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Last week after I posted the details about how crazy we got while looking for a barn, including looking up what type of soil the property had, several of you asked how to do that. I have based my last two boarding decisions based at least partially (ok mostly) off of what type of ground they had, and for anyone who is shopping for land or lives in a place where there’s a certain type of ground you want to avoid, or a certain type of ground you want to find, it’s a REALLY helpful tool. I don’t know about you, but as an eventer I feel like my life sometimes revolves around footing. The website is a little bit confusing to use though, so I’ll show you how I’ve used it for myself and that should be enough to get you started.

Web Soil Survey is a USDA site that lets you look up the soil content of any area. From the main page, just click on the big green button that says Start WSS. That’ll take you to this landing page.

From there you have several options for how to look things up. I usually have a specific address that I want to research, so I drop down the Address tab and enter it there. If you’re just browsing a general area you can use the State and County option. Or lat/long if you’re fancy. For this case I’m gonna use the Address option, but you do you.

Once you put that in, the map will refocus to whatever area you specified.

From there you can use the little AOI buttons on the top menu of the map to define what specific area you want to look at.

They’re small and hard to read, but they say AOI (area of interest). If you hover your mouse over them you’ll see that one says “Define AOI by rectangle” which allows you to just draw a rectangle around the area you want to define, and the other says “Define AOI by polygon” which allows you to draw a more specific shape around an area. Once you select which AOI you want to use, you’ll be able to draw that shape on your map.

Once you’ve defined your Area of Interest, look at the tabs along the top of the page and click on Soil Map.

The soil map page is where all the magic happens – this is where it shows what types of soil your selected Area of Interest has.

As you can see, it also shows which area of the property has what soil, as defined by the map unit symbols, as well as the total acreage for each soil type.

This is all well and good if you know your soils pretty well, but if you don’t, you might need further assistance. You can click on each soil type and it’ll pop up a page with some specifics, which may or may not make any sense to you. I tend to scroll down to the “properties and qualities part” personally, but depending on what you’re trying to do with the land, other sections may have more value. I’m really into drainage and generally prefer anything “sandy” over anything “clay”. Clay loam is far better than black clay though, which I have come to avoid like the plague.

I’ve also generally been able to find additional info by using good old Google and just searching the soil type in quotation marks. Here’s the whole USDA page on Behring clay loam, for example. I always pay particular attention to the drainage and permeability section, but if you’re growing hay there’s a lot of great info there too.

When in doubt, just start looking up the soil content of all the places you know that have great soil, and use it as a point of comparison. You’ll find patterns pretty quickly.

The WSS site has a lot of cool features that are fun to play around with, once you’re comfortable with how it works. Explore the tabs. Have a blast. If you’re anything like me it’s really fun and perhaps also highly addictive. Great tool though, it’s certainly proved useful for me over the years!

I did a thing yesterday. A thing that I hadn’t planned on doing, but it was one of those moments where the stars just kind of align and the moment feels right, so you go for it, and I did. And it was a success!

My original plan for the day was to introduce Presto to the western saddle. He’s worn both my jump saddle and my dressage saddle before, but I’d like to do his first few rides in a western saddle, so I figured it was time to put it on him. It’s heavier and louder and clunkier but otherwise not much different, so I figured he wouldn’t really care, and I was right. I put it on him in the crossties, slowly tightened up the cinch, and went out to the arena to let him walk and trot around with it.

That was super boring after about 5 minutes, so I pulled the mounting block over and we did some of our usual mounting block lessons. Working on standing still, me leaning over him, me putting some weight in the stirrup, flapping the stirrups around, smacking the saddle, etc. We’ve done this enough to where he’s also extremely unimpressed with all that.

I upped the ante and stood all my weight in one stirrup, leaning across and patting his opposite side. Again, totally unimpressed.

So as I’m laying there across him I’m like “screw it, I’m just gonna throw a leg over and see what he thinks.”. So I switched his lunge line for a lead rope, went through all the typical pre-mounting stuff again, and this time when I put my weight in the stirrup and layed across, I paused for a few seconds and then swung my leg all the way over.

And next thing you know, I’m sitting on him.

