heh. Minor detail.

I hope everyone has been doing well and is settling into spring!

The good news: we’ve made it to the fun part. The bad news: I stalled on this post hoping for lots of good show photos and there is precisely one that I liked enough to buy. Luckily there were lots of friends there so I have plenty of screenshots and some video too!

First off: the course. Presto ate it for breakfast.

To be honest, this was IMO a very soft Modified, possibly the softest we’ve run. Majestic is known for having friendly courses, so I expected something on the softer side (I entered this show because the timing was what I wanted, not because I expected a challenge) and this was definitely it. The only real question IMO was the big brush table bending line to the corner which came near the end of the course.

Anyway, I walked the course with Megan on Friday after showjumping. There were lots of instructions, mostly about straightness, keeping my eye up, supporting with my lower leg, and making sure that I’m pushing my crotch into the saddle more than my pockets. Supporting, not chasing. I also planned to make time on this one, compared to our slow lope-around the week before at Ocala, so I was keeping my eye on where my track and turns needed to be in order to save some ground.

On Saturday I ran XC at almost noon, which worked out great because it rained more overnight. Their XC field takes water really well (thank you Florida sand), but I still studded up a little bit more than usual. By the time we got to warmup the ground felt really good. I opened and closed his gallop a bit, jumped 3 jumps, and then went to the start box.

I was really hoping that things would start feeling like they were clicking again at this show, that we’d have our momentum back and feel more in sync again. He came out of the box like a little pro, and we hopped over 1, 2, and 3 out of stride. The first combo was 4AB, which was just two cabins that you could either ride on slight angles and do 4 strides, or ride them head-on and do a bending 5. We planned to do the 4, and that worked out easily. Next it was to a log stack which was potentially a little tricky, it had a pretty vertical face and was slightly downhill and in the shade. Just a little extra leg on to that one, easy peasy. I saved some ground in the turn to the next one, a brush roll that looked small and I knew he’d give zero thoughts about. I was correct.

Then we were to the coffin, which was shared with Training, we just jumped it the opposite way. Very soft coffin question for Modified, IMO, and one he’s seen so many times I think he could do it in his sleep. Pinged right through that. Then we had a big step table with mulch, again easy, and then another efficient turn back to the ditch wall. We had the smaller one, which he’s jumped as part of the Training course here before. From there we hopped over the big blue ramp (almost taking out KOC on the way, who had wandered in front of it) then it was down the hill to the water.

Here my objective was to jump smoothly through without losing any momentum at the jump in the water like he did last week at Ocala. I stuck my crotch to the pommel, supported with the lower leg, and he was brilliant here.

Right after the water we had the down bank combo – a rolltop, two strides, down bank, and then 5 to a skinnyish brush wedge. I rode positive and supportive into it and he was quite professional – didn’t do any kind of major wahoo off the bank. Still though, I knew the 5 would ride short for me and it did, so I just stayed back and kept the balance up and let him figure it out. He plopped over the wedge in the least impressed possible way.

Then we were galloping down to the bottom over the field, over the open MIM oxer (we shared the Training one… at his very first Modified we shared the Prelim one, so this one was considerably less terrifying) and to the next combo, the angled brushes. To be fair these were quite big, but the half-roll face and perfect two strides made it a lot friendlier. I just found my line straight through and it rode great.

After that we had a long gallop up the hill to the big brush table/corner combo. That table was big, y’all. I did not make direct eye contact with it because why. I rode the whole way up to it going “please let me find a good distance to this, please please please” and the gods were on my side because it materialized perfectly. Obviously with a table that big you do have to keep coming at it, it’s more of a gallop fence, but having a corner on a bending line after it meant you had to rebalance quickly and get their eye on the corner ASAP. Knowing that my horse would eat up the distance in the line, I bowed my bend out just a teeny bit more to give us a bit more room for the 6, and it rode great. I mean, he jumped the snot out of the table to the point where I might have a touch of whiplash, but it’s the first real effort he gave all day. Finally found one big enough to suit him, I guess!

From there it was a fairly simple gallop home – we had the picture frame which he’s jumped before but in the opposite direction, the trakehner which he’s also seen before, and then we cut through some trees to take out as many strides as possible before the last one, a friendly ramp.

