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I tried to make a Friday Five, but clearly I can’t play by the rules so instead this just turned into a Friday Free-For-All of all the randomness that I’ve been really into this week.

Seaver update

First and foremost, an update on my post from yesterday about the Seaver girth sleeve. I tried the modified attachment method that they suggested when I emailed them about my issues (velcro straps through the sleeve loops, and then the cinch straps all the way around the entire thing on each side) and that did the trick! The sensors are so sensitive that if it’s not sitting flat, the data ends up really skewed, and the app won’t display it if there are a lot of anomalies. Yesterday’s data looks pretty darn spot on though, and I was really impressed by just how much it shows. Heart rate, tons of gait data (duration, symmetry, elevation, cadence, left/right analysis, etc both average and at each gait), plus average and individual jump data. Like it literally shows your trajectory for every fence you jump. How friggin cool is that? The heart rate data is amazing too, I like seeing just how fast his BPM returns to normal once we come down to a walk. This will be useful for our conditioning rides, for sure.

 

The Hate U Give 

I downloaded this on Audible to listen to last weekend while driving to/from the horse show and a couple of y’all commented on how good it was. You were right. It was amazing, and it’s so important, and I’m so glad it’s being turned into a movie. It’s one of those books you just can’t stop thinking about. Also props to the narrator of the Audible version… sometimes I get really annoyed with narrators but she was great. If you haven’t read it, or listened to it, I highly recommend.

 

Majyk Equipe’s new saddle pad line

I have been a devoted Majyk Equipe brand from the very beginning, so I’m always excited when they roll out new products. They have yet to disappoint. Now they’re branching out from boots and getting ready to debut a line of saddle pads AND some girths! I’m 100% into this. I have yet to find the perfect short girth for my jump saddle, and I’m always interested in new saddle pad technology, especially coming from a company like ME that is always so thoughtful in their design. Really want to get my hands on the impact pad (the spine relief in the back!), and their Luxury pad comes in navy and golden yellow. I mean… are they making products specifically for me? I wouldn’t complain if they are.

 

Sadie

Everyone’s favorite resident elephant is at day 324 of her pregnancy today, if I’m counting correctly. That means she’s made it over the “safe” 320 day thresh hold, which is always a relief. So far, so good, knock on wood! Right now she looks about normal for her in this stage of pregnancy – ie she is freaking ginormous and looks like she ate a house. Presto’s newest half brother or sister should be here in another 2-3 weeks!

 

Leprince des Bois

 

On the same breeding vein, I just found out that we actually can get Leprince des Bois frozen semen in the US. For some reason I thought we couldn’t and now I’m geeking TF out. Who is Leprince des Bois? Oh ya know, just a proven 4* horse that was ridden by Kai Ruder and then “retired” to cart a junior to the win in the German young rider’s championships the following year. I’ve loved him forever, so the fact that we CAN get his semen here is very very very interesting news indeed. I might need one of these someday…

 

Wildflowers

We’re smack dab in the middle of spring in Texas, which means wildflower season! This is, admittedly, one of the few things I like about Texas. My entire jump field is coated in orangey pink, and the roads to and from the barn are layered in bluebonnets. Okay, granted, there’s also so much oak pollen in the air that you’re basically choking to death, but at least there are pretty flowers to look at? If you ever want to visit Texas, late March/early April is the time. Like, the only time. The rest is terrible.

 

Grem

And last but not least, a quick Grem update! She’s still adorable, still super fluffy (her butt is the fluffiest, omg), and still rules the house with an iron paw. She’s less snuggly and more… insane… than she used to be, but still overall a good cat as far as cats go. She has more toys and stuff than any of the other animals in the house, that’s for sure. She’s rotten, and she likes to destroy things. But her butt is so FLUFFY AND CUTE, so… it’s ok.

 

As I mentioned last week, my Seaver girth sleeve finally arrived last Wednesday. I originally backed this Kickstarter in summer 2016, so I was really excited to finally get it and try it out. Of course, I left for the horse show the following day, so all I really had time to do last week was read the instructions, charge it, and make sure it synced with the phone app.