I just sat there for a few minutes, talking to Hillary and the barn worker Ryan. Presto moved a little bit, mostly in small slow circles since I only had one lead rope, but he stayed SUPER calm and was happy to follow his nose around. I didn’t want to actually ride him, I just wanted to sit on him, and that’s what we did. He’s done so much of the pre-riding basics at this point that I don’t even think he realized anything new or strange had happened. He’s been used to me being above him for a long time now, and having my weight leaned on him. If anything, I think he was happier with me actually sitting astride because it was easier for him to balance.

I expected him to feel a lot scrawnier and smaller, considering how narrow and gangly he still is, but he felt pretty normal sized. He’s officially sticking 16h now, and I’m kind of glad that I went ahead and sat on him, because lord it is already a stretch to mount and dismount, even with the little mounting block. I’m definitely gonna need a 3-step by the time I’m actually ready to ride him for real. He’s still just a wee baby (ok maybe not so wee, but definitely a baby) so I won’t be riding him for quite a while yet, but… he’s officially backed. And my butt was the very first one to sit upon him. It’s a pretty special moment considering all we’ve been through in his short life. It makes me happy that I’m his person and he trusts me enough for this to have been such a non-event.

If I had wanted to, I’m pretty sure I could have trotted him around yesterday without any problems. With, ya know… two “reins”. We’ll do some more ground driving this summer and then I think I’ll be able to put a handful of short rides on him in the fall. Then I’ll bring him back out next spring and start hacking/trail riding a few times a week. He’s quiet about things, and he’s smart, and he catches on pretty quickly.

I swear the 2yo year is the longest. Just waiting… waiting… waiting for him to be older. I think I’ll be riding yesterday’s high for a while though.

When we last left off on the barn hunt update, I was stuffing my feelings into double decker Fudge Rounds and slamming them down my throat like it was my damn job. And up until yesterday afternoon, that’s pretty much exactly what was still happening, just with rapidly increasing anxiety (and copious amounts of queso) as one barn after the next didn’t pan out. I can’t really explain the hellscape that is barn shopping in this town. Well, actually, I can try. Let’s rehash what’s happened so far.

Hillary and I knew that we really wanted to stay together, with all 3 boys. Everything is just a lot easier with a barn buddy. Granted, finding space for 3 horses does complicate things. We scoured the shit out of the internet, I don’t think any stone was left unturned. If it exists as a boarding barn within an hour of Austin, we have seen it. She was even stalking private properties on google maps, looking for suitable barns that might possibly take on a few boarders, and driving around desirable areas being a total stalker. Yeah… that is some next level creepy, in the most admirable way possible. She even called realtors for properties that were for sale asking if they would rent. We were open to self care, co-op situations… anything that looked like a place where our horses could be happy and we could have what we needed.

First of all, getting anyone at these so-called boarding barns to call/email/message/text you back is apparently a completely unrealistic expectation. We got 3 times as many *crickets* as we did replies. Then there are all the places who have dealbreaker barn rules, like… you can’t come out before 9am. Ever. How is that a thing? Or that you had to have written permission every time you left the property. Or that you could only jump if you took a lesson with them, which isn’t such an uncommon rule, but I have zero interest in taking lessons with any of those trainers, so that’s a nope. Or better yet, you had to be in a training program to board there, which I completely understand their reasoning behind, but also a nope. I’ve already got a trainer and she’s worked pretty darn well for me.

Several more desirable places were just plain out of my budget, with two horses, especially if they didn’t offer pasture board as an option. Other places seemed in budget, until you started adding up all the extra nickel and diming fees, which could easily tack on another $200+ a month. The other more desirable places were full. They’re always full.

There are a lot of things I can make do with. I don’t need anything fancy whatsoever, but I needed it to be safe. That includes no barbed wire fence. I dunno what it is with horse people here, but damn they love them some barbed wire. Preferably rusty and half falling down. I also needed people taking care of my horse that gave me the sense that they knew what they were doing. Or at least had owned a horse for more than a week. Or knew how many feet horses were supposed to have. Or which was the ass end. Boy do I have stories.

