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While Presto was walking through water, wearing a way-too-big surcingle, and learning about ground driving, Henry was having a different weekend experience. Well… slightly, anyway.

You already heard about the Friday afternoon hack with both boys. While Presto was falling on his face, Henry was plodding dutifully along, up and down the hills, with few complaints. That horse really does love to hack out, he’d stay out there all day.

Saturday was his second visit from the new farrier. Even though it will take us a few cycles to really get Henry’s feet where we want them to be, I was already much happier with how he’d felt and looked throughout this first 5 week cycle. The first couple weeks were like a whole new horse, I could immediately feel more shoulder freedom and better/quicker breakover behind. Around week 4 he started forging a little bit on our long trots out in the field, but he never got to where he was looking super long or unbalanced, or felt wonky. That makes me MUCH happier.

The farrier was able to continue taking things in the right direction. shortening the toes up more and encouraging the heels to keep growing. Henry needed to be drilled and tapped this cycle too, with show season starting back up, and I was really happy that the farrier countersunk the stud holes and checked each one with an actual stud before he put the shoes on. That makes things easier for me. There’s nothing worse than getting to a show and finding you’ve got a bum stud hole.

He did charge me quite a bit more this time than last time, which I didn’t really realize until I went back and looked at how much I paid the first visit. This time was like $100 more. I guess that’s what I get for thinking he didn’t charge me enough last time lol. But both boys’ feet look massively improved already, so I can’t complain too much. If anyone in the Austin area is looking for a good farrier, I would definitely recommend him. He was even early for our appointment. What sorcery is this?

After the farrier was done I tried to get on and do a productive dressage ride in the arena but someone was so wild from the cold front that he just kept turning into a dolphin, so I gave up and let him canter for a while. Sometimes there’s just no point in forcing the issue.

On Sunday we were up bright and early (more accurately: dark and early) to head down south for a jumping lesson. We needed one. Badly. Since Chatt, in early July, I have jumped a grand total of twice at home and 3 times in XC lessons. Our first fall horse show is 2 weeks away. We should prooobably get on that. No wonder stadium is our worst phase.

As soon as I started trotting, my Trainer proclaimed that Henry looked the best she’s ever seen him. I told her that he’d just gotten shod again by the new farrier the day before, and agreed that he’s feeling so much better in general. Amazing what having balanced feet will do, eh? Especially having the hind toes shorter and more squared off, he’s feeling much stronger behind.

The lesson went decently enough. Trainer is kind of mean in that she doesn’t give me a smaller course anymore, I get to pop over a little fence a few times for warmup and then we go straight to a bigger course. Which is actually fine, because (no one tell her) I find the bigger fences to be a little easier to ride. You have fewer options when they’re bigger – better sit up and go forward. And I have to give Henry credit, even with so little jumping in the past couple months, he always picks right back up where we left off.

But in my case it means that I’m still having all the same old struggles. Controlling my upper body better. Half-halting sooner. Keeping that inside hind underneath him in the turns, and thus keeping his shoulder and poll up. Not getting weak to a deeper distance. All the things that I know and have heard a million times but still struggle with anyway. Now that the ground has softened up a bit and I fixed my jump course, we’ll be jumping once a week again. I get so freaking annoyed with myself making the same damn mistakes over and over.

 

Henry was great though, I have no complaints with him. We had some rails but they were my fault. I think we’re both starting to figure out the ride in the hackamore, though. It’s a little better. It’s definitely not there yet – my timing is even more important when we’re bitless – but it’s improved.

When we got home Henry proceeded to find the only muddy spot left in his turnout and roll in it. Pretty sure he was looking me in the eye the entire time he was grinding the mud in. That’s okay though… between me and Presto he puts up with a lot, so he definitely deserves a nice roll in the mud every once in a while.

It was yet another really full weekend here with the boys! It was actually one of the few “at home” weekends I have for the next month and a half or so, but somehow it never fails that things just kind of happen anyway to fill up the days. Granted, even a quiet weekend at home can seem pretty full when you’ve got two characters like Henry and Presto. A lot happens between the two of them. First: Presto’s version of events.

The forecast for the weekend looked pretty dismal, and the boys had been stuck in their stalls overnight all week due to on and off rain. They’re used to a lot more turnout than just the daytime. So on Friday afternoon I hopped on Henry, grabbed Presto, and took them both on a long walk out in the hilly field.

