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Somewhere amid the many hours in the truck that Hillary and I have logged together in the past month (along with many WhichWich sandwiches and cups of FroYo – brain food, clearly), we had a long conversation about trainers. Specifically, details about some of the ones in the area, and why I ride with the one I do despite the fact that she’s 2 hours away. That, of course, evolved into a conversation about what qualities are important to each of us when it comes to selecting a pro to work with.

For me, it all comes down to trust. I am definitely not naive enough to try any of this without some solid professional guidance. In eventing especially, I want and need at least semi-regular feedback (or for XC – very regular feedback), and I feel like I have to be able to trust that person’s judgment 100%. At it’s core, it’s a safety issue. Sure, not all accidents can be avoided, that is the nature of horses, but having poor judgment sure can get you (or your horse) hurt a heck of a lot more often, and faster, and worse. Cross country especially is not something to be messed around with. I want someone who is just as invested in keeping me and my horse safe as I am, who knows us and knows what we’re capable of. I would much rather someone move me up the levels slowly, and take extra time filling in the holes in my and my horse’s education, than try to do things too quickly and get me or the horse hurt. If I trust their judgment and they say I’m ready, I will believe them and I’ll feel confident about it… because I trust them.

I also need someone who will be honest with me about how things are going. Blowing smoke up my butt is not helpful, and feels borderline insulting, as if I’m too stupid to know otherwise. I mean, I’m not the brightest, but I know I’m not a future 4* rider sitting on a future 4* horse. Plus, if I’m riding like crap and need to pull my head out of my butt, say so. If I need to go back to basics and re-think everything I’m doing, say so. If my horse can’t handle the level or my aspirations, say so. I would prefer someone to deliver a harsh truth 100 times over than to lead me on or put ideas in my head that won’t ever pan out. Realistic expectations and honest, open communication keep me happy. I need to be on the same page.

Of course, I also want someone that believes in my dreams and goals as much as I do. I want to be able to say “Here’s what I want to do someday… help me get there!” and trust that they will keep that in mind and help me develop towards those goals. I’m not expecting them to get me there for sure, nothing is a guarantee, and a trainer can only do so much, but I do want to feel like when they look at me, they remember what my goals are and help me make the right decisions to get there.

I also need someone that expects me to be a thinking rider. I like for things to be explained to me in depth, so that I can feel what’s going on and try to correct it myself. Or have them educate me on different questions/combinations and how to ride them, so I can execute these things when I’m on course by myself. Basically, give me the skills I need so that I don’t have to depend on them for success. I feel like a trainer should be a builder and a refiner, but not a crutch. Again, in eventing this is really important, since they can’t provide us with assistance when we’re in the ring or on course. But also since I am not in a program at a barn with a pro, I need to be able to take what they give me and go home, work on it, and be successful by myself.

It’s important to me too that whoever I ride with has a good eye for soundness-related things, and a lot of knowledge on care. Sometimes that little “hmmm… have you thought about maybe trying X?” can be the difference in night and day for a horse. That level of horsemanship is vital, IMO, especially since they see things that I might not feel.

For me, this combination of qualities has been hard to come by. In my 25+ year riding career, I’ve only come across a few trainers that I feel have really fit the bill, with the current one being one of those few.

Is it inconvenient to drive 2 hours each way for lessons? Uh, hell yes. It’s also really hard to fit lessons in with any real regularity or frequency, given that it ends up being a most-of-the-day commitment. When those are the stakes, you definitely have to want it, and you have to re-arrange your life sometimes to make it happen. I have no doubt that we’d be farther along, and probably more polished about it, if I had professional help at my disposal all the time. That just isn’t an option in my current circumstances. And I would rather get less frequent help from someone who meets all these criteria than regular lessons from someone who doesn’t. I have come to trust my trainer implicitly, so those are the sacrifices I make, and we do the best we can with the situation. It’s worked out pretty well so far.

Plus, like… if this woman has put up with my bullshit for almost 4 years now, clearly she is made of some tough stuff. Or she’s deaf. Either way, it works.

What about you guys? How do you choose a trainer? What qualities are most important to you? If you have to sacrifice something, what’s the first thing on the chopping block?

You know that phenomenon where a weekend feels excessively fleeting but also ridiculously long? That was this one for me. Although really that’s kind of how the entire past couple months have felt, too. How it is already almost November? Yet at the same time, so much has happened since August. Life is flying by.