We crossed the finish with 11 seconds to spare and a very confidence-building run. It was in sync, it was executed to plan, and felt very easy and textbook, which is exactly what I’d been wanting. I feel like he could have hopped happily around the Prelim, and that’s what I wanted to feel.

Presto got an entire container of cookies for his double clear, plus a post-bath roll in the sand, as is tradition for him at Majestic.

Overall I’m really pleased with the progress we’ve made over the past few weeks – it feels like we’re not just back on track but also making improvements in areas that I’ve felt “stuck” on for a while. Now we tuck in and do some homework over the next few weeks before the next one!

Ok, well, I was waiting for recap posts until show pics were posted but turns out they left dressage about 5mins before I went in, and Presto casually loping over Modified didn’t make for any SJ pics worth buying. XC pics aren’t posted yet, hopefully some of those are good. But for today’s portion of the show recap: screenshots it is.

First and foremost, the weather was ick. Like big big big ick. It rained BUCKETS the night before and the morning of, just a torrential never ending deluge. I’m not sure I’ve ever been less enthused to braid and head to a show. Especially because I had multiple friends in town, plus people here trying Argo… it was a lot going on for my brain and it wasn’t super focused on showing. Especially not in the rain.

But, ya know. We’re eventers, we do the damn thing even when it’s soggy and we have no enthusiasm, mostly because we’ve already paid our entry fees and there ain’t no getting it back.

I had Megan coaching me again at this show. She didn’t have anyone else entered so I told her I didn’t really need her until SJ course walk time. Dressage warmup is fairly standard for us by now. Luckily by this point the rain had slacked off enough to where it was more of a heavy drizzle. Granted, we were already super moist, and it was still raining enough to constantly be dripping off my helmet or smearing into my eyeballs. I was very much in “let’s get this over with” mode.

The footing in the dressage rings at Majestic is notoriously not great. They’re grass, but uneven and rutted and tend to be slick no matter what. You may remember this is the place where we had the test last year where Presto legit almost fell down multiple times. I always stud him a little extra for these rings, and I pulled out some bigger ones for this day in particular, having a feeling it was going to not be great. Truth be told, I got in there and mostly tried to avoid the worst spots. I’d rather have a less accurate test and keep my horse out of the muddy corners, so that’s what I did. I definitely left plenty of points on the table when it came to boldness, accuracy, and geometry, but I mostly just wanted to ride a safe and quiet test and keep my horse confident on his feet. It was nothing to write home about, but fine. We scored a 30 to be tied for 4th.

After that I hunkered down in the truck for a while to try to dry off a little bit. Ya know when you got juuuuust wet enough for it to seep through to your bra and underwear? It was like that. Showjumping honestly couldn’t come soon enough.

Megan got there about an hour later, and we headed over to look at the course. It had a couple wonky turns, mostly the one from 1 to 2, but otherwise was standard fare. She reminded me to put my eye on the inside standard through the turn, and then shift my eye to the takeoff as we came out of the corner. She also said I needed to make sure to keep riding him forward, because the footing was really deep and sticky in front of a few jumps, and a little bit of balanced momentum would be helpful. She didn’t want me to get bogged down and backwards (it’s almost like she knows me or something).

We watched a few go and you could definitely tell that the footing was playing a part. It had mostly stopped raining but it was WET WET WET and the takeoff spots in front of some of the jumps were getting deep. Some of the horses dealt with it fine, others seemed to really stick off the ground and require a lot of encouragement. I wasn’t really sure what to expect – Presto has been lucky enough to always jump on pretty good footing. The part I was most concerned about was all the standing water/puddles scattered throughout the course, especially the giant lake in front of fence 2. He’s got a tendency to want to jump over puddles, or at the very least he gets a little “stuck” going through them. I knew I’d have to be ready to ride more positively forward through those spots than usual.

He was a bit of a situation in warmup. Last week at Ocala someone almost ran right into us (and a few other people) multiple times, which freaked Presto out a bit. So when we got into showjump warmup this weekend he was wanting to prop and spin when horses came directly at him. That was super fun. I was trying to avoid traffic as best I could, while also keeping him on the better ground, while also trying to get him positively through as many puddles as possible, while also warming up. By the time we had jumped our last warmup fence he’d stopped wanting to spin so much and wasn’t being as dramatic about the puddles, so… small wins?