Presto was a little bit full of himself for the first 20 minutes or so. At one point we were crossing a little natural ditch, and Presto was so busy trying to sneakily bite Henry that he wasn’t paying any attention to where his feet were, and ended up falling on his face. Splat. Baby horse go boom. The look of sheer bewilderment on his face was priceless, I wish I’d caught a picture. He minded his feet a lot better after that, though.

The worst of the rain was supposed to come through Friday night/Saturday morning, so I tucked the boys into their stalls with extra hay. Since the water system in Presto’s outside shedrow has been under repair, he’s been in the stall next to Henry in the main barn. I have to admit, it’s kind of nice having them right there next to each other. Convenient, for sure, when you’re a helicopter horse mom.

I woke up on Saturday to some major pouring rain. Like that shit was coming down sideways for about an hour. I needed to go to the feed store on the way to the barn to pick up more alfalfa, so I waited until mid-morning for the storm to pass. Still though, the road I usually take to the feed store was closed due to high water, and I had to drive all the way around to come in from the other direction. Texas is so saturated by this point that even just an inch or so of rain is causing some flooding.

I knew my fields would be too wet, but I wasn’t sure how the arena would hold up. Generally it takes ridiculous amounts of rain to make that thing unrideable, but it has happened before. Once. I had to laugh when I walked into the ring to inspect the footing, though… the back half, where the round pens are, is covered. The rain came in so sideways that the covered round pens had standing water in them. I’m talking several inches of standing water. The uncovered part of the arena was wet, and had a puddle in one corner, but otherwise had already dried out quite a bit. This was kind of perfect, because you know what I saw when I looked at that underwater round pen?

The plan was to introduce long-lining/ground driving to Presto that day, so I dressed him in his way-too-big surcingle and took him out to investigate the underwater round pen. He snorted at the water a couple times before splashing his way around. At this point I’ve dragged him through so many puddles he isn’t particularly impressed with water in any form. I’d like to keep it that way.

That done, we got down to business. I had him trot a minute or so each direction on the lunge line to get his focus. With the storm came a nice little cool front, and Presto was the most wild he’s ever been for “work”… in that he spent one whole circle snaking his head around so much that I thought he was actually going to buck for the first time. But no. Just a lot of slithering.

After that I hooked up the other lunge line (I have actual long lines coming, but… who can wait when lunge lines technically work just fine for the first time?) to the outside of his halter. As he walked a circle around me I gradually moved the line from over his back, down to behind his haunches. That isn’t totally new to him, I’ve been running the lead rope around his butt and under his tail for a long time, to get him used to the idea. He just kept chugging right along at a polite walk, so I gradually moved myself more and more behind him, to a ground driving position. It took some clucking to keep him going, but before I knew it – voila – he had it.

The steering was sketchy, that’s for sure. Not only is it a new concept for him to be directed that way, but a rope halter isn’t exactly my favorite thing to use for something like this. I will probably end up trying to rig Henry’s side pull next time we do it. But we still managed to walk all over the arena, making figure 8’s, turning and walking over poles, and even going between the skinny standards over a pole on the ground (ok, that one took 3 tries). For a first attempt at ground driving, though, I was pleased with his effort and the fact that he seemed to understand it pretty much immediately.

After that, it was farrier time. It’s to the point where I can just stick him in the crossties for the farrier and leave him, and he’s totally fine. I was on the other end of the aisle tacking up Henry, so I just walked over there every once in a while to make sure everything was ok.

He’s totally a big boy for the farrier these days. A+, gold star, the farrier loves him, so I’m happy. It’s super important that he has good manners for that.

Presto’s regular turnout was a little slick so I stuck him out in the arena while I did some stuff with Henry in the barn. He was standing there happily grazing around the perimeter when I put him out, then a few minutes later I heard the sound of hoofbeats and baby horse screams. It was like he suddenly realized that he was alone, so he was out there running laps.

Well ok, he ran like… 3 laps. Then he settled down to a trot for another lap or two.

This horse is not particularly good at or dedicated to being wild, which I’m 100% ok with.

A little corner paddock had dried up pretty well by early afternoon, so I stuck both boys out there for the rest of the day to graze. It’s taken me a while to trust them together unsupervised, because Henry can be a real jerk and Presto is a little dumb about knowing when to run away, but they both seem to have settled. Henry is less rude than he used to be (I think he secretly likes Presto, even though he would never admit it) and Presto is quicker to vacate the area when Henry’s ears go back. I don’t really want them getting turned out together all the time, because they’d end up attached to each other, but it’s nice to at least be able to turn them out sometimes and not worry about them too much.