I kicked off the weekend with a quick ride in the rain on Friday afternoon. It just never stopped freaking raining all week long. Texas has gone completely off it’s rocker. While my fields were too saturated to ride in, luckily our arena has all weather footing, so even with a huge puddle down one side it was still safe to ride. I just channeled my inner Ingrid Klimke in that oh-so-famous flooded arena video, put some trot and canter poles in it, and off we went. Henry is a little delicate about getting rained on, so he wasn’t very happy with me at first, but the poles cheered him up a bit.

On Saturday, Hillary and I were up super early again to drive down to Pine Hill for a day of volunteering. Of course, Mondial du Lion cross country was live streaming from France, so I watched it most of the way there and gave Hillary a blow-by-blow while she drove. I feel like this is something only an equestrian would do – get up at 4:30, go 2 hours to a show, and live stream another show in the meantime. We’re an odd breed.

My job for the morning was dressage scribe, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I was paired with a great judge, who took the time to explain things and was very open to questions. We got along great, and the time completely flew by, despite it being… dressage. The afternoon was occupied by XC jump judging, my other favorite job. It was a little chilly, but I had a good coat, and it was overcast but not raining. A very pleasant day to spend the afternoon out in the woods, all in all. And better yet, no one had any problems at any of my fences.

Plus I picked up the hat that I earned with my volunteer hours last time, and proceeded to send Bobby a picture of it to make him jealous.

And NO, Bobby, no matter how many times you ask me, you can’t have my hat.

He was running BN with Halo, so I made sure to give him my favorite one finger salute as he came by my fence. The best part was that when he returned it, Halo spooked sideways and there for a second I thought he might miss the fence because he was too busy giving me the finger. That would have been epic. I totally would have put that on youtube.

If Saturday was all about giving my time away, Sunday was all about Me Time. It was, finally, a glorious day – we went over a week without seeing the sun at all. There was a slight chill to the air (HELLO FALL!), and sunshine aplenty. I waited until early afternoon to go to the barn, hoping that it would give the field enough time to dry. It totally did, the footing was perfect up on the higher side, and Henry and I went for a gallop.

Is there any better way to clear your mind and recharge your soul than going for a gallop on a good horse? I think not.

After putting Henry away I headed out to check on the feral DonkeyBeast.

Presto has been largely ignored lately, but I wanted to bring him in, pick his feet, knock some of the mud off, and do a little bit of a manners check-in. After grooming I took him out to the arena for a few minutes of in-hand work, then stuck him on the lunge line and trotted a couple circles each way, working on his voice commands. All of those buttons still work just as well as they did when we left off. After that we worked on the ground-tying lessons again, which definitely is NOT where it was when we last worked on it. I think the combination of cooler temps plus his awakening hormones are starting to make it a little harder for him to keep his feet still. Hopefully the weather will cooperate in December or January and we can make his snip-snip appointment. He still isn’t anywhere near what I’d call studdish at all, but you can tell that he’s trying to figure out what some things are for, and he’s a little more mouthy.

It was a good weekend for all of his brethren though, with Mighty Magic’s representing at shows across the world. The 6yo at Mondial du Lion, Trebor, ran a double clear XC in his 1* division, and the 7yo Figaro des Concessions was clear in the 2* with just 0.4 time. Across the pond at Fair Hill, Michel 233 finished 3rd in the 2* with Will Faudree, finishing on his dressage score. Take note of your future, kid!

Hope everyone else had a fun, horse filled, short-long weekend too.

Yeah I know, two boring breeding nerd posts in a week. Stick with me on this one though, because thoroughbred lovers, there’s fun stuff for you this time too! US events always have more thoroughbreds than European events do, and Fair Hill and YEH are no exception.

Small disclaimer, I did all these stats before we lost a few entrants before/at the first jog, but decided to leave those horses in the stats. They were interesting, and worth looking at, and well-qualified, so I think they’re still relevant to the data.

First of all, let’s look at the Fair Hill 3* horses.

Originally we had 41 entries, before we lost 3 at the last minute. 44% were bred in the US or Canada, with 51% originally hailing from Europe (the rest of either Unknown or from elsewhere, like Australia).

The most popular breed registry is Irish Sporthorse, with 10 entries, followed quickly by Thoroughbred, with 9.