I had some issues right off the bat. First of all, the instructions suck. I tried to think of a nicer, more polite term, but there’s no sugar-coating it, they SUCK. It basically shows you how to take all the measurements of your horse so that your data is accurate (although it doesn’t tell you where to input said measurements), where to put the “wither” electrode (but not HOW), and where to put the charger to charge it. Which… the position they tell you to put the sleeve in, in order to charge it, has the wireless charger itself sitting upside down, so that you can’t see the indicator light to tell whether or not it’s actually charging. That’s… not well thought out. I flipped mine around so that I could sandwich the charger inside of it with the edge poking out through the hole just enough to actually SEE the indicator light.

It also came with a bunch of straps but no actual directions telling you what they were for, or how to attach the sleeve to the girth. I had to go on their facebook and look at pictures to make sure I was doing it right. They sent two kinds of straps – little velcro loops (supposedly meant for thinner girths) and longer clamping straps (supposedly meant for belly guard type girths where you need a longer strap). I could not get those stupid little velcro loops very tight at all, they were cumbersome to try to put on and the sleeve didn’t seem very stable, so I switched to the straps. Their longer length means that there’s a lot of excess, but at least I could get it snug on the girth.

I also noticed on the first charge that the app is clearly still buggy. It was truncating my battery percentage, and literally none of the little help or info buttons in the app actually have any information in them. So like… good luck!

Just getting that thing charged and attached to the girth was a little frustrating in itself, but I figured it out and all seemed fine. I must not have been the only one with these issues, because a couple days later Seaver sent out an email with a lot more instructions and photos.

I used it for the first time on Monday, when I took Henry out for just an easy hack in the field. I was a little concerned about the wither electrode and whether or not that would bother him, but no issues with that so far. It’s pretty soft and flexible.

The first day’s data wasn’t much, we just walked. I did have to laugh at the heart rate graph… it showed a lovely spike at the beginning when Henry spooked at a round bale.

But heart rate data was the only thing it gave me. For everything else it gave me an error message about “abnormal data”. I kinda just shrugged it off, thinking maybe that since we just walked around a field, there wasn’t much data for it to give me.

The next day we did a w/t/c hack out on the hills, still short and sweet, but definitely more data for the sleeve to gather. This time I got heart rate data and gait symmetry, but nothing else. Just the same error message.

That was annoying, but I figured maybe I goofed somehow and didn’t have my girth or the sleeve tight enough, or maybe my dressage girth is too narrow so the sleeve doesn’t sit correctly on it. So yesterday I switched to my jump saddle with it’s wider girth, made 100% sure I had that thing on there super securely, made 100% my girth was tight, used conductivity gel on both electrodes, and did another hack followed by a handful of jumps. Now it should REALLY have plenty of data, right?

Sigh. Nope. Same message.

Ok, so at this point I admit defeat on my own “figure it out myself” skills. I have no idea what I’m doing wrong here. I’ve sent Seaver a Dear God Please Help Me email, because I’m beyond frustrated at this point, trying to make it work. I’ve scoured their social media and website for hints and tips and clues but information is hard to come by. Hopefully they can help me out here and we can get it working. I know other peoples’ are working, so I have to assume it’s something I’m doing. Either way they REALLY need to work on their user guides and help tools.

I hope I’m making some big obvious mistake and am just oblivious to it. I will keep you guys posted… I’d really love it if this thing would work. It’s cool, and it’s rugged, and I like that it’s waterproof, and I like the app interface. They do have a 2 year guarantee on it, so if something’s wrong I feel pretty confident that they’ll make it right. We’re just off to a frustrating start.

UPDATE: Seaver has said that the sensor is too “curved” along his stomach, due to him either being too narrow of barrel or the girth not being wide enough (my jump girth is about 6″ wide, definitely not particularly narrow). They suggested I use the velcro straps in the loops, and then use the clincher straps around the sleeve itself to help stabilize it. Like so:

I’ll try that today!

I know lots of you are waiting with bated breath to hear all about Presto’s homecoming and how he did with Henry. Unfortunately those plans went awry, Michelle had some vehicle issues, and Presto did not make it to our planned meeting location in Abilene.

Luckily it was nothing crazy or traumatic, he never actually left home. And to be honest I was almost a little relieved to be able to leave the show and drive Henry home instead of 4 hours west and then an additional 4 hours southeast. I’d been so anxious about the logistics of that trip, I’d been having trouble focusing on the show.