I also need good enough footing to where I’m not going to be out of the saddle for days every time it rains, and to be able to keep my horse sound with all the conditioning we do. THAT is a tall measure around here, where black gumbo soil rules the lands. God it is awful, and I wanted to avoid it. An arena would be nice, but not needed… the more important part is a big enough field to do my conditioning. I can dressage and jump in a field, but it’s a lot harder to condition in a ring. As it is I ride out in the field 99.9% of the time now, and I don’t mind it one bit.

I needed turnout. Like… more than a few hours a day and on something bigger than a tiny dry lot paddock or just a stall run (a stall run isn’t turnout, omg). One of my horses needs to move as much as possible to keep himself loose, and the other is a growing and developing 2yo warmblood. They can’t just stand still 23 hours a day if I expect either of them to stay sound in their jobs. Go ahead and cross several more off the list at that request.

We went to look at a few places. On Monday afternoon we drove out to the one that looked by far the most promising on paper and in pictures. It was… what’s the word I’m looking for here… horrendous? Animals were everywhere, of every species, the place smelled like a dirty zoo, there was shit all over the place, the barn worker was walking around barefoot, the stalls were filthy (and everything looked dried and old, so it wasn’t fresh filth), there were way too many horses crammed in the dry lot pens, and – my personal favorite part – there was a horse chilling in the crossties with wire wrapped around it’s leg. The wire had obviously been there a while, judging by the amount of swelling in the leg. Eventually someone came and cut the wire off, then they ran some water over it and gave the horse some bute. I dunno about y’all, but to me that’s an emergency vet call situation. These people were like “oh it’ll be fine, not a big deal”. WHAT. THE. SHIT.

We couldn’t get out of there fast enough, and immediately hightailed it to a mexican food restaurant to stuff our faces with queso. It’s a healing elixir for PTSD.

With our standards freshly lowered and desperation mounting, we decided to look at pretty much anything and everything. Whoever would call us back and had the few basic things that we needed, we agreed to go look at. Yesterday morning Hillary went out to another place that would be great if you didn’t actually ride, but was definitely a problem if you did. Mostly because who knows where you would do that. Also the stalls were so tiny I don’t think our horses would have fit in them. Not exaggerating.

One of my vets heard our tales of woe and suggested that we call and talk to his wife. She manages his mobile veterinary business, sometimes riding with him to act as vet tech when needed, but they also have a private barn at their home and he thought she might be able to make space for us. It was an incredibly kind offer, and I know it’s not one that just anyone gets. Luckily they both quite like Henry (he can be pretty charming when he feels like it) and I’ve known them for years, so I guess we qualified. I was concerned about how far away it was, 45+ minutes, but I was willing to drive that far if it fit the bill.

Since our levels of internal panic were quickly rising to epic and overwhelming proportions, we cleared our schedules and went out to look at the farm yesterday afternoon. It’s a no-frills type of place, and they’re still in the process of building and adding things and making improvements, but it’s cute and even under construction it’s already got everything we need. The barn is really nice, lots of air flow and good sized stalls with high powered fans and good light. The wife’s ideas and methods about horse keeping line up very closely with my own, from turnout schedule to diet to blanketing and pretty much everything in between. In the summer the horses are rotated between two grass turnouts, also with round bales. In winter they’re turned out in the 6 acre hay field in the back. We can also ride on the neighbor’s property, and maybe even across the street. It looks a lot like what I could imagine having in my own backyard, if I owned property. There aren’t many people and it’s quiet and it comes with the blessed quality of freedom.

There’s a sand arena that’s definitely big enough to do dressage or put a few jumps in, and she didn’t mind if we brought ours and set them up. There’s a round pen if I need it to do stuff with Presto. She’s totally cool with us riding out in the field, parking our trailers on site, bringing all of our shit, riding whenever we want, coming and going to shows all the time, etc etc. All of the horses, even the old retired ones, look really good. They have roughage in front of them pretty much 24/7 and all seem very chill and happy and social. Everything is clean and tidy. The ground is pretty good, even with the insane amount of rain we’ve had this week. Presto wouldn’t be on full time turnout since they aren’t set up for pasture board, but he’d get at least all day or all night turnout, with room to stretch his legs.