The average blood percentage is 63%.

One stallion, Chacoa (who is by Contender), has two offspring in the field. Contender himself is also the damsire of 2 others.

On the thoroughbred side of things, none of them share any parents in common, but there are certain names that show up repeatedly across the nine entrants. Danzig shows up within the first few generations of 4 different horses, with Mr Prospector showing up in 3.

Now that I’ve broken down the breeding on 10 different upper level events (I haven’t shared most of them, maybe eventually I’ll make graphs or something and condense this stuff, as I have more data), the trends in the thoroughbred lines are interesting. You see Danzig a lot (he was the most common among WEG entrants as well, if you remember) which does not surprise me being a Danzig lover myself, but I have been a little surprised at the prevalence of Mr Prospector. He gets a bit of a bum rap, and I myself have even tried to avoid him in the past, but clearly having him in the pedigree is not a detriment. And I think it’s safe to say that he isn’t showing up repeatedly simply because he was so popular that he can’t be avoided. Storm Cat is super popular too but I have yet to come across him in the pedigree of the horses from any of the upper level events I’ve looked at so far (fear not, Storm Cat fans, you’ll feel better after we look at the YEH horses). Of course, Storm Cat is 13 years younger than Mr P, but only 6 years younger than Danzig, so I don’t think the age excuse holds much water either. I’ve also come across a fair bit of the Mr P son Fappiano (especially via Unbridled’s Song, another horse that gets a bum rap), Nijinsky, and Mt Livermore.

Aside from the 9 full TB horses in the field, there are 9 others that have a full TB parent. Of those, 4 horses have a full TB sire, and 5 horses have a full TB dam.

Alright, on to the YEH horses! I only did the 5yo’s, because everything is just way too much of a wildcard at 4, but historically the 5yo’s have gone on to see a decent bit of success at the upper levels.  Again, I worked my numbers based off of the original entry list. These horses are, generally, a lot harder to track down since they aren’t at FEI level yet and therefore still flying under the radar paperwork-wise. Some of them I couldn’t find much on at all, but I was able to at least figure out the sire. I wish people were more diligent about entering their horse’s breeding completely and correctly, but alas, I digress.

While I wasn’t able to track down breeder information for everyone, I was able to figure out that the majority of the horses are imports. Of the 41 entries, I could only confirm that 12 (29%) are USA bred. Of those, 8 are full thoroughbred.

One of the thoroughbreds is actually by the same sire, Flatter, as one of my trainer’s OTTB project horses, which is probably relevant to no one but me, but hey fun fact.

Among the thoroughbreds, Mr Prospector, AP Indy, and Storm Cat are quite popular within the first four generations. Mr P shows up in 5 horses, AP Indy shows up in 5 horses, and Storm Cat shows up in 3 horses. We also see some of the same names that we saw in the 3* thoroughbreds – Danzig, Unbridled, and Mt Livermore – but with less frequency.

There are some warmblood sires in common between our YEH 5yo’s and the 7yo horses over in Europe at Mondial du Lion, too – Diarado, Shannondale Sarco, and Zambesi in particular have offspring at each.

The showjumping stallion Verdi is the sire of two horses in the YEH 5yo field.

One of Dom Schramm’s rides, Quadrocana, is out of the full sister to Michael Jung’s phenomenal mare FischerRocana. Quadrocana’s sire is Quadrofino.

Fernhill Turbo’s dam, Royalty van de Heernis, also has an offspring competing in the 6yo class at Mondial du Lion with Piggy French.

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I guess the reason I do all this is that for a long time people believed that you just couldn’t breed event horses. That, much like hunters, they were simply the castoffs from other sports, more like accidents that happened purely by chance. It’s obvious to most breeders by now (especially those crafty Irish and French), that this clearly isn’t true. It is entirely possible to breed eventers, it’s just not tracked and studied and logged the way that it has been with showjumpers and dressage horses for so many decades. Not to mention that our sport has changed a lot in the past 20 years, and the type of horse needed at the upper levels has changed right along with it. I find the whole thing really fascinating, and I’m striving to better my own understanding, because I think it’s really important – not just for breeding, but also for sport. Thanks for hanging in there on a subject matter that I’m sure bores most of you to tears. Fear not, I think y’all are probably off the hook for more of these posts until LRK3DE.

