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I’ve been back from Europe for almost a week now. The original plan for Henry was to go to Trainer’s while I was gone, but of course Hurricane Harvey ruined that idea. Instead he got basically two full weeks off, which he didn’t seem to mind. When I got back he kind of looked at me like “Oh, it’s you… got any cookies?”.

Henry seemed to do just fine with the down time, other than the fact that he’s a bit fatter (omg horse, stahp, I can’t feed you much less) and it seems he was quite itchy while I was gone. I dunno what it’s been about this summer, but he’s been Mr Walking Allergy since May. The only thing that’s been able to keep him from rubbing all his hair out is my magic spray, which ran out while I was gone. Thus, I came home to this:

AGGGGHHH.

His face looked almost as bad, it’s just not quite so noticeable since it’s more spotty.

The very first thing he got on Wednesday (after a nice hack) was a very thorough bath, after which I covered his body in every elixir I could find to make him stop itching until my new bottle of magic spray arrived.

Then on Saturday I pulled him out of his stall to find this:

WTF with the elephant head, Henry? I took his temp, checked his respiratory rate, etc. All totally normal. He was acting normal, had eaten breakfast just like normal. Nothing about his routine had changed. He has a bit of a history with random swelling (last summer it was the sheath) so my first thought was some kind of allergic reaction. I texted pics and his vitals to the vet, who said he didn’t think it was an emergency but he wanted to come examine him just to make sure there wasn’t something bad brewing. In the meantime Henry got a little bit of banamine, and we settled in to wait for the vet.

And by “settled in”, I mean someone got a makeover. Fall season officially starts this weekend so it was time to make him look less feral. We started with dying his tail, and then I body clipped him. Yeah, it’s early for a first clip, and not much hair came off, but every little bit seems to help keep his fat ass cool, so I’ve just given in to the fact that I’m going to end up clipping him every 2-3 months by default.

The vet showed up, examined him, checked all his vitals again (still pretty much the same as when I checked them), felt around the edema, and then took a long look in his mouth. He had some irritation to his soft palate, and a kind of suspicious looking little red spot. The vet stood there going hmmm, and then looked at me and said “Honestly, it looks just like a bee sting, but…. inside his mouth…”. Who knows for sure, but if any horse could manage to eat a bee, it’d probably be Henry. He got some dex, the vet left me with a couple more days worth, and said if it’s not better by then to let him know.

Sunday morning it wasn’t much different, size wise, but the edema was definitely softer. On Saturday the pitting had been like memory foam… if you pushed your thumb into it, it took a while to spring back. On Sunday there was no pitting if you pressed it.

I texted the updated pics (and vitals – all still normal) to the vet and got the okay to at least take him on a long walk under saddle to stretch his legs. Someone is going stir crazy. He spent half of our walk jigging sideways and snorting, so I’m going to guess he feels just fine despite the elephantitis throat.

Afterwards I gave him another dose of dex and decided to ice the area. May not help, but it can’t hurt, right? Henry was pissed.

It looked a bit better last night, so I’m hoping by this afternoon it’s made some significant progress. I’m sure Henry thinks this is a swell way (ha, pun) to prolong his vacation, but it’d be cool if I could actually get some real rides in. Details…

It’s possible that I strongly considered just staying in Germany and becoming an illegal immigrant. I really felt at home there. The country is absolutely beautiful, the people were so welcoming, the food was awesome, and honestly there just wasn’t anything about it that I didn’t love. Despite the busy schedule, our time there was the most relaxing, most enjoyable, and most peaceful. I could have stayed for a lot longer in that little farmhouse in the middle of nowhere.

Alas, by the time Monday morning rolled around, it was time to start making our way back to Brussels toward the airport. We weren’t quite done with Fabulous Horse Stuff In Germany yet though, because thanks to a few pulled strings we were able to get an appointment at Schockemohle to see their stallions. The name might not mean much to non breeding geeks, but you may have heard of a few of the stallions they have… Sandro Hit, Balou du Rouet, Kannan, Diarado… just to name a few. Some of the best, most successful stallions in the world for both dressage and showjumping.