Unfortunately now I don’t really know when he’ll be home. There’s a chance it could be this week but if that doesn’t happen, my schedule is super packed for the next several weekends and Michelle is only a couple weeks from the next foal being due. It’s a bit challenging to find the time. And if he doesn’t make it home in the next week or two, that means probably no Future Event Horse classes for him this year either.

Everything is ready for him at home though… his stall is set up and his feed has been purchased and is waiting on him. Speaking of feed, I won The Roaming Rider’s first quarter Volunteer Challenge, and part of the awesome prize package was a subscription to FeedXL. I promptly went in and uploaded Henry and Presto’s diets to see what it thought about them, and if they were missing any important nutrients.

It thinks I’m overfeeding them a bit (neither of them is fat and they both get the lowest recommended amount of their feed, sooo) but all the bars are green, which means everything is within a “good” range. Henry’s folic acid is a little under 100% but still in that ideal range, they say. Interesting tool. A lot of Presto’s numbers look off the charts high but are still green, since there aren’t adverse affects to them getting too much of those things. Basically all of that comes from his “growth” feed, even at less than the recommended feeding amount. Maybe I’m just making expensive pee, but the horse needs the calories and considering his early life, I’m ok with overdoing it as long as there are no adverse affects.  I played around with it a bit, adding and taking away different things to see what happened… it really hates all the iron in alfalfa pellets, and the only way to get the %’s lower on the vitamins was to basically give him only hay. That’s not happening. Kid is scrawny.

 

So… now we just wait and see how things unfold with his arrival, I guess. It’s never a good thing when I’m feeling antsy and anxious though. Especially not when I take a quick visit to Riding Warehouse’s site (WHAT, I’M JUST LOOKING, OK?) and see that they have the EQ3 helmets in stock now. And the usual coupon codes work. And shipping is free. And return shipping is free too, so if it didn’t fit I wouldn’t be out anything. And my current schooling helmet is past it’s replacement date.

This is bad.

XC DAY, BITCHES!!! Aka the real reason I came. Aka the only reason Henry tolerates the other two phases.

I was really excited about this course as soon as I walked it. This year brought a new course designer, James Atkinson, and I LOVED the way he used the little bit of terrain that this venue has. In Texas we don’t have a lot of hills, but he took advantage of every single one. I absolutely loved it. The fences were overall a bit smaller than in the fall (that course felt like giant fence after giant fence after giant fence) but this one was maybe a little more technical, asked a wider range of questions, and definitely used more terrain. I’m 110% all about that. The course was also running backwards from how we’ve ever run it before, which really made it feel like a whole new venue. The footing was perfect from the rain a few days before, and the weather when we went was upper 60’s. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Fence 1 was your typical first fence, just a plain log. The first 2/3 of the course was the more open area, with a few long gallop stretches thrown in. I knew that the last part of the course would ride a bit slower, so I wanted to come out of the box thinking forward and get a little bit ahead of time in the first half of the course. This is where it’s important to note that I actually FORGOT MY FRIGGIN WATCH (I had a hard time getting one of Henry’s studs in and was running behind, so forgot it in the rush because I dunno, I’m a hot mess of a person in general?) and didn’t even realize it until I was in the start box. I have a pretty good feel for pace by now though, and I had already carefully plotted out the places where I could save some ground. I just kinda shrugged internally and went “Ok, self, challenge accepted!”. I’ve spent a long time working on honing that internal pace tracker, let’s see how good it really is.

Fence two was a simple step table, which came up nicely

And then over to 3, the little mulch-filled table. We basically made a loop around warmup with those first 3, which had proven a little distracting to the lower level horses the day before. I don’t think Henry even noticed though, he’s so focused on finding the next fence.

We rebalanced a bit before 3, jumped it easily, and headed straight ahead to the first terrain question. Fence 4 was a skinny-ish house with a downhill landing (I should have waited for the deep distance here, but apparently there were ants in my pants. Thank goodness for Henny and his quick feet.),

down a hill, then back up a hill and bending around right to another small house at 5. Yep, I like these little terrain questions.

