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Most of the time when we get rain in Texas, it seems to come in one big deluge and then it’s bone dry again for a month. Over the past week we’ve gotten a few inches of rain, but steadily, a little bit every day. I am loving it.

Our previously rock hard and crunchy brown pastures are lush and green and perfectly soft again. It rains just enough every day to keep the ground springy instead of making it slick. It’s so rare to have this many days in a row of perfect footing… usually it’s a day or two between soggy and hard. Plus the weather has cooled down significantly, with highs in the lower to mid 80’s instead of 95-100. This means I can go back to riding in the afternoons again, giving me more time to spend at the barn.

On Monday there had been a pretty hard deluge just before I got to the barn, and I arrived to find lots of puddles on the driveway. Eventers: what do puddles look like to you? Miniature water jumps, right? I know I’m not the only one…

So I decided this was the perfect time to continue Presto’s water education. First I tied him in the arena while I did a bareback dressage ride on Henry (that’s totally a thing) which caused a fairly hilarious but short lived temper tantrum.

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye during some canter-trot-canter transitions just in time to see him very angrily pawing just before he tried to lay down in protest. Sure kid, go for it. That doesn’t work so well when you’re high-tied, even if you are a baby giraffe. He finally resorted to just standing there looking pissed.

Once he was done being a moron, I ponied him down the road with Henry.

I guess he’s seen enough water by now to not be impressed by it anymore, because he walked right through all the puddles. He tried to roll in one of them, but I didn’t let him, so he just stood there and pouted some more. He’s in a very angsty, emo, pouty, “life isn’t fair” phase right now. It’s kind of hilarious.

The only bummer about all the rain is that the horses aren’t getting turned out at night, since there are so many random pop-up storms. Day turnout is only about 8 hours. I’ve been taking the opportunity to shove a ton of extra hay into Presto (who eats hay faster than any horse I’ve ever seen in my life) but he still just looks growthy as hell. Definitely growing again. Also his butt is getting really hairy already. Why are all my horses total yaks?

It seems like most of the country is getting rain right now… what’s it been like in your neck of the woods? Are you drowning or is it feeling more like Fall? I hope everyone in the path of the hurricane is able to get somewhere safe!

 

I dunno what has happened lately, but considering that I own exactly ZERO donkeys, my life sure does seem a lot more donkey-centric than it should be.

First of all, Presto lives with a couple mini donkeys. They’ve been his pasturemates since he came to this barn, and it’s actually worked out pretty well for him. He doesn’t seem to see them as “equals” so he’s not attached to them at all, and they can’t really inflict any damage on him when they’re playing.

If you’re asking me, though, these donkeys… they’re kind of jerks. Bob, the bigger one, is a biter, and in a sneaky way. More than once he’s snuck up behind me and grabbed my pocket, or my shirt. He’s persistent, too, and tries to insert himself into the middle of whatever I’m there to do. It’s not that easy to tie a rope halter on the distracted yearling when you’ve got a miniature donkey doing his best shark impression right at waist-level.

Then there’s Dudley, the smaller mini donkey. He tends to try to steer clear of Presto as much as possible. Probably because Presto has decided that Dudley is really fun to chase, and I’ve seen him out there running Dudley’s fat ass in circles on more than one occasion. But Dudley is also a master escape artist, and if I don’t chain the gate shut behind me in exactly the right way, that little shit will be out of the pasture and GONE in 2 seconds flat. One morning I got to chase him around in the dark for 20 friggin minutes until I could get him cornered.

Then there’s Henry, who has no regular contact with donkeys, yet is somehow ridiculously obsessed with him. The few times I’ve let him sniff noses with the mini-donks at the barn, he’s been… um… very attracted to them. Henry thought he was definitely a stallion, and those donkeys were the prettiest things he’d ever laid eyes on. Luckily he pretty much never sees them in his day to day life.

Then, this past weekend, Henry had a complete and total meltdown over some donkeys. After we were done XC schooling I hauled him over to my friends place nearby, so we could stay the night. We turned him out in the paddock next to a couple horses and donkeys, and Henry proceeded to lose his marble (there’s only one in there, I’m pretty sure). The horses came up to the fence to say hi and Henry completely ignored them, staring past them toward the donkeys. Eventually those two finally wandered up to say hi to him as well, and Henry was OMG SO EXCITED ABOUT DONKEY FRIENDS.