On Sunday it was dry enough for Presto to go back to his regular turnout with his donkey friends, which he loved and they hated. He likes to play Cutting Horse with them, against their will. Since he’d been so good on Saturday I just left him alone with his friends, only going out there to say hi and check him over.

It looks like we’re supposed to get a few days off from the rain now, which all of us are happy about. Being stuck inside sucks. I’m going to try to pony Presto a couple more times this week, and then Friday we leave for FEH Champs! He is not in a particularly flattering phase right now, but oh well.

Yeah I know, another book review even though I said I don’t really like book reviews. I’m making exceptions for noteworthy ones, okay?

I ordered Starting the Young Jumper by Charlie Carrel a little while ago and completely forgot about it until it showed up. I waffled for a while on whether or not to buy it in the first place… it wasn’t cheap. But I’m always interested in books about starting and training young horses (Reiner and Ingrid Klimke’s Basic Training of the Young Horse is one of my most treasured riding-related books – it was not cheap either) and this one looked like it might cover some things that a lot of other books don’t. So I paid my $45, and I waited, and eventually it came.

The quality of the book is excellent. Hardcover, but also spiral bound, to make it easy to leaf through. The paper is nice and thick, and there are lots of pretty pictures, as well as pictures of the subject matter and how to execute said test.

As far as the quality of the writing, if you’re expecting the eloquence of Charles de Kunffy or the relatability of Tik Maynard, you might be disappointed. The writing is just ok, and the first few chapters of the book read a little bit like advertisements for Colts Unlimited and some of their partners. However, if you can read past/through that, there’s a lot of really good information here.

Most of these ideas will not be new or foreign to anyone who has brought babies along before. There are a few different ideas/ways to approach things that I haven’t seen before though, and a lot of really excellent quotable tidbits. I’m a sucker for a quotable tidbit.

Granted, some of the methods outlined in the book aren’t super executable for most people. Like their specially constructed crossties that allow a lot of options and training opportunities when it comes to teaching horses to tie. I don’t have that, nor do I have a way to make that. I have to make due with what I’ve got. However, they’re still really good ideas, and something I will keep in mind if I’m ever in the position of building things for myself. You can also still take the gist of what they’re doing and morph it to fit whatever situation you’ve got.

I’ve had some colt starting type of books before, but what I really like about this one is that the end goal is a sporthorse – one that jumps and shows for a living. Not a cow horse or a trail horse. Sure, many of the basic principles are the same across the board, but other things are different, and it covers more specialized things such as freejumping and lead changes and preparing for shows. It also talks about the type of horse that is best for jumping, what qualities matter most, and how to pick one. It’s kinda like if a Frank Chapot book got together with a Clinton Anderson book and had a perfect little baby.

It also talks a lot about what responsibilities you have as a rider, if you’re going to be training and riding a young horse. That has a hell of a lot to do with how successful you are, but I haven’t often seen it addressed so directly and so thoroughly. Love that.

So while a few parts of this book had me impatiently turning the pages, the overall material is very good, applicable, and useful. If you own a young sporthorse, or plan on ever possibly owning one, this book is a really important addition to your library. A little pricey yeah, but if you consider that it’s right around the cost of a lesson and you get to keep all the material in a nice spiral bound reference form, it’s definitely a justifiable purchase.

Remember when I was talking about the Labor Day sales and how well I restrained myself at Riding Warehouse? Yeah, well.

In that post I mentioned how I had a lot of regrets about not buying the brown TraumaVoid helmet and some Horze Grand Prix breeches while they were on sale. I wasn’t kidding. I had so many regrets. I didn’t even make it 8 hours past publishing that post before I caved and bought the helmet. It went on sale after Labor Day – $199 plus it came with a $25 gift card, and free shipping of course. That was an even better deal than during the Labor Day sale. And when I innocently added it to my cart there was only one left in my size. That’s a sign if I’ve ever seen one. Let’s be honest, I never stood a chance anyway. Resistance is futile.

Did I neeeeed the pretty brown helmet? I mean… not totally, I have other helmets. But it did prompt me to toss my old GPA Speed Air (my previous daily schooling helmet) in the trash, where it definitely belonged. I’ve been wearing the brown TraumaVoid every day since, and I love it, and it perfectly matches my brown Ego7 boots, and now I regret nothing. It’s my new favorite helmet.