First off, if anyone is interested in watching Mondial du Lion, they’re live streaming the 7yo dressage here, and the order of go is here. Because seriously, that’s way more fun on a Thursday morning than, like… working.

I was finally able to make it out to the barn yesterday and ride Henry/mess with Presto. I hadn’t sat on Henry since the jumper show on Saturday, which was before this 45 degree temperature drop and disgusting, never-ending rain (for real, send an ark and a waterproof parka and a few gallons of hot chocolate). It had also been about a week since I’d put my hands on Presto at all. The turnouts have been too slick for turnout since Sunday, although the barn worker has been turning them out in the arena on half hour rotations, when the rain lets up. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing. Still, Henry and Presto are both starting to get that slightly frazzled, freedom-seeking look in their eyes. Y’all know the one.

Henry handles captivity pretty well, for the most part. His manners don’t change, he just gets a little spookier under saddle and does a lot of crowhopping when you canter. It’s 0% intimidating, as evidenced by the fact that I chose to do a bareback and bitless dressage ride in the arena yesterday. In true Henny form, he was totally fine except for a few slightly dolphinesque canter laps that are nothing but entertaining.

Presto, on the other hand, is having a little bit more difficulty coping. He’s back in his shed row barn now that the water system out there has been fixed, which is actually a good thing in this situation. He basically has a double stall out there, giving him more room to move around. He hasn’t made a pest of himself too much yet… nothing is broken and the buckets are still attached to the wall, although he appears to have spent quite a while pulling his halter over his gate and playing tug-o-war with it, if the layers of dried slobber are any indication.

As soon as I started leading him into the barn I could feel him slowly turning into a baby horse balloon. He was snorting lightly, and growing steadily taller with each step. You could feel the crazy rolling off him. I decided to pass right by the barn and head to the arena first instead, to let him blow off some steam. Clearly there was no way he was gonna stand politely in the crossties for grooming at that point. So I turned him loose in the arena, where he spent the first two minutes ambling around, sniffing things, then all the sudden took off like a little banshee. There was a lot of galloping, a lot of bucking, and a lot of screaming and squealing. Quality entertainment.

What Presto doesn’t have is much stamina or dedication. His psycho circles lasted all of 2.5 minutes before he broke back down to a trot for a lap and then promptly trotted straight up to me, declaring himself finished.

At that point I took him inside to the crossties for grooming, where he was semi-behaved. As long as he stayed in his space, I let him be. Some days you just have to pick your battles and lower your expectations a little.

By the time I left the barn it was raining AGAIN. It’s supposed to keep raining til Saturday, then stop just long enough to make us realize what nice weather is, and then start again. I give up. Good thing I have a pretty new raincoat on the way.

It should be here tomorrow, just in time for my volunteering gig this weekend. I also entered one more show for the season, because sure, why not. Nothing like a solid couple weeks of rain to inspire me to throw money at situations in which I’m unlikely to arrive prepared. Meh. I can dream about sunny days, right? In between all the squealing and crowhopping, that is…

Help me, I can’t stop obsessing about eventing breeding and statistics. Actually, don’t help me, I am a nerd and I love this stuff way beyond what anyone would consider normal. It’s expanding my own education to do these little breakdowns for big events, so whether anyone else is actually reading or not… that’s ok. The more I break this stuff down, the more correlations and patterns and commonalities I find, so when I see them, I try to point them out – hence there are several mentions of WEG in this post too. And I actually already have stats for Fair Hill 3* and YEH 5yo Championships as well (lots of TB data to be had there!), but they were too much to fit into this post. Maybe I’ll subject you to that tomorrow, if anyone is still awake by the end of this one.

I am a particular sucker for young horse events, be it Bundeschampionate or YEH or the biggest of the big guns when it comes to finding future stars: Mondial du Lion, the World Championships for young event horses at Lion D’Angers, held every fall in France. You may have heard of a few of the past MdL competitors, like FischerRocana, Mr. Medicott, La Biosthetique Sam, Seacookie, Avebury, Quimbo, Bay My Hero, Bayano, Hans Dampf, Upsilon, and so on. An impressive amount of 4* horses have passed through Lion d’Angers on their way to the top. The 2010 7yo Championship title was captured by none other than Mighty Magic, Presto’s sire (that was a pretty big year – the field included eventual Burghley 4* winner FRH Butts Avedon, Rolex 4* winner Quimbo, Rolex 4* winner Bay My Hero, 4* horse Paulank Brockagh, 4* horse Onwards and Upwards, 4* horse Qwanza, 2018 WEG competitor Carriem van Colen Z, 2018 WEG competitor Pivoine des Touches, and 2018 WEG competitor Rumour Has It). Basically, if you want to get a good look at the future superstars of eventing, the 7yo World Championship in particular is a really good place to find them.