The price for both horses is slightly more than I’m paying now, but it’s such a negligible amount that by the time you factor in what I currently pay for fan fees in the summer months (something that is included at this place), it pretty much equals out. I will have to rework my life and my schedule a little bit to make the commute work, but… there’s a lot to be said for your horses living at your vet’s house. It’s a pretty incredible offer and I feel really lucky to be on the receiving end. So on June 1, the boys get a new home.

Mostly I’m just relieved to have something nailed down, and so grateful to everyone that helped and offered us a place to land if we couldn’t find something in time. I was definitely starting to panic. Yesterday morning I came perilously close to ordering those double decker Oatmeal Creme Pies by the case from amazon, but today I’m feeling so much better. There’s plenty to be done, some things to buy, and A LOT to pack, but I’m looking forward to the next chapter.

Yeah, I know, I’ve complained a few hundred times about how much I hate stock ties. It’s definitely not my favorite thing to wear, as someone who is lazy and likes to just slap on a show shirt and not bother with layering more fabric under/around my chins. But now that we’re going Prelim, I finally caved and picked up a simple pre-tied one last fall. Mostly because it had navy unicorns on it. I like it because it’s simple, but I don’t really like the satin fabric, and I don’t like that it sits kind of flat and sad-looking. I mean, I don’t like a super poofy stock tie, but it just looks weird when its really flat. I decided to go on the hunt for a real stock tie, one I’d have to tie myself like an adult (ugh, so whiny) so I could get to lay exactly how I wanted under my coat. I have really grown to love the navy unicorns though, and I knew I wanted something similar. Because if you’re going to make me wear a neck noose, it better at least be fun. But do you know how many unicorn stock ties exist in the world? Very few. Enter: Stockbubble.

If you haven’t seen Stockbubble before, you’re missing out. Even as a begrudging stock tie wearer/buyer, I have to admire the brand. Paging through the Etsy store is almost a little bit of sensory overload, with all the different fabrics available. Owner Halley makes some really pretty stock ties, and isn’t afraid to be creative with her fabrics. I had also heard that she can make pretty much anything by request, so I decided to put that skill to the test. I messaged her letting her know what I was picturing – white fabric with navy unicorns for me, and some kind of elegant navy and white or gray and white anchor fabric for my trainer. Within a few hours she had somehow found both, like some weird fabric magician. She must have some serious sleuthing skills too, because the anchor fabric had to be ordered from Germany.

Once I gave the green light to the fabrics, she placed the orders, and then we waited for them to arrive. And, no joke, within a couple hours of her having the fabric in her hands, she had the ties completed and ready to ship. She kept me updated every step of the way, and sent me pictures when they were complete. I paid, she shipped, and I had them in my hands a few days later. The ordering process was ridiculously easy, Halley was great, and I got them extremely quickly for a custom item. The price was also super reasonable, with each tie coming in at under $50. Considering the fabrics were a bit pricey and one had to ship from Europe, I thought that was pretty good.

The construction of the tie is top notch, I couldn’t find so much as a stitch out of place. They have a nice loop built into the back to make it easy to thread the the tie through, which I much prefer over just a slit. The length is perfect to get just the right knot and have enough left over to stay tucked under your coat. As soon as I put it on I found my deeply ingrained stock tie hatred plummeting a few notches.

I’m pretty excited to have a unique, one of kind tie that looks really good under my navy coat but still has a little bit of fun flair to it. It’s pretty subtle, and you can’t really tell that it’s unicorns until you get up close. The anchor one is gorgeous too, the little bit of glitter from the anchors makes it just fun enough, but still really elegant looking.

Paging through their Etsy store or Instagram, there are so many cool stock ties that I find myself having grabby hands for more. There’s such a wide variety, from really plain to really bright, simple smooth cotton to fabrics with texture. And if you have something specific in mind that doesn’t already exist in the store, I’m relatively convinced that if you can dream it, Stockbubble can make it a reality.

For those of us that like to match (which, DQ’s, I’ve seen those matchy sets y’all are obsessed with so I know that literally all of you like to match. Eventers, we already know about y’all, calm down.), she can also make matching belts and dog bandannas.

