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One of the first things I noticed when I switched to eventing from h/j-land was how the sharps containers at events were a) very sparse b) never had anything in them. At the bigger events there were maybe 3 of them scattered across the stabling area and they always appeared untouched. At the smaller events you may or may not even see one at all. Yet at h/j shows it seems like there’s a sharps container on every other aisle, and they’re full pretty much from the word go. We have enough of our own problems in eventing, but sticking lots of needles into our horses isn’t one of them.

As most of you know, I grew up doing h/j and spent plenty of time in the hunter ring. For a long time I thought that the A/O hunters were my ultimate fantasy. I bred Sadie specifically hoping that she would grow up to be my fancy hunter. Yet by the time she was 4 I had already grown very weary of the hunter ring, and it didn’t take long for that weariness to turn into complete and total disillusion. I had a great trainer who was one of the “good guys”, but I noticed more and more that the good guys were awfully damn few, and often at a disadvantage. Needless to say, I was not disappointed when we re-routed Sadie to the jumper ring.

I was hopeful that when the derbies started getting super popular, good changes would come about and some of the demons of the hunter world would fall by the wayside. They didn’t. Before a derby class at one show, a horse dropped dead because of an incorrectly administered magnesium injection. It wasn’t the first, nor would it be the last. But that’s the day I wrote the sport off, for me personally anyway, as lost.

When I saw Mary Babick’s facebook post earlier this week, I thought here, finally, was someone saying exactly what I’ve been thinking. Judging by the way it went viral almost immediately, I’m obviously not the only one. There was one part in particular that really stood out to me:

“As I sat in the airport, I was joined by two fellow USEF directors. The talk turned quickly to the shocking statistic which was presented in Murray Kessler’s Strategic Plan. That statistic? That almost 60% of all doping violations are in the hunter sport. The two directors (an active athlete from dressage and another from Morgan) expressed horror at our transgressions. The dressage athlete told the two of us that people in dressage are embarrassed to be part of a doping violation. She asked why we were not.
Her question rang true with me. Why aren’t we embarrassed? Have we lost our love for horses? Do we love money more than our honor? I don’t know the answer but I do know that this lack of integrity is both a sickness of people’s souls and our sport.”

This is exactly what I’ve been wondering for a long time. So many BNT and BNR have had doping violations, some of them on a pretty damn regular basis. And these are only the ones getting caught using testable substances… what about all the others that have found their way around the tests? Yet it doesn’t seem like a big deal to anyone. These people still show, they still win, they still sell horses, they still have a barn full of clients, they still have good reputations, and they still make plenty of money.  This is what has always been so shocking to me… the level of acceptance that seems to exist, and the number of people who are seemingly okay with it.

The fact that Mary, USHJA president, was willing to come forward and state her opinion in a very public way gives me some hope. Hats off to you and your lady balls, Mary. I really hope that this is the beginning of some good conversation and some positive changes within USEF and USHJA. I’d love to be a hunter fan again.

Nothing like starting a show day with an 80% chance of thunderstorms and a 7:42 dressage time.

It was kind of a gross, dreary day from the get-go, but luckily the rain showers that passed through around 5am were long gone by the time I got on Henry and headed down to dressage warmup. Our goal for this show was just to try to keep him as quiet and relaxed as possible, keep myself PRESENT, and see how much I could ask for in the ring. We walked for a while, trotted a bit, then did some canter with a few lengthenings (remember when I used to not be able to canter in dressage warmup?). Being a one day show, and knowing that dressage is not our forte, we opted for a pretty short and sweet warmup. Just no point in anything else. Full disclosure, I don’t have any media from dressage, so feel free to just scroll right on down to stadium if you don’t want to deal with my word vomit. Here’s a picture to hold you over until you make it down that far:

He went in the ring a little bit “up” but overall I thought it was a passable test. He got heavy after the first canter and I never was really able to get his balance back (uh, maybe sit up?), and most of the trot at the beginning was done with him keeping one eyeball on the XC jumps nearby. We haven’t had a dressage lesson since August, and neither of us have done a test since July, so I expected it to be rusty and it was. But there were two things I really LOVED:

1) I stayed present and I didn’t just turn into at total blob. At one point in the canter lengthening I even smiled. Whaaaaaat, me smiling in dressage? Hell hath frozen over. I was amused at my horse, who was hoping that we were going to gallop out of the ring and over to cross country (hence why there wasn’t much of a lengthening, lest we exit the arena unexpectedly).

