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Saturday’s XC schooling was fun and all, but the real highlight of the weekend was going to see this little nugget. Side note: he’s 2 months old today! Everyone be glad I resisted the urge to get him a little “2 months” sign and pose him with it like all the human babies on facebook.

It sounds funny, but I was more nervous to go see Presto than I was for schooling. I have legit overprotective horsemom syndrome, and I’m always worried that something is going to be wrong with him. I dunno what, just something.

When we got there Sadie was up toward the front of the field and as soon as she spotted me she locked on to my bag with the treats in it. She’s no fool. Of course, Presto was nowhere to be found. All the babies were scattered around the field, passed out asleep, none of them near their actual mothers, and from that far away I couldn’t tell which one was him. As I was opening my bag to give Sadie her belated birthday/happy mother’s day cookies, Presto jumped up (waaaay back by the far hay hut) and started screaming his head off. What did Sadie do? Completely ignored him. Mom of the year, right there.

Granted, Presto didn’t seem particularly concerned either. He walked the whole distance from where he’d been sleeping to where we were, screaming all the way. Pretty sure he’s just always gonna be a talker with a flair for the dramatic. That’ll be a fun party trick at horse shows.

After I finished stuffing Sadie (and Lissa and Laken by default) full of cookies, I haltered Presto and started messing with him a bit. It’s obvious that the lovely ladies at the breeding farm have been handling him a lot, because he leads great and picks up his feet like a champ. It’s not bad showing up after a few weeks of absence and having your foal be more trained than he was when you left.

Mostly I was shocked with how much he’s grown in the past few weeks. His withers now hit right at bra height (I got home and measured, that’s 12h for those among us who prefer to be all precise and fancy). Liam’s only got about an inch on him now at the withers, although Liam’s giant butt is a little bit out of control and a few inches higher at the moment. I think all my delusions about having a horse that finished more like 16.1h instead of 16.3/17h are fading quickly.

After I was done messing with him and gawking at him, I got to work with his fancy new Leistner brushes. His coat looks… terrible.

All baby coats look terrible around this point, right before they start molting, then they look REALLY TERRIBLE until they’re done. But Presto’s seems especially thick and coarse and fried, I’m guessing maybe because of that whole near-death/couldn’t-absorb-any-nutrients-through-his-GI-tract thing that happened (details). The coat underneath looks nice and dark and shiny, he just needs to shed this gross carpet of thick curly baby fuzz so we can get to it.

The hair has grown back on all of the bald spots on his butt and neck though, and it’s nice and dark. His legs are super dark like Sadie’s for sure, but I think his body might end up being a smidge lighter than hers. I’m still definitely sure that he’s brown (that little bit of shadowing on his shoulder is the telltale sign), but I think he might end up being a lighter shade than she is. We’ll see.

Otherwise though he looks good and seems to be feeling quite fine. I might be biased (neeehhh) but I think he’s got such an air of intelligence about him; he’s curious but calm, and bold but quiet all at the same time.

He also got bored with me pretty quickly, but he’s still content to stand there and hang out. I think he’s just hoping he’ll get more scratches.

I think what I love most is that he’s got Sadie’s sleepy eyes and floppy ears. It’s a Westporte trait that he seems to pass on almost always, and it just gives them the best expression. Presto might not be winning at the whole “look of the eagles” thing, but he looks really sweet.

Hopefully I’ll be able to make it out to see him again in a couple weeks! Maybe he’ll be shedding by then?

But banks ain’t one! Crap, brb, gotta go knock on some wood so I don’t jinx myself.

We headed back down to Pine Hill on Saturday to do a little XC schooling. Mainly we wanted to work on the down banks, but I had my eye on a couple of the “beefier” Training questions as well. Henry didn’t have an issue with the little bank at the derby the weekend before, but still, we need to work on his (and my) confidence at them.

We popped over a few warmup jumps before our group headed over to the water, Henry’s favorite. Not quite sure why this horse loves water so much but I will never complain. We jumped through the first time from Training log to log the long way across, then came the short way over the Training ark to the upbank.

No problem with any of that so we turned it around and did down bank to ark. First down bank of the day being one that drops into water? Only makes sense if you’re on Henry. No hesitation, he plopped right in.

Then we jumped the Prelim ark to the Prelim log into water to the Training ark out, making something a little more complicated. He took a big leap over the Prelim log when I got him there a bit too deep, which made the already downhill landing even more of a drop, but he went.

Then it was over to the Weldon’s wall. Which, really the ditch in front is so small that it doesn’t even count, it just rides like a very upright brush fence. No problem here either, he just popped right over. Well ok, there was no problem with the jump itself but he did spook at the bushes while he was in the air so he landed trying to duck right and then kind of fled through the woods. I’m pretty sure he will never stop being spooky at Pine Hill no matter how many times we come here. #nevertrustabush

After that we headed over to the trakehner, which definitely does have a real ditch under it. He took a little peek off the ground but jumping it was never a question. For as spooky as he can be about open ditches, Henry is pretty brave when you put something over top of it.