Once we were in the ring I trotted him directly to the big puddle of standing water in front of jump 2. That was my biggest area of concern, considering it was already a fairly sharp turn and not a very long approach. He peeked at that puddle but went through it fine, so off we went to the first jump. He was good, but it was just kind of like riding a whole new horse. He was being super genuine about it, but you could tell he wasn’t accustomed to jumping out of that kind of muck and was trying to figure it out. The turn from 1 to 2 rode really well though, I kept riding forward and he mostly ignored the big puddle.

Honestly it all went well until the triple at the very end. I just… missed coming in. Plain and simple. I was a couple strides too late looking at my takeoff spot, so when I did finally look I saw the perfect half stride coming in and didn’t have enough time to fix it. So we had the rail at both A and B. Totally and 100% my fault, I was too slow with my eye. Trying to retrain where I’m looking takes a lot of conscious effort that I haven’t quite mastered yet.

I was really happy with how he was otherwise though. Pretty rideable, and he kept trying for me despite it being a bog. It was character-building for him I think, good for his education to have to jump on footing that isn’t so ideal. He definitely felt like he improved from start to finish in how he handled it, which is all you can really ask for.

All we had on Friday was dressage and SJ, so we were done for the day after that. I left Presto at the trailer with Hillary (his BFF babysitter extraordinaire) so Megan and I could run out and walk XC. I’ll be honest, I was mostly just really really really looking forward to going home and putting on dry clothes. More about XC tomorrow!

Presto and I had another show this past weekend, but before we just jump straight from one show recap to another, I should probably fill in a little bit more about what else has been going on. Plus I need to stall a little bit in the hopes that show photos might be posted in the next couple days.

First and foremost, our intrepid young hero officially turned seven. SEVEN. Can you believe it? Time is starting to feel like it’s flying by. He is, dare I say, a Real Boy now. Well… on paper anyway.

He celebrated his birthday in proper Presto fashion, with a gathering of friends, a birthday outfit, and a pinata full of cookies that he smashed to absolute bits, much to the delight of the crowd. He also got an FEI membership for his birthday from me, which he seemed less enthusiastic about.

In other news, Argie boy has continued to prove what an exceptionally good egg he is. He’s had several more friends come take him for a spin now, and he’s been well-behaved for all, but he does seem particularly adept at caring for the less-experienced or timid rider.

A friend of a friend flew in last week to try him, his first official sale trial, which was a really nice older woman looking for her first horse. On paper you probably wouldn’t pick an 8yo OTTB that’s been off the track for 6 months, but he really loved her, and she loved him too. He was an absolute saint, so well-behaved for her and her trainer. He’d be in a trainer program so I think it would work fine, but she’s got a few others to try (that are, admittedly, probably better-suited on paper) so we’ll see. There are other people interested in him too, and he seems to gain new fans pretty quickly.

My friend Stacy is in town from Texas and she’s ridden him twice now (out of the whole herd, he was her pick) and also loves him. He’s just so kind and pleasant, and ok perhaps a bit of a leg workout.

If she wasn’t at capacity for horses she said she’d be buying him (and perhaps jokingly may have asked her husband if he would consider offing the grumpy elderly retired one to clear up a space… don’t worry, he wouldn’t), which seems to be the consensus of most people that swing a leg over. She thinks he’s the perfect type to take a timid ammy around the 2’6″ while also trotting around the crossrail classes with the kiddo at the same show. She’s right, he is. This horse will be absolutely worth his weight in gold to someone, and he will probably consume a relatively grotesque amount of treats in the process.

Henry got to come out and play last weekend on the day of Presto’s party, when all his friends were in town. He gained a new fan I think, because obviously he’s also perfect. He told me that himself.

As I mentioned, this past weekend was another horse show, which I’ll post about later, and I also go to go to brunch at WEC with Michelle, her husband, and Stacy to watch a Grand Prix. McLain Ward won. Everyone be shocked. It was fun though, I’ve never gotten to sit up in the VIP bougie seats area. Can’t beat that on a Sunday morning.

This was the last week of winter circuit at WEC, which means my extra retail income will be driving out of town to head back to Texas. I’m equal parts sad and relieved – sad because the extra money is nice, but relieved because I’m freakin exhausted. Season is basically just four months of running myself ragged, and that’s one thing off my plate again for a while, albeit to the detriment of my wallet. But I did manage to sneak in one more fun purchase thanks to my employee connections… here’s a hint:

You’ll have to wait and see what it is!