Then the donkeys quickly lost interest and wandered away, and Henry’s meltdown began. He was running laps and screaming as if we’d just taken away and murdered all of his friends in the entire world. They were all of 30′ away at the time, mind you. He ran himself up into a sweat, so finally I had to just lock him up in a stall before he hurt himself. All these donkeys around and the Biggest Ass award goes to Henry. Clearly he is not mature enough to handle donkey neighbors. He didn’t give a shit about any of the horses, but he spent all night on-and-off pacing his stall and screaming for those donkeys. What. Even.

All of this drama seems to, OF COURSE, have triggered an ulcery reaction in Henry, who picked at his dinner the past couple days in a way that Henry never ever does unless his tummy isn’t happy. Great, just great. I think this time I’m gonna try to get the injectable omeprazole and see how that works… anyone used that yet?

Henry is officially banned from donkeys forever.

And all this wet weather has caused a leak in Presto’s outside stall, so he’s in the main barn for a while, which means I don’t have to deal with the donkeys when I go get him out of his stall. Fine by me, I’m about donkey-ed out at the moment. Horses are dumb. So are donkeys.

Nothing like making riding plans for both days of the weekend and then checking the forecast only to see 90% chance of rain both days. Luckily for me, they were only halfway right.

The main objective of the weekend was a jumper show on Sunday, which Trainer and some of her students were going to. She told me to enter the three Prelim-height classes, which left me going “Ugh, I have to learn three different courses, really? Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.”. Which shows just how far removed I’ve now gotten from my h/j roots. But at least I wasn’t feeling dread about the height or anything… maybe that’s progress? Then she texted and said “Funday at Pine Hill on Saturday too, if you’re in!”. You will never ever ever have to ask me twice about a funday at Pine Hill. Yeah we had just been there on Monday to XC school, but we got cut short because of lightning. There were a few more things I wanted to school, so hell yeah, let’s go hang out with some friends and finish what we started.

I think Henry is liking this “XC school once a week” kick that we’ve been on. Three weeks in a row and he’s thinking that finally I’ve figured out the secret to a happy life. He’ll be sad to realize that this was only a temporary stroke of luck.

After a couple warmup fences we headed to the same Prelim downhill drop/bending line thing that we did last week, but this time we had to do the 4 instead of the adding 5. That meant I had to keep his stride open down the steep hill but still reeeeeally keep his balance back so we didn’t literally die over the log pile at the bottom. We managed to get it right on the first try, which we’ll totally pretend was due to skill and not to the fact that when we started I was like “Okay Henry we’re doing that drop line again, and we need to get 4 this time.”. I’m 99% certain he understands.

After that we jumped the Time Warp combo again, smoothing out the curve and also leaving out the extra stride we had put in on Monday. Those Prelim combo’s, man… they are forward.

From there we went to the crater again, with the log pile down into the crater, around the blind corner to a skinny. Henny’s got that down pat almost to the point of being cocky about it.

After that I asked if we could go to the boat… it’s a table that literally has a boat on the front face. This jump had caused a ton of trouble at the spring recognized show, so I was curious about how it rode. The jump itself isn’t bad, but you basically come blasting out of the woods and have to make a REALLY sharp turn to the right in order to catch the table. I can see how it would be easy to skirt right past it when you’re going Prelim speed. I basically had to set Henry on his butt and square the turn out of the woods so we could get straight to it, but we popped over it fine.

I have to be honest, I didn’t feel like I was riding particularly well that day. Some days all the distances just come right up, no problem, and I mostly execute what I’m supposed to do, and my brain actually feels like things are firing and my body is responding correctly. This wasn’t one of those days. I felt kinda floppy and discombobulated and my eye was  off. BUT… it’s good to know that even on a day where things aren’t clicking as well as they can, we can still answer the questions. Henry was definitely stepping in and making up for my shortcomings, which is good to know that he can still do at the bigger fences. Granted, I would also really like to have fewer non-clicking days so that Henry’s job is a little easier.

After the boat we went to the water, which I had to do twice because the first time was just a bit sticky and underpowered. I was on such a roll with the water for a long time, but I think since my horse is so good about water, maybe I’ve gotten a little more complacent. I still have to ride in a bit more aggressively. We went up to the bank combo after that and kinda the same thing. First time through was just kind of flat and blah, so we had to do it again. I think it didn’t help that by this point Henry was pretty hot. The humidity was killer, and he just doesn’t handle it. But also… I wasn’t helping enough.