2) After we halted and left the ring, Henry wasn’t chomping. Normally by the end of the test his brain is pretty maxed out and he’s quite tense when he leaves. And when he’s tense, he chomps his mouth at a really impressive rate. There was none of that this time, and he went back over to the warmup and stood fairly still for a few minutes while we talked to Trainer and watched Bobby go.

Those two things alone are huge wins in my book, and exactly what we were there to do. I was just aiming for a score under 40, and we got a 37.4, so I was totally fine with that. Somehow our highest score was the stretchy trot circle, which I will happily take.

We had a couple hours in between dressage and stadium, so Bobby and I went over and walked the course one last time. It was set for Intermediate/Preliminary, and I have to thank Trainer here for getting me comfortable with bigger fences, because their jumps didn’t look that big to me. Ah yes, this is why you always school higher than you show. I felt pretty good walking around their course knowing that ours would be two holes lower. For some reason leading up to this show I had been more freaked out about stadium than anything else.

While we were tacking up we checked the radar and saw a big ugly cell headed straight at us. Cue a very quick and abbreviated warmup, hoping to get through stadium before that thing hit. We did a few laps of canter, hopped over the crossrail once, the vertical once, then the oxer once. Henry was getting to the base and jumping really well, and I was actually not pulling, so I quit with that and went up to the ring.

We trotted in, halted, then picked up the canter and headed to the first fence. He went right into a really good rhythm and all I remember thinking as we cantered down to fence 1 (a single oxer) was “Oh thank god, these jumps look little!”. I dunno why I thought they’d look big, but I was really glad they didn’t.

We hopped over the first few fences and I’m not really sure where this horse came from, but Henry was jumping like a total freak. He was coming off the ground with so much power that it was all I could do to stay with him. I whoaed a teeny bit too much in the corner before the first double at 5AB and thus had a bit of a long two stride, which made 6 come up a short. He hit it, but it stayed up. The tight rollback to 7, which I’d worried about the most, actually rode really well.

Although he jumped 7 so hard that (aside from almost gouging my own eye out with the end of my whip) I pulled a little to 8, then landed and pulled a little more to 9AB, the last double. Instead of just letting him come forward out of the corner I tried to cram one more stride in and Henry, bless his soul, had to climb out over the oxer at B. That mistake cost us 4 faults, but… whatever. We did it, the jumps looked small, he was jumping amazing, and I made DECISIONS (ok that last one was a bad decision, but at least I made one).

It started raining during Bobby’s round, then as we were headed back to the barn the skies finally opened up and it poured buckets. Lots and lots and lots of buckets. Once the lightning started they held the show, and we all just stood around watching the XC course turn into one giant lake. By the time it stopped raining there was no doubt – XC wasn’t happening. The whole thing got turned into a CT, but it was the only right decision to make. No way the footing would have been safe out there, especially back in the woods. I was bummed at not getting to run around XC, but not at all bummed about not having to do it in the mud. Henry is drilled and tapped, and I had studs with me, but still. There will always be another day, and I’d rather not run our first Training XC in the slop.

Overall I was happy with the day. I stayed calm, had fun, and Henry was great. We definitely have more work to do to get everything more polished, but that will come. After a long 6 month break, it was great to be back!  I may have already sent in my entry for the February show… fingers crossed it’s a little drier.

First of all… I think I love schooling shows. I literally had all of my clothes, including show clothes, packed in a backpack. It took me maybe 5 minutes. I didn’t have to pack a ton of shit, I didn’t have to braid, and it was cheap. Sign me up for this. Ok, but not permanently, because I did miss wearing my Winston coat a little, but it was fun to be casual for once.

On Saturday I was up early (because I’m always up early, because I go to bed early, because I’m 33 going on 85), and as I was leaving my neighborhood I realized that although I had remembered to gather all of Henry’s crap, I forgot to get any food/drinks for myself. Oops. A quick stop at Walmart to grab whatever I could carry (which amounted to 2 Lunchables, an apple, some Goldfish crackers, and 2 waters… spoiler alert this is not enough food for 24 hours) I was back en route. I went to the barn, shoved all my crap in my truck/trailer, and headed out. I’ll be honest and tell you a secret here: I didn’t even clean anything. The forecast for the weekend looked gross, and my give-a-shits just were not numerous enough.