We got up early to make the drive north from Ostbevern to Muhlen, pulling into the stables around 9:15. One of the people in the breeding office (I wish I had taken more pictures of this farm, it was insane) took us around through the stallion barn, letting us get an up close and personal look at all of the stallions we were interested in. Yeah, I stood there patting Sandro freaking Hit on a run of the mill Monday morning. Surreal.

We made our way around and saw pretty much all the stallions that were at the farm at the time. Our main objective for the visit was to see Diarado (Michelle has 2 mares in foal to him) and Balou, both of whom were there. It’s funny… Diarado and Sandro Hit are probably two of the best producers in the world, but they’re also some of the most unassuming looking stallions we saw the whole time. Sandro Hit is very refined, to the point where he looks like a thoroughbred. There’s nothing about him outwardly that would indicate what a renowned sire he’s been, and his temperament is a bit “special”.

Diarado is absolutely beautiful, really one of the most perfectly put together horses I’ve seen, but smaller and more compact and more refined, not the big stereotypical “look at me” warmblood stallion presence that you often see. He almost had a bit of a pony-esque look to him.

He seemed pretty bored with us in general. His son Diatendro was in the stall next to him and I swear was a least a hand bigger and a lot wider. Goes to show that you can’t always judge a book (or a stallion) by it’s cover, because of all of the horses we saw go at Bucha all week, the Diarado offspring stood out to me head and shoulders above the rest. They varied a bit in size and type (although none were as small as he is) but they were all beautiful and they could all JUMP and they all seemed very sensible and rideable. He’s a fantastic and very consistent producer. I liked Diarado before, but I came home as a Diarado SUPERFAN.

After we were done meeting everyone at Schockemohle we were back in the car en route to Belgium. But instead of heading straight to Brussels to tuck into the hotel for our last night, we made a small detour by Euro Horse. What is Euro Horse? Oh ya know, just the home of Olympic stallion Emerald.

You guys know Presto’s BFF Liam, sired by Emerald, because you’ve seen him so much on this blog. Michelle is a huge Emerald fangirl (and rightfully so, really, the horse is incredible) and I thought for sure she might hyperventilate before we got there. His owners were SO incredibly nice and welcoming, and had one of the grooms pull Emerald out of his stall for us so we could give him some scratches and get a closer look at him.

If you want a horse with presence, Emerald has it in spades. He knows he’s handsome, and he knows he’s special. He’s big, he’s eyecatching, he walks with a swagger, and is just so captivating to look at. He’s also very cheeky, oozing character, and always waiting for the opportune moment to try to sneak in a little “love bite”. He stood outside behind the barn while we took pictures and talked about him, clearly enjoying being the center of attention. That is a pretty special horse right there. It’s also incredible just how similar he and Liam are.

Funnily enough, Emerald and Diarado are by the same sire, yet just about as polar opposite in type as two horses can be. Mare lines shining through, y’all.

After I peeled Michelle off of Emerald, we got back in the car and headed to Brussels. Even thought the horse part of our trip was now over, we still had one more night to be tourists, and we were gonna do it up proper. Our hotel room was literally IN the Grand Place, with our window opening out into it. You really can’t beat an iconic view like that. Once we’d gotten settled in and did some social media updates (thank you, glorious wifi) we went down the street to a restaurant to do some people watching while we had some drinks, frites, and a sausage and cheese plate. People-watching at the Grand Place is pretty great. Never seen so many selfies happening all at once in my life.

Once we were properly fed we wandered around the area a bit, taking in some sights and hitting up some of the super touristy yet still really amazing shops. Mostly chocolate ones, because when in Brussels. We grabbed a waffle with nutella to eat as we strolled, bought some souvenirs, and then finally called it a night. Unfortunately we had to be up early to get to the airport.