But it didn’t stop there.

Of course it didn’t.

As soon as that helmet arrived, and I registered it online at TraumaVoid, and packed it away back in it’s bag to take to the barn, I pulled out the $25 gift card and was contemplating where to put it so I wouldn’t lose it or forget I had it. Then, lightbulb moment.

Why not put it toward the breeches I wanted? Riding Warehouse gives discounts if you buy multiples of certain things. With those breeches, if you bought 2 or more pairs, they were marked down from $109 each to $89 each. Already a $20 per pair savings. BUT WAIT! I also had a 20% off coupon code (I almost always have coupon codes, FYI). That knocked them down to $72 each. $37 off per pair! BUUUUT WAAAAAIIITTT!!! Toss in the $25 gift card I got from buying the helmet. BAM! Now they’re $59 per pair. $50 off the regular price per pair.

At that point it would be a crime NOT to buy them, right? So that’s how, within one week of posting about how I had resisted all this stuff, I found myself now owning ALL OF IT. Brown TraumaVoid, white Horze breeches, and black Horze breeches. Yes, that gift carded lasted all of one hour in my possession before I used it.

You win again, Riding Warehouse. You win again.

But it gave me a great opportunity to include so many of my favorite things in one post via GIFs. Now we’re all winning.

 

Now that I’ve finished watching the eventing XC and showjumping in it’s entirety (ok, mostly, because round after round of stadium makes my eyes bleed), I have a few thoughts about WEG so far.

First, that endurance debacle was just WOW. Watching that unfold on Ahmed al Hammadi’s page was more dramatic than any soap opera you could imagine. It was just a shitshow from start to finish in every single possible way. However, I am a big fan of the meme that’s going around of the Frenchman flipping the officials the bird. It makes me chuckle.

After that whole thing, my hopes were not very high for the eventing. Especially with a hurricane on the way. I am not the biggest Tryon/Bellissimo fan anyway, so I didn’t have a lot of faith. I have to admit though, I think they pulled it off as well as they possibly could have. The footing ended up being excellent – even on Monday after all that rain, the stadium ring looked fantastic. The XC looked better than I thought it would, and I liked that the mistakes generally resulted in runouts and refusals rather than falls. That’s ideal. I still don’t like CMP’s tendency to make everything look like a freaking miniature golf course (bees, squirrels, turtles, waterfalls, fountains mushrooms, cantering under/through construction equipment… kinda makes me gag) but the result was a good one and I can’t begrudge him that.

I was shocked at how many problems the little waterfalls caused. Some really steady horses and veteran riders fell victim to trouble there. Wanna take bets on how many people spent the plane ride home trying to figure out how to finagle their own waterfall bank at home?

The horse that ended up jumping down into the ditch in front of the Weldons Wall – THAT IS MY NIGHTMARE.

And last but not least for the XC stuff: I was really wowed by Ingrid, Astier, and Sam Watson’s rides in particular. They’re all so smooth, so bold, so balanced, and as a result… so fast. They all did an impeccable job of just staying in the middle, keeping their leg on, and not getting in the horse’s way. No yanking, no big changes to the rhythm. It made everything look effortless and easy. I must have watched the full replay of Ingrid’s ride at least 5 times by now. It’s poetry in motion. I have always been a bit of a fangirl when it comes to Ingrid, and she did not disappoint.

Having the last rail in showjumping was a heartbreaker for Ingrid, but I like Ros Canter a lot too, so I’m not sad that she won. Her horse was jumping fantastically on Monday and Ros had ice in her veins.

I’m bummed for the US team, but not super surprised. But CAN WE TALK ABOUT JAPAN?!?!? WOW!

Watching a top level rider epically miss a distance will never stop making me feel a tiny bit better about myself, even if that makes me a bad person.

Also bummed that the dressage freestyle got cancelled, but how could you not be impressed with Isabell Werth and Bella Rose? A chestnut mare, with a French AngloArab for a damsire. How about THAT? The average blood percentage for the dressage horses is somewhere around 35%, but Bella Rose has 49%. And no Donnerhall or Rubenstein. That’s pretty rare these days!

Not to mention their all female podium – two of which were on mares. Suck on that, boys.  We were darn close to an all female podium in eventing too, until Sarah Ennis’ rail. Heh. Heheheheheh.

As soon as the Games are totally done I’ll do another post about the breeding of the horses in each of the main 3 sports, along with blood percentages and all that fun stuff. For now… on to the jumping!