MdL is way up there on my bucket list of events I want to attend. I was hoping it would happen this year, but alas, no dice. One of these days it’ll work out and I’ll actually get to France in the fall for this event. One of these days.

Until then, I can obsess over it pretty well from home. There’s a live feed, there will be tons of pictures on the Mondial du Lion facebook page, and I’ve met a few of the horses that are competing. I saw US-bred Quantum Leap (piloted by Doug Payne) at YEH Championships at Fair Hill in 2016, where he finished 8th overall, and this year he is one of two horses representing the US at MdL. Long time blog readers have also already been briefly introduced to 3 other competitors in the 2018 field: Figaro and Max, both by Mighty Magic, and Leipheimer, by Vigo d’Arsouilles. We met all of these boys when we were in Belgium in 2015, on separate barn tours. The two Mighty Magic’s are actually a huge part of the reason why I chose him as Presto’s sire.

I did my usual spreadsheet (the very fact that I have a “usual spreadsheet” routine is probably weird, isn’t it…) and research routine with the field of 7yo/2* horses, breaking them down by how they’re bred, studbook, blood percentage, and any other interesting information. Here’s how they stack up:

15 different nations are represented, along with 21 different registries. The USA has two – Quantum Leap and Irish-bred Cooley Quicksilver.

The most represented registry is Irish Sporthorse with 18 horses. However, only one of those is of completely traditional ISH breeding, with no outside European warmblood in it’s lines. The other 17 are at least 1/2 European warmblood (with 7 being half and 10 being 3/4). The full warmblood parent is almost always the sire, on an ISH mare. Four of those ISH mares have full TB sires. If you want an event horse, clearly jumper-bred warmblood (particularly Holsteiner and Selle Francais) + blood + a splash of Irish is not a bad formula.

Two stallions have three offspring each in the field: Mighty Magic and Shannondale Sarco. All three of the Mighty Magic’s are from different registries (one sBs, one Hanoverian, one Holsteiner). Two of the 3 are from very “blooded” dams – one from a full french Anglo Arab mare, the other from a TB x Hanoverian mare. The latter is particularly interesting to me, since that’s how Presto is bred. I’ll be watching Mama’s Magic Way closely (fun fact – he is being ridden by Andreas Dibowski, who was also Mighty Magic’s rider when he won here in 2010). As for the Shannondale Sarco offspring, all 3 of them are registered Irish Sporthorse. While Shannondale Sarco stands in Ireland, he actually has a full brother available for breeding right here in the US: Wonderboy.

Ok, ok, this is unrelated to the 7yo class, but Mighty Magic also has an offspring in the 6yo Championship, representing Canada. The same rider also has a Diarado offspring entered. Clearly we should be friends since we have the same taste in horses.

There is one horse in the 7yo’s, Leipheimer van’t Verahof, who is a full sibling to one of the 2018 WEG eventing horses – Fletcha van’t Verahof. Both are by the showjumping stallion Vigo d’Arsouilles, out of a full thoroughbred mare.

Out of the 12 French riders entered, 11 of them are sitting on French-bred horses. If you remember back to WEG, every single French rider there was also on a French-bred horse. This is pretty standard for them. Clearly we need to be looking at what they’re doing right, both with their breeding programs and with how they produce and develop their horses and connect them with their best riders.

The average blood percentage for the field is 51%.

62% of the field has the majority of the blood in their pedigree coming from the dam’s side.

Much like the WEG field, Selle Francais and Holsteiner blood are overwhelmingly common among these horses. 76% carry one or the other or both within the first few generations.

 

Not that I’m biased or anything, but here’s a video of Figaro (Mighty Magic x AA) in his last jump school before heading to MdL. Baudouin tells me they’re planning on freezing a bunch of Figaro’s semen this winter and that it’ll be available for US import. Just saying.

Are any of these stats interesting to anyone else? Any other numbers you would be interested in seeing from this group or from the Fair Hill/YEH groups?