And then last but of course not least, we headed over to the banks. We started by jumping down the single (same one as last weekend), then the double, then finally the triple down to the bench. Same line we came UP last weekend. Henry picked his way carefully down the triple the first time, but went. The second time he had figured it out and nailed it. What a good pony!

So, hopefully now our down bank issue is at least mostly fixed. At some point we will have to circle back around and tackle the Irish bank that was the cause of this whole undoing, but I’m waiting for Trainer to squirt her baby out so she can deal with that one. I’ve tapped out.

But now I do feel better enough to enter one more show for the season, a schooling HT in June. They run the same courses as their recognized, which are no joke, so it’ll be a good last test for us before spending the $$$ on the recognized Trainings in the fall. They also have a giant freaking down bank that T shares with P, so let’s hope Henry’s still feeling cocky by the time we have to face it!

Tomorrow is Sadie’s 10th birthday.

That feels so surreal to type. On one hand, it seems like I’ve had her forever, like she’s always been a part of my life. On the other hand, it seems like just yesterday that she was first introduced to me as a black dot on an ultrasound screen.

It’s a unique experience, breeding and raising a horse. You know everything about them. The source of every scar, physical or mental. What they’re like in pretty much any situation. In some ways you know them better than you know yourself, something that is especially true when you’ve owned a horse from age 23 to age 33. I’m not the same person I was when she was born, and much of what I’ve learned about myself, horses, and life in general can be attributed to her in some way.

Although the entrance of Presto into the world officially marked the transferral of Sadie’s ownership from me to Willow Tree Warmbloods, she will always be “mine”. I will probably always be the one that knows her best and I’m not sure that anyone else could possibly love her more than I do.

Yet I’m not sad about the idea of seeing someone else’s name on her papers, because there’s no one else in the world that I’d rather have as her owner. Willow Tree is where she’s meant to be. They take better care of their horses than any other breeding farm I’ve ever seen and I know they’ll do right by her. She’s a good broodmare, she loves her job, and she gets the best care that anyone could ever want for their horse. She’s happy, she’s healthy, and she’s a productive member of horse society. What more could you want?

I can’t wait to see what other babies she produces, and I especially can’t wait to see other people enjoying her foals just as much as I have enjoyed her (and, in turn, as much as I already enjoy Presto).

And although Presto looks more like his sire, I already I see so many qualities in him that remind me of her. His tenacity being #1. I don’t think he would still be alive today if he wasn’t Sadie’s child. That mare has no quit in her, and apparently he doesn’t either. While it can sometimes be one of her more frustrating qualities, I’ll also be eternally grateful to her for it.

So here’s to a decade of Sadie, and hopefully a couple more still yet to come. It’s been the experience of a lifetime.

Every year when Badminton rolls around, Bobby and I follow along online and dream about how fun it would be to fly over to jolly old England and attend in person. It is, after all, the ultimate 4*. The paramount event.

Last year, watching the carnage (and there’s no other word for it, that’s exactly what it was) at the Vicarage Vee took some of the wind out of my sails. That fence was really hard to watch, and it punished anyone and everyone who didn’t meet it exactly right.

This year saw a new course designer and no more Vicarage Vee. I was hopeful we’d see an event just as big and gnarly as Badminton is known for, except hopefully without the carnage. Alas, that last part was not to be.

Hung legs were everywhere. I stopped counting after 14. Some of them resulted in horse falls, a few rotational or awfully damn close to it, but miraculously a lot of these horses were able to pull out their “fifth leg” and save themselves (with the assistance of many a broken clip). Still… it was hard to watch. Horses don’t get to this level if they have a tendency to hang a leg (no one wants to die), so something was contributing to them either getting to the questions wrong or misreading them.

Two spots in particular that made me cringe were the The Lake and the PHEV Corral. At The Lake, the distance from the bank up to the brushed jump did not work out well for most people. I don’t think the horses jumped the bank the way the designer thought they would, and as a result the distance was off. There were a lot of runouts here, but also some scary falls. At the Corral, I hated having very upright fences, the rails of which were quite square and the second of which was on a hard angle, toward the end of a course like this. There were many horses that just got in a bit off-stride and couldn’t get out of their own way, resulting in a hung leg.

I love eventing because it’s hard, and it’s gritty, but I don’t love seeing genuine horses make mistakes and get punished with a fall. For me it takes all the horsemanship out of it. That’s not to say that I want XC to be easy – heck no. It shouldn’t be a dressage competition. But the Rolex course seemed to do a bit better job of turning mistakes into glance-offs or refusals, whereas Badminton sent a lot of horses and riders into the turf. Granted, it’s always done that. This is nothing new.

Bobby and I both didn’t make it that far into the coverage before we lost heart and closed it. It doesn’t leave me with a warm happy “omg eventing is so awesome” feeling. Instead it made me feel… uncomfortable. I lost all desire to go watch in person.

Did anyone else watch? What were your thoughts?

Alternate title: STOP DRAGGING THIS OUT, DID HE GO DOWN THE BANK OR DIDN’T HE???

But first, the course. Fair warning, I did a real shit job of documenting the course with photos (as in I took none and had to scour the internet to find a few to put here), so here’s the map again.

