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Remember when Presto was so little and fuzzy and cute? Remember those inspection pictures where he looked like a respectably attractive tiny horse? Cling to those. Cling really really hard to those.

I wish I could claim that I had forgotten just how ugly baby horses can be, but trust me I am still quite aware. Sadie, his dam, was so freaking ugly for so freaking long that I was kind of worried there for a while that I’d accidentally discovered a new species of mule. Her 5yo year was finally the tipping point, when she decided to fill out, and her body finally matched up with her head and legs.

And because she was so ugly for so long, it’s not something I would easily forget. She did end up beautiful, so there is a light at the end of the tunnel, but wow. I got to be pretty expert at taking advantage of those rare “omg she looks like a real horse” days to get pictures of her before she inevitably looked super awkward again within 24 hours. I think a huge part of it is that she just kept growing, so slowly, and so steadily, for so LONG. My 15.2h, narrow as a fence post 2yo (that I was terrified was going to end up being teeny tiny) ended up a very big, very stocky, very solid 17h hippopotamare. It just took her a good 6-7 years to get there.

I think Presto is following his mother’s lead in the awkwardness department. At not quite 9 months old the kid is TALL, like he’s for sure going to be close to 15h by the time he’s officially a yearling (geez guys I think he’s going to be every bit as big as Sadie, but I don’t even want to string test him because denial), and he’s all leg. He is lanky and he is rangy and he is hairy and he looks a little bit like a giraffe and a mule made a baby and then covered it with the coat of a yak. I love him dearly, but he has entered that really not-at-all cute stage of baby horse awkwardness, and who knows when he’ll look like a real horse again.

I don’t know if his awkwardness is 100% genuine, or if it partly has to do with the fact that his condition still hasn’t totally caught back up to normal from being sick for essentially the first four months of his life. Either way, I still can’t help but be thrilled that we’re here. The weanling/yearling fuglies are a milestone that I was worried he might not ever make it to, so I’m okay with him not being the most attractive animal at the moment. It’ll get better. Hopefully he makes it back around to “pretty” a lot faster than his mother did (please please please omg please), but either way it’ll be a privilege to watch him grow and develop.

The vet wants to wait a bit longer to geld him, so for now the whole gelding and then moving him closer to me thing is on hold. I have 2 barns on the docket to go look at in the near future, but as of yet I just don’t know when he’ll be ready to move down here. It might end up being later next spring or summer. No worries though, he has little QH baby Murphy to play with and terrorize up in Midland. It just means Presto updates and posts will continue to be a bit sparse for a while.

USEA announced last week that there will now be a Central Championship for FEH and YEH, held at Texas Rose, which is only about 4 hours from us. I hold out zero hope for him being attractive enough to show in hand as a yearling (like, god no, who would want high res professional photos to commemorate THAT phase?) but maybe he’ll get a little prettier at 2. If he’s at all presentable I’d like to at least get him out there and support our FEH program, even if he doesn’t qualify for Championships. It’s great to have that option on the table now though, either way.

And just a few days after USEA’s announcement, EquiZone restocked all of their bridles. Which meant they now had a brown cob in the Ivy bridle. And if it went in with the other order from Black Friday, they would honor the super sale price. Soooo now Presto has a pretty bridle waiting for him if he decides to be attractive enough to show in hand. Stop judging me, it was only $65 with reins. That’s basically free. And if nothing else maybe the pretty, slightly weird-looking bridle will distract the judge from the gira-mule-yak that’s wearing it?

Guess who is Pro Level at standing in the crossties looking exhausted the whole time I’m grooming and tacking up?

He’s not tired or sad in the slightest, don’t fall for it. I’ve made the mistake of believing him a couple times now and he thinks both occasions were HI-LARIOUSLY fun. The first time was when he talked me out of a serious dressage ride and into a bridleless hack instead. He spent the whole time snatching bites of grass while I kicked him and kicked him and kicked him (to no avail) like a Pony Clubber. If a horse was capable of an evil laugh, he’d have been letting them fly the whole time.

Yesterday he was so committed the the facade that he kept it up all the way until we started trotting. Walking out from the barn to the field took forever, because he Literally Could Not walk faster than a 30 year old lesson horse. But again, don’t let that fool you, because on our second trot circle he squealed and dolphin leaped as we passed by a jump. He just can’t suppress ALL of his Henny, no matter how hard he tries.

This weekend I bathed him… a nice long scrub with the Espana Silk stuff (because the hair on his butt is so long and thick that he was literally hiding a pebble in it) and then a couple of spots with the fungus stuff, and then some conditioner for his tail. I got aaallll up in there, it took forever. It was a warm day, about 80 with a slight breeze, and he had been really quiet all day, so I decided to let him hang out by himself on the super lush grassy patch behind the barn while I put my tack away. We do this a lot. He never wanders farther than the grass patch, because he is a fat ass. Plus he was soooo quiet, right? And we’d just done a long conditioning ride, and no one else was around.

