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It’s been a while since Henry and I have been out on cross country. The last time, in fact, was at our last show at the beginning of June. And before that was the derby in May. You have to go all the way back to April to find our last actual XC schooling. Whoops. Where does the time go?

Of course, doing much of anything with Henry in the summer is hard, given how badly he handles the heat. So on Saturday we were up bright and early (ok it was 4:30am, so technically it was dark and early) to head up to MCP to meet Trainer for an early morning school. We’re now less than a month away from our first recognized T, and given my schedule over the next month (i.e. crazy) this was my last opportunity.

Even at 8am it was still pretty hot and humid, so we kept everything pretty brief. It took me the first few jumps to remember the more forward XC ride (it always does… why so dumb?) but Henry was totally game none the less.

Honestly he’s kind of the ultimate professional these days. We schooled a double ditch combo, the Prelim down bank combo, the Prelim Weldon’s wall (which is an option at Training and I swore I’d never take it because the ditch is huge and terrifying. I tried to hide from Trainer when we were near that jump so she’d forget about me and wouldn’t make me jump it, but let me tell you how futile THAT was), then jumped the trakehner the Prelim way (the approach is a bit tougher from that direction, you end up on a slight angle), and a few random T fences. Henny never blinked at any of it. Definitely not challenged in the least.

I did notice though that when I’m concerned about a jump and trying really hard not to look down, I get “tappy” with my whip. Like it’s physically impossible for me to just be still, and if I don’t do something I’ll end up staring down at it and tipping forward. So there I go, tap-tap on the shoulder those last few strides, like some kind of nervous tic, to keep myself occupied.

Henry just kind of flicks an ear at me like “You know I’m jumping that no matter what, you idiot.”. If a horse could roll his eyes, he would. And he’s not wrong. But he chugs right along like a trooper, ignoring how dumb his mom is.

Apparently that habit is limited to jumps that worry me, because I only did it at the Weldon’s and the trakehner. In my defense, they’re both terrifying. If you’re asking me, anyway. Henry obviously disagrees… extra cookies for that boy (and yes, he did get plenty of cookies).

I’m glad that he’s feeling this easy and confident about things, headed into the fall season. Hopefully that means we’re ready. I’m excited to finally get back to the recognized shows and see how we stack up!

Oh and… there is video but I think the person’s camera was having some kind of zoom issue. Anyone know a way to help make the video less nauseating?? I recommend Dramamine before clicking play:

Guess who’s 5 months old?

Presto celebrated by getting his second official farrier-performed trim. You may remember that he was, um, less than cooperative for the first one, so when I was up there a few weeks ago we worked A LOT on farrier manners. Either the extra lessons worked or he just decided it wasn’t worth the fight, because he was very well behaved this time. The farrier also complimented the quality of Presto’s feet (now that they aren’t being aimed at his head).

In all honesty, Presto and Liam are pretty much ready to be weaned. They’re independent, they’ve been eating grain and hay for a while, and their moms are not all that concerned about them anymore. Under normal circumstances, now would be the time.

But we got inspection dates for the sBs (Belgian Sporthorse) tour, and they’re not coming through the US until the end of September. While it’s not really ideal to leave the colts on their dams for that long, it’s far less ideal to present them for inspection “off” their dams, for several reasons. So they might start getting separated a bit for feeding time (moms are starting to look a bit “drained” from these big babies sucking the life out of them, but if you overfeed, you risk physitis in the babies), with official weaning waiting until after the inspection.

I’m still looking into options for moving him closer to me, but that will probably get put on the back burner until winter. I remembered he has to be gelded before he can be pasture boarded (duh), but I’m not going to geld him a) right after the stress of weaning b) in warm gross fly season. We’ve had enough complications so far, I’m not interested in stacking the odds against us any more than necessary. So maybe in November/December he can lose his manhood, and then I can look into bringing him home a month or so after that.

His current favorite hobbies are trying to catch the little goldfish in his tank (who knew he was a fisherman?) and snacking/napping at the same time.

Very tough life this kid’s got these days.

Knowing when to move up a level is, I think, one of the trickiest questions for us as riders. I’ve talked about it on this blog before, when we were moving up from BN to N (geez that feels like a life time ago) but it’s a subject that you see come up quite often on blogs and message boards. It would be nice if there was a handy dandy be-all-end-all checklist that we could go by, but there really isn’t any hard and fast rule that is going to applicable across the board. Jim Wofford gave a good outline of his opinions here, but even then, there’s more to it than that.

And before anyone starts jumping to conclusions, NO I am not even thinking about moving up to Prelim. Like ever. That’s hilarious. Trainer can take my horse around that level but I’m gonna hard pass, thanks.

But even just to feel ready to show at a particular level, whether it’s a move up or not, there are certain things I want to be doing at home to feel like I’m well-prepared. For instance, I’m proooobably not gonna want to run Training if a 3’3″ stadium course looks at all big. Personally, I need that stuff to look small or I start riding in fetal position (ok, sometimes I ride in fetal position anyway). So for me, if I’m ready to go to the show, that means I’m comfortably jumping full courses a hole or two higher at home.

That seems to be pretty common across h/j-land… always school higher at home than the level at which you show. It makes sense to not expect to go to a show and be successful if you’re performing at the very tip top of your current ability. It doesn’t seem quite as common in eventing though. I often see people very meticulously set a course to 2’7″ or 2’11” or 3’3″, whatever the height may be that they’re showing, and very rarely jump anything higher except for a single fence here and there. I dunno how they do it. I would legit die or pee my pants when I got to the horse show. Probably both.