It was a quick trip, yet we managed to cram a whole lot of stuff in. We met so many great people, saw an endless supply of fantastic horses, got some serious education, and even had the opportunity to pat a few living legends. Not bad for a week. Yet even though we did so much, it feels like there was still a whole lot left to do and see. Until we meet again, Europe. ❤

Woooo Sunday, the final day of Bucha, and the day where the champions would finally be crowned! We did some last minute shopping in the trade fair in the morning, then watched the jumpers for a little bit before heading over to the XC field. When we were looking at the course the first thing I said was “Americans would probably shit themselves over jumping this stuff on 5yos”. What say you, Americans, arst thou shitting?

A couple of horses had some issues, and there were some green moments, but otherwise the majority skipped through it like it was a walk (gallop?) in the park.

Once again I was looking forward to seeing how my 3 favorites went on XC. Seeing them in stadium gave us a good idea of their basic talent, but we all know that XC is a whole different ballgame. We sat/stood on a bank complex off toward one side of the grounds, which gave us a pretty decent view of most of the fences. The first one to go out of my 3 favorites was the Diarado mare, Deike 22. She was such a nice eventer type, with a great effortless gallop and plenty of jump. Really, really lovely horse that certainly looked like an upper level eventer.

A little while later, it was the Mighty Magic’s turn. He zipped right around like it ain’t no thang, easily handling all the harder questions. Never waivered from his line, never sucked back, never missed a beat. He was clever, he was brave, he was athletic, and he was forward thinking. Loved him even more on XC. Which is a good thing I guess… would have been a bummer to hate the horse by the same sire as Presto. Luckily the MM genetics held true. After they announced his XC score (8.7) his rider cheered and hugged him and looked like she was about to burst into tears. She very clearly adored him.

Finally Gentleman, the Grey Top stallion, was towards the end of the order. Clearly the spectators had already heard the buzz, because by the time he started there were people stacked up everywhere to watch him go. The crowds here are clearly very educated.

His round was pretty great (I mean… I would expect that from a horse who has been piloted by Olympian Sandra Auffarth for his entire career) and his score of 9.5 secured his overall win.

We hung out to watch the awards presentation and victory gallop, which was all very amusing in itself. The Diarado (who ended up 3rd) stood there grazing throughout the whole awards ceremony, while the Mighty Magic (who ended up 4th) just looked bored AF. Meanwhile the one with the TB sire was spinning like a top (clearly pumped to have ended up 2nd).

After the 5yo eventers were done, we headed back up to the showjumping ring to watch the end of the 5yo jumpers and then the 6yo 2* class. The winner of the 5yo’s was Diaron 2, another one sired by Diarado, out of a Come On mare. Super super nice horse.

By this point of the weekend we were pretty much professional bleacher sitters, and we manged to snag ourselves a spot on the shorter bleachers, on the top row. That way we had the back railing to lean on, which was pretty damn amazing after hours and hours of regular bleachers. It’s the little things, ya know?

After the first round we finally threw in the towel, took one last slow stroll through the vendors, and made the long walk back to the car. Our 2017 Bundeschampionate was over.

But we weren’t quite done with Germany yet, and still had some pretty freaking awesome plans for the next day. First though, one last stop at our favorite restaurant Dreibruckenhof for an epic Spezial Balkan Platte.

This thing said it was for two people. Michelle and I did a pretty impressive amount of damage, but there is no way two normal people could eat all of that. Steaks, sausage, schnitzel, fries, vegetables, rice… all so good. Way too much damn food, but it was really fun trying to eat it all. Love you forever, Germany. ❤

Not gonna lie, after all the wine on Friday night at the party, Saturday morning was ROUGH. Luckily there wasn’t anything happening super early at Bundeschampionat that we felt like we absolutely had to see, because both of us were zombies. Zombies with varying degrees of headache that had major caffeine requirements and were definitely over-sensitive to the bright morning sun. Four hours of sleep after a lot of wine did not cut it for me.