Fence 6 was a trakehner, which caused it’s fair share of problems. After my mistake of not waiting at 4, I got him a little deep here at the trakehner but that seemed like the better choice. I must not have been that concerned about because I didn’t do my nervous “tap tap” whip thing that seems to be my go-to move when I’m freaked out. Just a little clucking.

After that it was off to another terrain question at 7AB, a rolltop,

down the hill, to a small kind of slopey skinny upbank going back uphill. If you jumped the right side there was less slope and the bank itself was teeny. You could also save more ground that way, so that’s what we did.

It was an easy hop up the right side, then we whipped around quickly to the right to get lined up for the open oxer at 8.

Then we headed to my favorite series of fences on course. We had a long slightly downhill gallop to the big red barn table, then had to hang a fairly quick left to the first water. Interesting question. It would be easy to fly past your line to the water if you came in too hot over the table or weren’t able to get a pretty quick half halt on landing. We jumped the table fine and he came back nicely when I landed and half-halted, so I was able to get him lined up for the water easily and allow him to come forward again.

I was excited about this water, because it was a brush fence jumping into the water,

a little house IN the water (this is the first time we’ve had a jump in the water at Training! Finally!)

and then a bending line out of the water to another small house. I dig the combos, and this one rode really well. It was a super fun line.

Then we had a long gallop back up and around to the ditch wall with a steep downhill landing. Henry got a little distracted before this one, passing a bunch of people on the left and a little covered seating area on the right. You also really cannot see the landing AT ALL since the ground falls away really fast on the landing side, so I really had to put my leg on and ride all the way down to it, but he hopped over it fine. Tellin’ ya, love these terrain questions.

From there you had to roll back up the hill to get to the second water, so it was important to not get sucked too far down the hill and end up wasting time having to gallop all the way back up again. We managed a decently handy turn back up the side of the hill (thank you, hind studs), galloping back up a little bit before rebalancing again for the jump into the water. I took too much of a pull here and jumped weak into the water, but Henny handled it fine. I landed kicking and we jumped out much better. This water was simple (which is probably why I rode it worse, I always do that crap), just a hanging log in

and a slightly angled brush fence out.

Then there was a plain little table

down to the Corral. We had to enter through the “gate” opening with an overhang, make a right, jump a downhill rolltop

keep going down the hill, and hang a left to a corner at the bottom. I asked him to switch to his right lead before we got to the corral, so that I wouldn’t have to worry about it as we went in and turned to the rolltop. That one came up great… then around the tree and down the hill we went to the corner. This fence was directly facing the highway beyond, so I thought it might ride a little looky. I definitely felt a tiny bit of distraction when we turned to it, but not enough to pull Henry’s attention away from his job.

From there we went over the creek crossing to the last fence, a table. When you came off the creek crossing there was an Intermediate roll top right there that we had to go around, and for a split second Henry really thought he was supposed to jump it. For that same split second I really thought he was going to. Luckily a little left spur convinced him to go around it instead, and we looped past their fence to hop over our last table and through the finish.

A few clips my trainer got:

 

And HELMET CAM! At least I remembered this, even if I forgot my watch. Maybe next time I’ll clean the lens.

 

There were a couple fences where I definitely rode like a monkey, but Henry was great the whole way around. He really is such a fun cross country horse, it makes the other two mediocre phases 100% worth it. I don’t care about ribbons, I care about learning to ride. He’s teaching me a lot, and he’s super safe, so it’s just such a blast.

When we crossed the finish I felt 90% confident that we were good on time. I thought I’d kept my average speed pretty darn close to the designated 450mpm, and I followed the exact track I had planned out to save myself enough ground to where I thought I had some breathing room. Not gonna lie, I was pretty damn proud of myself when they posted scores and I ended up being 7 seconds under Optimum Time. Not bad for no watch! Double clear!

Henry wasn’t even breathing hard by the time we were done (I sure was, so much damn pollen in the air I can’t even breathe out of both nostrils) and wasn’t sweaty enough to warrant a rinse. By that I mean he wasn’t sweaty at all. He was looking around like “that’s it?”. So, the horse is plenty fit, too.

Overall I was pretty happy with the run. I think I sat up and rode in the places where he needed some support, and as usual I think he stepped up and covered for me in the places where I goofed. Teamwork… it really does make the dream work.