Having a friend that is a male rider and can so rarely find fun things for men, it was also pretty exciting to see that Stockbubble makes neck ties. Did I peer pressure Bobby about buying an OTTB neck tie? Maybe. Should more people peer pressure him about it? Absolutely. He has two OTTB’s now, clearly he needs one. Plus $5 from each sale of an item made with the OTTB logo fabric goes to RRP. You can’t beat that.

Halley is a fellow eventer and OTTB owner/rider doing a mad side hustle game (which I have a lot of respect for, obviously) so it feels pretty good to support her business and give her a few of my dollars. The products are gorgeous, the process was so easy, and overall my experience was absolutely 5 stars. If you’re looking for a stock tie, definitely check out Stockbubble! I’ve already got her on the hunt for just the right magic-themed fabric, since clearly I will need a special tie for Presto too…

Since I was a little late on this one due to life drama, I did some extra stats based on the results as well. Which took even more time and nerd dedication, but I also think it’s more interesting too. Let’s take a look at the field for Badminton 2019!

A grand total of 80 horses started the dressage phase this year, and as usual there were a few I had to throw out of a few stats due to incomplete pedigrees. I’d rather omit them than knowingly put in inaccurate data.

As has become pretty usual by now, Irish Sport Horse was the most common registry, with 33 horses. The rest were relatively split between Dutch (7) , Hanoverian (7), Selle Francais (7), Holsteiner (4), British Sporthorse (5), Thoroughbred (4), etc. There was also one Connemara x TB cross, just like at Rolex, and one Clydesdale x TB cross.

Of the Irish contingent, 12 have traditional Irish breeding and 21 have some kind of European warmblood – and of the ones that contain warmblood, 76% of them carry Holsteiner blood.

The average blood percentage of the original starting field is 58%, and the average blood percentage of those who completed is 57%. Pretty much the same. The average blood percentage of the clear XC rounds? 58%. What about the blood percentage of the double clears? If you guessed 58%, you get a prize. What about the average blood percentage of the horses who didn’t finish? 57%. These are kinda boring numbers considering how long it took me to input all of that data.

Moving on.

A little more interesting… 19 horses (24% of the field) have at least one full TB parent. Of the full TB’s, you saw a few names several times throughout the pedigrees, including Heraldik, Golden Bash, Danzig, Nijinsky, Mr Prospector, and Mytens.

Aside from just the commonalities among the thoroughbreds, several stallions appear more than once throughout the field as a sire or damsire. Courage II, a Holsteiner stallion that was widely used in Ireland, is the sire of an incredible FIVE horses, 4 of which went on to complete, 2 with a clear XC. Limmerick, another Holsteiner stallion that was widely used in Ireland, is the sire of 3 horses in the field, all of which went on to complete, 2 with a clear XC.

Other stallions that are seen multiple times include: Ricardo Z (sire of 2, damsire of 1), Clover Hill (damsire of 3), Balou du Rouet (sire of 2), Lauriston (sire of 1, damsire of 1), Heraldik xx (damsire of 2), Cavalier Royale (damsire of 2), and Golden Bash xx (damsire of 2).

An amazing 56% of the field came up through the FEI young horses classes – ie the old 6yo 1*/7yo 2* levels.

Despite having only 4 horses in the field that are registered Holsteiners, an incredible 40 horses (50%) have Holsteiner within the first 4 generations. Similarly, only 7 horses in the field are registered Selle Francais, but 28 horses (35%) have Selle Francais within the first 4 generations. I won’t say that jumping blood is super important for event horses, because I say it all the time, buuuuuut.

I will say that when I sorted out the top 10 dressage scores, I kind of expected a slightly lower blood percentage, ie less TB. But the blood percentage of those top 10 was bang on the average – 57% – and while none of them have a full TB parent, 5 have a full tb damsire. Eight of those top 10 have holsteiner and selle francais (ie more jumper-oriented) breeding.

Any other finisher stats you’d like to see? I could go all day, breaking down average dressage score by registry, average number of rails in showjumping, time faults, etc etc. But I feel like everyone is probably already asleep, so I’ll stop there…