We missed the eventing horses’ dressage, but caught the tail end of the eventing pony dressage and basically stayed parked by the ring for a while to watch the eventers’ showjumping. Neither one of us wanted to move that much anyway.

By midday a little bit of frozen yogurt with strawberries had perked us up a bit, as did intense stalking of the 5yo by Mighty Magic. By this point I’m basically a professional MM offspring stalker, so one of my biggest objectives for the show was to get eyes on him. Overall I had marked 3 horses in the program as “ones to watch” based on the pedigrees I liked – the MM, a Diarado, and a Grey Top.

There were several quality horses in the 5yos, which was nice to see. All 3 of the ones I’d marked were definitely still my favorites once I saw them go, and – spoiler alert for tomorrow – my 3 were all in the top 4 by the end. I think the one that stood out to me most on Saturday though was the Mighty Magic (me, biased? Nooooo…). His rider made a big boo-boo at the first line and he proceeded to bail her out in pretty spectacular fashion, without even turning a hair. That’s a quality I definitely appreciate in a horse.

 

After watching the eventers showjump, we walked over to the big jumper ring to watch the 7yo 2* class. I wanted to see a particular stallion, Diacontinus, mostly because I find his pedigree very interesting for eventing (Diarado x Contendro x Argentinus) and for a jumper stallion he got pretty high dressage marks at his stallion testing. He was quite handsome and did not disappoint.

After the first round we were a bit bleary-eyed and we’d seen so many horses that they were starting to blur together, so we peeled our butts off the bleachers and plodded wearily to Aldi to grab some easy dinner to cook at the apartment. So cheap, and good food too. Can we talk about why food is so much better in Europe? Nevermind, that’s probably another rant.

We collapsed into bed pretty early that night, both out of sheer weariness and in anticipation of the next day: the last day of the finals, and the crowning of the 2017 champions!

So, I didn’t intend to leave you guys hanging on Friday. It was working out pretty well to where I’d get back to our accommodations in the evening, I’d put up a blog post, and the time difference would make things line up just fine.

Until Friday.

What happened Friday? Well, it was the first day that we were at Bundeschampionate, for one. And we met up with Gerd, the breeder of one of Michelle’s mares, who had a horse competing there in the dressage. Like pretty much everyone else we met along the way, we were fast friends, and he quickly took us under his German wing. Mostly at the wine bar. Germans plus alcohol… can you see where this is going?

For most of the day we were on our own while Gerd was with his horse, so we spent a long time hitting up the trade fair (omg, it seriously rivaled Rolex)

then watched a little bit of everything – jumper ponies, jumper horses, XC, and dressage – and got ourselves oriented to the facility. There were A LOT of rings and a lot going on.

I have a lot of opinions about the 3yo dressage stallions we watched, but I don’t think any of us have the time or energy for THAT particular rant right now.

At the end of the day we rendezvoused with Gerd again, expecting a quick little chat in the ringside tent over a glass of wine. Ah, that’s cute. Somehow it morphed into a 6 hour wine bar extravaganza where we made a whole lot of brand new German BFF’s and somehow ended up at the rider’s party, which was complete with some serious lights and dance music. Oh, and currywurst, which is super good at midnight with some pommes. The things you learn at BuCha.

Long story short, this is why no blog post on Friday, since we ended up being at BuCha for like… 16 hours total. The next morning was painful too, so I just didn’t have it in me. We learned really quickly that we cannot keep up with the Germans.

But hey, how often do you get to hang out with a bunch of REALLY good breeders (and riders), IN Warendorf, AT Bundeschampionat, drinking wine and attempting to speak some really broken German? The lost sleep was totally worth it.

Oh, and what did I get at the trade fair? 

Exactly what I was looking for! Henry got some fancy leather bell boots, too… he’ll model them soon.