I mean, no offense to dressage or showjumping, y’all are great sports in your own right, but literally no eventer in the world is like OMG THAT DRESSAGE TEST WAS THE MOST FUN FIVE MINUTES I’VE EVER HAD. Especially not this eventer. Let’s be clear, we’re here for cross country, these other two phases are formalities.

First of all, I about died on Thursday night before the show even started. It was already dark out, I had parked my truck a little ways from the barn and was almost done setting up my tent. I saw a trailer pull in down at the barn and was so preoccupied by straining to see if it was a friend that I stepped backwards off the tailgate, missed my step, and WHAM slammed into the ground under a bush. My entire spine popped upon landing and all the air went right out of my lungs. Not gonna lie, I laid under that bush for a solid two minutes before I got up. Do not recommend falling backwards off a tailgate. That was worse than falling off a horse.

probably wishes he could have seen that, he would have enjoyed it

My Friday morning dressage was at 9:18 so I got on around 8:45. Henry was pretty good in the insanity warm up, more relaxed than when we were there in November. I was happy to see that we got ring 4, which was off to the side by itself, instead of ring 2 or 3 like last time which are right to each other in the same arena at the top of a hill. That was a little too much stimulus for Henry. The first person in our division was a no show at her ride time, so we ended up going a little early. Henry was on high alert as soon as he stepped foot in the ring (I dunno why we gotta pretend to be spooky about the judge EVERY TIME), but he was mostly obedient.

A couple times he tried to sneak peeks at the horses that were hacking up the hill (I think he was trying to figure out if they were getting to go XC while he was being tortured) and the canter lengthenings on a circle were, as usual, pretty non-existent. Training Test A has them both directions, so that’s not particularly helpful to us at all. He was still tense, he is a tense horse, tension is what he does best, but overall it was fine. That’s really the best word for it. Not great, not tragic, just fine. Our division was full of pretty nice horses (one of these days I will remember to STOP ENTERING Senior Training Rider, omg it is always the most competitive division), so we certainly didn’t impress anyone, but for Henry it was a decent test. Our score of 37.7 was totally fair. Once again I forgot to pick up my test but I’m confident it looks like pretty much every other test we’ve ever done. Consistently mediocre… that’s our specialty! It was definitely an improvement from last fall’s test at Texas Rose (where I legit could not even touch him with my leg because he kept threatening to turn into a coked out dolphin), so I’m cool with that.

Then we had a few hours to cool our jets before stadium. By this point I had already walked XC and was pretty pumped about the course, so I was like “Ok, for the love of god, let’s just not get eliminated in stadium because I really want to run XC tomorrow”. Priorities, y’all.

The showjumping course was super legit. It was long, it had a lot of good questions, and it was proving to be difficult. I sat there through all of the Intermediate and most of the Prelim and rails were falling left and right. Jump 1 in particular, a single oxer near the middle of the ring, was getting a lot of people. I made a pretty exacting plan for how I wanted to approach that one to give us the best chance to get it right.

We went in, picked up the canter, and I was like “alright self, keep your leg on, keep a rhythm, sit up, and don’t die. Oh and breathe every once in a while.”. All good goals, ya know? We swept around the turn to the first oxer, I saw the distance come up easily, we cantered down to the base right out of stride, and… wham. Henry hit the crap out of that thing. First rail, in the dirt, for no particular reason at all. I was like what the actual F, man. Even Trainer agreed there was zero reason for that to have come down. Considering how often I watched it fall all day, I wonder if there was something the horses just weren’t reading about the fence. Whatever though, we still had 11 more to jump.

The rest of the course was fine. The rhythm was better, but I was having a hard time getting him rebalanced quickly enough in the lines. That made them all ride a little tight, which finally bit us in one line when we just got too deep and flat to the out. That rail I will definitely take as my fault. My horse is not careful, so if I give him a good reason to have a rail down, he certainly will. We really gotta jump more long courses, my 4 fences at home aren’t particularly fair preparation for either of us with a course like this one. I see some jumper shows in our future.

But there were no spectacular crashes or fails… so like… that’s something I guess? Aim high, kids. Mostly I was just happy to be done with those two phases so that we could finally switch to XC mode and focus on that part. Tomorrow, THE FUN STUFF.