Same thing for XC – if I’m running Training, I want to at least have jumped some legit Prelim fences. If nothing else it’s a great confidence boost if I’m worried about a tricky jump on my course, to be able to say “Come on self, you’ve schooled bigger harder things than this, don’t be such a baby. Sit up and kick. Jesus.”. You’d be surprised how well that works for my psyche.

A similar idea can be applied to dressage, just without the death part. If I never school anything harder at home than the movements that are in my test, riding up centerline at a show would be exponentially more stressful and more difficult. And anyone who’s ever seen us do dressage knows that we’re challenged enough without any added stress or difficulty.  So we plug away at home with shoulder-in and haunches-in and leg yield and counter canter and 10m circles even though I wouldn’t, under any circumstances, enter a test that had all of that.

For me personally, being truly prepared (whether it be for a move up or just for a show) means that I’ve done enough work at home to where I get to the show and feel confident in our ability to perform the task at hand. I’ll never be mistake-free, but I at least want to always walk in the ring or start box feeling like we’re more than capable of making it around. For me, it’s such a mental game. If a fence looks intimidatingly big, I’m probably in trouble.*

*Unless it’s a BAT (big ass table)… I reserve the right to say that those ALWAYS look too big and never walk within 30′ of them on foot…

What does “prepared” look like for you? Do you jump higher and school harder movements at home?

As you may have guessed from all the mentions of counter canter around here lately, we’re working really hard to strengthen Henry’s back, SI, and hind end. Now that he’s post summer break (he says how the eff does it count as a summer break when I still made him do w/t dressage 4 days a week and one light conditioning day???) and post SI injection, and only 4.5 weeks from the start of the fall season, it’s time to get buckle down and get that big ol’ butt turned back into serious muscle.

This is an ongoing thing with him really. The fittest and strongest he’s ever been was summer of 2016 when we did the 3Day, but of course he came home from that and hurt himself about a month later, garnering a few months off work. I legged him back up to decent fitness in the spring, but he definitely was not as strong as he was before his time off. He really loses it FAST when he’s not in hard regular work. His SI is just naturally not very good and his loin is perpetually weak. As we’ve slowly ramped up the hills, transitions, counter canter, and trot poles, he’s gotten better and better. Every week he gets steadier and stronger.

Of course, with the ramp-up in all of this hindend targeting work, we’ve had to deal with some muscle soreness. I’ve finally figured out that giving him days off makes everything exponentially worse, so what used to be his off days are now his long bareback marching-walk days. I think he’s getting tired of seeing me every day, but I just keep giving him more cookies.

He’s always been a horse that gets tight and muscle sore pretty easily, so it’s certainly not a surprise now. I expected this. Luckily I’ve gotten pretty good at managing it and helping him work it out. We do stretches, psoas release, and lower lumbar/SI area massage daily. Then he gets a nice long forward walk to warm up, before we ever really start working. All of that makes a huge difference in how he feels.

I’ve also added a couple of new things to our repertoire. I’m not a fan of oral supplements in general, but I added MSM and DMG daily. It’s $25 a month for both and I’m hoping we can just use them temporarily as he comes back into full fitness. He’s been on this particular combination before, waaaaay back when I first got him and was bringing him back into work off of a year layoff. I thought it helped him a bit then, so it seemed worthwhile to try it again.

The other fun new thing that we’re trying out is microcurrent therapy. I’ve had good luck using electroacupuncture with him, so when I saw the Microlief system I couldn’t resist trying it out. I’m still waiting on my Medipore tape to get here so I can try it, but we’ll see if I can tell any positive difference with that too. Yes, eventually I’ll review it, once I get a good idea of whether or not it helps.

All of this might seem a little high maintenance, but it’s definitely working. His canter work is feeling better than it has in over a year, and really all of his flatwork continues to make steady improvement as he becomes physically more capable. Hopefully after another month or so he’ll be back at full strength and all of this will start feeling easier for him again!

I’m pretty sure we’ve discussed dealbreakers before, at least in the capacity of buying a horse, but what about the things that would prevent you from even swinging a leg over in the first place?

I’m not a particularly timid rider, so most things don’t bother me. I don’t mind a hot horse, or one that might be inclined to buck or play or spook. Young and green is fine, and while I’d prefer to not have to ride one that requires a ton of leg (let me tell you what I’m not good at – slow horses), I don’t mind it every once in a while. My dealbreakers are mainly of the I-don’t-want-a-horse-to-crash-down-on-top-of-me variety.

For me there’s only one thing “on the flat” that will make me not even want to climb aboard: rearing. Been there, done that, got the bruises and the near death experience to prove it. If it rears, I’m not going near it. Period.

If we’re talking about jumping, I have one more dealbreaker: I will not jump a horse that has a consistent tendency to hang it’s knees and jump over it’s shoulder. See above about the whole not wanting to ride a horse that is going to crash down on top of me thing. Rotational falls are scary, I’m not interested in stacking the odds in favor of one happening by riding a horse that hangs it’s knees. I think I’d be cantering down to every fence just holding my breath, so… no thanks. Hard pass. I make enough mistakes, I don’t need to be extra worried about the potential ramifications of my bad decision-making. While it’s true that just about any horse can get to a solid fence badly enough to have a rotational in exactly the right circumstances, I sure as heck am not interested in stacking the odds in my favor by picking a horse that jumps with hanging knees.

What about y’all – any dealbreakers that make you not even want to ride a particular kind of horse?