Yeah, I fell for it again.

I was in the barn, wiping down my bridle, when I heard a few suspicious footsteps. I walked out the back of the barn to check on him and he had decided to let himself into the arena, where he was in the process of plopping down for a nice roll. He couldn’t even give me FIVE MINUTES of clean horse. I was too late to stop it, so I just watched as he flopped around back and forth, waving his legs in the air and grunting.

He finally got up, shook himself off, and then spooked at his lead rope, because clearly it was a snake and OMG would you believe it was following him? This quickly morphed into a fancy, snorty Arab trot for two laps of the arena while I just stood there like

until finally he pranced into the round pen at the far end and went “well shit, I’m trapped” and waited for me to retrieve his muddy, disgusting, still-snorting self. Eventually I will stop falling for the “But Ma, I’m SOOOO tired!” charade. Maybe.

The good news is that we only have one more 80 degree day before a cold front rolls in, so maybe he won’t be able to fake it so much anymore.

Hopefully the cold front brings some rain with it, because it’s been a lonnnngggg time since we’ve gotten any. The ground is hard and I don’t like it. I popped into Dover on my way to the barn on Saturday to grab some Durasole and Magic Cushion, because a) somehow I’m out of both, b) I’m nothing if not paranoid. While I was in there I fell victim to the sale shelf. Normally it’s pretty easy for me to waltz in and just grab whatever essential item I need Right That Minute, because everything in that place is so massively overpriced. But this time the sale shelf (which I always make a quick stop at, because I am ever the optimist, but rarely ever buy anything from) had an array of goodies waiting for me.

They’ve had this cool “corner” jump cup in there for over a year now. It’s basically just a single jump cup that can hold a pole on each side, so you can use it on a single standard to create a corner. I really wanted it when I first saw it, but it was like $40. It was cool, but not that cool. Every time I’ve been in there it’s been marked down a little bit more and a little bit more, and finally this time it was $9. Okay, fine, you win, Dover. It’s worth $9 to me. They also had a jumbo size bran mash (Tropical flavor) marked down to $7. Henry loves those things, so I couldn’t say no to that either. Or the slightly discounted oily container of Stud Suds.

I’ve been going to town with the Durasole and the Magic Cushion on his feet (come on, rain!) but I’m not sure when Henry will earn the bran mash. Maybe when he stops lying to me about his mental state and then going for an unattended Prance’n’Snort around the arena. Just saying.

Can I borrow a bag of money from someone? Like permanently? With no intention of paying it back?

I was doing my usual mindless facebook perusal on my phone yesterday morning when an ad posted in one of the OTTB groups caught my eye. It was long, but it was pure gold.

I cannot say YES enough. He totally fits me! Where do I sign up for this horse? Quirky, weird, opinionated, a total slob, and kind of annoying? That sounds familiar! He’s a bit robust for a track horse too, kinda like Henry. And then I saw the pedigree.

Ah, yes, double Danzig. That explains a lot. Henry is Danzig too. Plus there’s Roberto x 2, Fappiano x 2, Alydar, Lyphard, Herbager, Blushing Groom, In Reality… it’s been a while since I’ve seen a pedigree that I liked this much for eventing.

And then, to cap it all off, there was this picture included in his ad:

Add levitation to his list of skills!

I’m think I’m madly in love with Stevie.

One of my favorite things about Henry is that, in general, he’s a pretty agreeable type of guy. Sure, he can get super tense and curl himself up into a tiny up-and-down ball of horse like nothing else I’ve ever ridden, and clearly he will never enjoy having his legs scrubbed, but the word “no “isn’t really in his vocabulary. Really, he is the epitome of a Yes Man. Those yeses can vary widely, from the grudging and perhaps borderline dramatic “omg FINE” of Dressage Henry to the absolutely euphoric “ERMAGERRRDD YAAASSSSS” of XC Henry, but they’re all still overall obedient reactions.

So last night at my dressage lesson when Henry absolutely flipped me the proverbial bird and NOPE’d right over PLSDT (poor long suffering dressage trainer), all I could think was: “well this is a new one.”. The offending movement? Rein back.

This isn’t the first time we’ve ever done rein back. I mean come on, it’s a basic. Granted, we don’t work on it that much. Last night he did a few, grudgingly, and then at my next request after that he was disinclined to acquiesce to the whole backwards thing anymore. He stood there rooted, stiff-jawed, until finally his solution was to charge forward through my hand. PLSDT came to help and Henry just about ran over the top of him before he finally sighed, rolled his eyes (ok that part didn’t happen, but if horses could roll their eyes, trust me, they’d have been rolling around like that boulder in Indiana Jones) and took the requested 3 steps back.