After I was done with dressage (praise be) I left Henry at the trailer and set off to walk the course. They were doing jumper rounds in the stadium ring so I didn’t wait around for a break to walk the first three fences of my course, which were all stadium jumps. Jump 4 was another stadium fence set in the fence line, over which you jumped OUT of the arena, landing on a downhill slope. I figured Henry would be a little confused about jumping out of the arena, so counting that plus the downhill landing I figured I’d just stay back and keep my leg on. That’s usually the right answer.

Then of course the very first XC fence was a down bank. Super. I got permission from the TD beforehand to just skip the bank if we had an issue there, but… I really wanted to jump down the damn thing. Mostly because whether or not he jumped off the bank was going to be the real test of how much we’ve rebuilt his confidence about them. The bank itself wasn’t very big but it was going down a big hill, so on the approach it kind of looked like you were jumping off a cliff. Plus it was another downhill landing. I have to be honest, I stood on top of that thing and felt in my gut that he wasn’t going to jump it.

After the down bank it was a bending line right to a small bench, then you kept rolling out into the big field with a little bit of a longer stretch to 7ab, a vertical to oxer in and out of stadium fences. Then you hung a right and jumped the red train car

straight to a stadium fence vertical set in between trees.

Then it was a right turn through the water and up the bank out

loop around back to a skinny into the water from the other side, and out over an uphill log.

After that it was back up the hill to the T rolltop, with a distance that walked either a long three or short four to the triple up bank. I was excited to ride this, it looked super fun.

After that there was one more stadium fence hidden back in the trees, then we looped around and had a little brush fence at the last.

Overall I thought the course looked really fun and inviting. If we hadn’t literally just had a down bank issue, I’d have gone so far as to say it looked easy. Nothing was big or tricky, although I thought having the stadium fences scattered throughout was definitely a challenge. Henry is not particularly careful, especially when he’s in his flatter more forward XC mode of jumping. Getting him rocked back for the stadium fences was going to be one of the hardest parts for us.

My plan for the bank was simple: I was going to stay in the back seat and ride it like both of our asses were on fire. I told my trainer that I was going down the bank come hell or high water, either with or without the horse (and if I went without the horse, could someone please go catch him?).

Henry was great in warmup, he definitely woke up once he realized we were jumping (ah, there’s the energy I didn’t have in dressage). He was a little confused when we went from XC warmup to stadium… he kept looking back down the hill toward the start box like “wtf kind of cruel trick is this?”. The first stadium fence was fine, but he landed pulling on me a bit and I didn’t get him back quick enough to make a very balanced turn to 2. That kind of dominoed into him getting a bit crooked off the ground and pulling the rail there, but then he was more reasonable to 3. I landed from 3 with my spurs in his ribs because I knew he’d balk at 4, the jump out of the arena. Pretty much every horse was really backed off of that, and I’d already seen a couple stop there. Henry sorta weaved his way down there in a very skeptical canter, but he went.

I landed and immediately sent him forward again… I wanted him thinking forward as much as possible before we got to the bank. He was a bit confused about how the hell we’d just teleported magically from stadium to XC, but he never needs to be asked twice to gallop out onto cross country. We came around the corner, I sat up, kicked him forward, and we attacked the bank. And while Henry leapt off of it with considerably more gusto than necessary, he didn’t even hesitate. Perhaps the override wasn’t needed after all, but we made it so whatever. We’ll smooth it out next time.

I had to steer to the bench with super long reins after the big leap down, but we got down there and over it fine. Then he was off and running at 450mpm, which would have been great except the next fences were stadium jumps and the course speed was 360mpm. Thanks to Dr. Bristol we had a stadium canter back by the time we got there and popped through the in and out fine.

***Side note: you have never seen seasoned event horses more confused as when you combine an XC course and stadium course together. Horse minds were being blown all day.***

Then I let him go a bit more forward again to the red train car. I thought he might back off a little there since it’s in a new location next to the trees he always loves to spook at, but he locked on and was delighted. Then another whoa and balance again for the stadium vertical, right turn down to the water keeping a bouncy canter up the bank out. I’m pretty sure I could feel Henry smiling by this point – he loves water. I pretty much just steered as we looped around to the skinny back into the water and the log out.

He landed and wanted to charge up the hill (HENNY GO CROSS COUNTRY HENNY GALLOP) but I could only let him roll for a few strides before I had to bring him back again. We had to fit four strides in between the bench and the triple up banks (because charging forward and flat to up banks is not the death warrant I would like to sign, thanks) so I found a short distance to the rolltop, landed whoaing, then let him maintain the collected 4 and pop up the three banks. And it was SO FUN.

After that it was just a hop over another stadium fence and around the corner to the little brush box at the finish. Aside from the rail at fence 2 we were clear, so we added 4 faults to our dressage score. Still, there were enough issues to move us up from 6th to 4th. Mostly though I was just really thrilled that he went down the bank. We definitely still need to keep rebuilding his confidence more, but good to know he isn’t totally broken about it.

While I did think that in general it was a lot harder for us to really get in a good groove around a course of mixed stadium and xc fences (me probably more so than him), it was still a total blast. I would definitely love to do more derbies every once in a while!