 

We had a really big group with us (because FUNDAY) so they got some video. Thanks guys!

Afterward we hung out and ate food, and Henry went back with me to a friends house so we could stay the night there and hit the jumper show the next day, since it was nearby. And then they cancelled the jumper show, which is fair because it definitely DID rain on Sunday.

But hey, at least we got to enjoy one nice day, and another fun XC outing. Things are feeling pretty decent in the XC department (at least, ya know, when I’m not riding like a sack of potatoes) so we definitely need to focus on the showjumping. That’s for sure our weakest phase at the moment. Hopefully this rainy weather will go away and we can at least get some lessons, because the fall shows are OPEN and it’s time to start sending entries in!

Very serious, very important post for Friday, guys. I need to decide what Presto will wear for FEH Championships. We have the option of halter or bridle for yearlings, and he’s shown in both now. I can’t quite decide which one is my preference.

The halter is a Kavalkade Ivy, black with a unique shape, white stitching, and chrome hardware. I have a black leather with chrome hardware lead shank that goes with it (not in the photos, obviously). I do like the simplicity of a halter, as does Presto. It gives me a tad bit less control when it comes to handling, but not enough to where I think it makes much of a difference.

 

His bridle is dark brown with dark brown stitching, very plain and simple, from the Lund Saddlery eventer series. It’s a bit tight at the crown/brow but totally workable. With this I’d be using a dark brown newmarket shank like this, or I could use reins. He can sometimes get a bit chompy in the bit, but with how distracted he’ll be in the ring, I doubt that would be an issue.

I’m pretty torn. They both have their pros and cons, and I can’t really decide which looks better. His ears look freaking GIANT in both. Oh wait, that’s because they are.

If it makes a difference, I’m wearing a black polo/helmet/gloves with khakis.

Which would you pick?

 

See how much better that sounds than “all the shit I bought during the Labor Day Sales”?

Really though, I think I was quite restrained. I did place a Riding Warehouse order of course (which I already got yesterday!) although I talked myself out of a few things.  I loaded up on my usual salt blocks, a new clipper blade for my Listers (WINTER IS COMING), a couple of cheap boot trees because I keep trying to be more of an adult and take better care of my stuff, a pair of foxy D&S socks, and an Equifit boot organizer for the trailer.

With show season and it’s accompanying money purge coming up just around the corner, I talked myself out of the brown TraumaVoid helmet for now. I was feeling a lot of peace with that decision until I went back to the RW website 5 freaking seconds ago to grab the link to it and saw that they’re now on sale. And not only are they on sale, you get a $25 gift card with a helmet purchase. WTF Riding Warehouse. Why are you doing this to me?

At one point I also had a black pair and a white pair of the Horze Grand Prix breeches in my cart, but talked myself out of both even though with the sale plus the multi-pair discount, it brought them to $73 each.

I’m having a lot of regrets right now, guys. Help me.

What I did take full advantage of was the Aerie underwear sale. 10 pairs for $35? I’m in. I really like their seamless ones for riding, and they have like 5 different shades of “nude”. No way in heck I’m paying the normal $12 per pair price, but at $3.50 a pop, I’m down. I definitely needed more of those, because I am inevitably always one pair short at a horse show and end up wearing something neon under my whites. I’m that person. But it won’t happen anymore because now I have a bunch.

Other than those two online sales, I was doing really well. At least until Tuesday when I met Hillary for lunch and she said she needed to stop into Dover afterward. The only thing I’m really interested in, when it comes to the Dover store, is the sale rack. Usually there’s nothing great to be had, but every once in a while there’s something really cheap that I can’t pass up.

And this time, as luck would have it, there were two knit show shirts, navy and gray, in my size, marked down from $99 to $19.99. I have the green version of this shirt and really like it, so there’s just no way I was going to be able to resist that. I didn’t even try. I just plucked them off the rack and kept walking, barely a pause in my stride.

I have a weird obsession with show shirts. For some reason I have nine of them, which is more than a little absurd for an eventer. There’s no scenario in which I would need more than 2 per horse show. At some point I should probably go through and sell some of the ones I don’t wear as much.

Did y’all get anything good in the Labor Day sales? It just occurred to me that the next big sale event will be BLACK FRIDAY… I don’t think I’m ready for that yet.