My first thought was that my aids were incorrect and he didn’t understand, but PLSDT verified that they were accurate. My next thought was that he’s sore somewhere (even though he sure as hell felt fantastic for the rest of the lesson, especially in the canter directly proceeding the bird-flipping rein backs), because he’s only about a month away from his SI being due. That could certainly be part of it. But mostly I think it was because we started this at the end of the lesson, after a walk break where he thought he was already done, it was hot, he was sweaty, and rein back is hard for him anyway being that he’s a croup-high horse.

Either way, we definitely went home with some homework. He is no stranger to the “backwards” concept, because one of his strengthening exercises from his chiropractor/acupuncturist is backing short distances up a slight incline, which we do in hand regularly. He just genuinely had no interest in backing 3-5 steps at the end of our dressage lesson last night. So now, we shall rein back several times every ride.

$20 says today he reins back perfectly, like he’s never done otherwise in his entire life. Horses, amiright?

Before I get started with today’s post, I have to take a minute to thank Pam at Mango Bay for stepping in at the 11th hour and making sure that my facebook fundraising campaign for USEA Foundation met it’s goal yesterday. When we’re picking and choosing where to spend our money, it’s nice to know which small business owners give back so generously, in turn, to our sport. Pam/Mango Bay is among the best, and I think everyone should know that!

Okay, moving on…

 

Usually every year when the new FEI rule approvals roll out, I glance at them without much more than a modicum of interest. They affect the upper levels of sport, of which I am obviously a fan, but they generally don’t really affect ME, the lower level competitor. At least not immediately (because we all know trickle-down is a thing, and when things change at FEI they have a way of making it down the chain sooner or later). They’re usually pretty boring, either very tiny changes or matters of semantics. This year, though… this year a few things really caught my attention.

First, from the perspective of “fan”, the big HALLELUJAH from me came with the announcement of the removal of the dressage coefficient for eventing. The FEI states that this was “to address risk management issues through rebalancing the importance of cross country skills” which I completely 100% wholeheartedly agree with. For those who aren’t totally clear on how the coefficient worked, it weighted the dressage marks by 1.5, placing more emphasis on the importance of a good dressage score. Which, IMO, is definitely not what we should be doing in upper level eventing. Interestingly enough, Equiratings went back and looked at some 4* and championship results, and over the past 6 years there are FIVE 4* events and one WEG that would have had different winners without the coefficient. That’s cray.

The second thing that really caught my eye was from a rider/competitor perspective, and purely for selfish reasons. This would be the new restructuring of the star levels for eventing starting in 2019.

So basically the current 4* becomes a 5* Major, current 3* becomes 4*, current 2* becomes 3* etc. While my initial reaction to this was to wrinkle my nose up – after all, 4* is FOUR STAR and always has been, right? Boo, change. But SJ goes up to 5* level, so this kind of puts us more in line with them as far as star ratings go, which does make sense in my head.

And right there, at the very bottom of the chart, is the introduction of a new star level – the new 1*. If you read the original FEI rule change proposal, it states: “the introduction of a CI* at a lower level event of a XC at 1.05 meter level. This new category would allow a transition between national and international competitions in developing countries. The level can be used for the Pony championship as well as the basis for developing a Children level/category in Eventing.”. For us plebeians who used to think of the current 1* as a faraway, distant, maybe-someday-but-probably-never goal, the new introductory level could be pretty appealing and much more attainable… if you’re into paying lots of membership fees and higher entry fees to show at the “international” level, anyway. Brilliant in a lot of ways on the part of FEI, both to use this level as a stepping stone to the upper levels, and to bring more money in. Making a 1* just a little bit smaller opens it up to a whole lot more people/horses.

Over in the showjumping world there are two semi-interesting changes for 2018. First being a clarification to the rule about blood in the mouth… now it will read: Horses bleeding in the mouth (in minor cases of blood in the mouth, such as where a Horse appears to have bitten its tongue or lip) Officials may authorize the rinsing or wiping of the mouth and allow the Athlete to continue; any further evidence of blood in the mouth will result in Elimination. Which makes it match up with the other disciplines. I don’t like the rule, personally, but I can get on board with it at least be standard across the disciplines. Weirdly, no one from FEI called to ask me what I think. 😉 The second rule for SJ says hind boots can only be used for purposes of protection. That’s past due, IMO.

The major change for dressage, which I think is REALLY EXCITING (I mean it’s still dressage, but it’s exciting for them) is the removal of most of the collective marks. No more scores for paces, impulsion, and submission – now you’ll have one score that covers the rider’s seat, aids, and correctness. I think it has the potential (although granted I can see how it might not play out this way) to level the playing field just a tiny bit, which in turn could be really interesting. How much do I have to pay USEA to take the submission and impulsion scores off of THEIR tests?

Either way, I think it will be interesting to see how all these things play out in the long run. What do you guys think of the new rule changes? And more interestingly, how do you think these changes could trickle down over time into the lower levels?