I was one of the first ones to arrive, so I parked my trailer in a primo spot and got Henry settled. Bobby and I were lucky enough to get awesome stabling spots in a smaller barn that is less chaotic and has more space. Loved it. Then Bobby got there, parked next to me (because stalker), we put our tents up, got everything unpacked, and then got on the boys.

Earlier in the week Henry had a day where he just felt kinda crappy under saddle (like SI flaring up again), to the point where I almost scratched. Then the next day he felt super, so I decided to just go and see what horse I had. If he felt weird, I could always scratch. We got on and walked for a while, then I rode him down to the arena and Trainer asked to see him trot and canter. Henry was moving pretty damn great, albeit he was a bit of a sassy dolphin. We quit after a very short ride, just in case, but definitely got the thumbs up to proceed. He might end up being wild for dressage, but he felt good and that was more important. He literally pranced back the barn, fairly certain that we were headed to the start box for XC. He was super bummed when he got a bath instead.

After the boys were settled we went to walk stadium, then walked XC twice. It was warm and humid enough to where I was sweating balls by this point. There was much chafing. Thanks, Texas in January. Overall though, I felt pretty good about the XC and stadium courses (mentally, not physically, because see above note about chafing).

Then we fed the boys, ate dinner (mmm… Lunchable…), socialized a bit, and took the horses for a handwalk. I DID wipe my bridles down with a wet rag and thoroughly brush out my horse’s tail, so… wow, such effort. Then I popped one of Bobby’s ZzzQiul’s and was in bed by 9. With a 7:42 dressage time, it was gonna be an early morning…

 

Yeah, horse show happened yesterday, but I need a day to gather myself before I can write all that up, so a few quick “what’s up in my world” updates:

First – dog update. As I mentioned last week, Stewie had not been feeling so well. The only thing we found amiss in his vet appointment was a low grade fever and elevated white blood cell count. He came home with antibiotics and anti-inflammatories, instructions to bring him back if he seemed worse, and a follow-up appointment for this Weds to recheck him. He’s steadily gotten better at night (he’s not shaking for hours at a time), although he’s still not eating very well (granted, he’s never been a particularly great eater anyway). He wants MY food, and treats, but not his own food.

I bought my plane ticket and Rolex tickets last week, so I’m officially GOING. If there’s some kind of blogger meetup happening, lets talk details. I’m so excited!

I finally paid off the Devoucoux! That didn’t take FIVE MONTHS or anything. Thanks, Henry’s giant stack of fall vet bills and newly acquired, very expensive acupuncture addiction.

Because I am obviously so very good at adulting (see above), I rewarded myself with a pair of “oilslick” spurs. They were on sale, shut up.

And last but not least, a few Sadie pictures. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a pregnant mare who’s belly was so perfectly round.

She still thinks she’s fancy though!

More tomorrow, when I’m more awake.

Remember what my main goal for 2017 was? Ah, that’s right: to chill the eff out about being so insanely competitive with myself. So we have our move up horse trial this weekend and I’ve decided to take the “Oh, it’s no big deaaaaaal, it’s fiiiine, not even worriiiieeed, I’ll pack laterrrr…” nonchalant approach. Because if I pretend it’s NBD, my myriad neuroses seem to be able to keep themselves contained.

Normally I’m the queen of pre-show lists. I have lists of lists. Pages of shit to do, when to do it, what to pack, things planned down to the minute, etc. It’s part of what feeds my crazy Type A control freak obsession. This time I’m taking the opposite approach.

My prep this week has been bare minimum. I learned my dressage test on Wednesday and ran through it once (technically we rode it twice last year, so it’s not totally unfamiliar to me) and I’ll run through it another time or two tomorrow. I cleaned up Henry’s tail and gross fetlock hair when I clipped him a couple weeks ago, so I haven’t really touched him at all. He got new shoes yesterday, but that’s about it. My tack will get wiped down tomorrow but I’m not taking it all apart and conditioning it to perfection. I guess I might polish my boots (wearing the brown ones, because so casual) and I’ll pull out my nice helmet. I’m even using my blue “schooling” Majyk Equipe XC boots instead of our fancy “show whites”. So far the only thing I’ve packed is my stud kit, in case it rains. Normally an event takes up every waking thought for at least a week beforehand, but I’ve managed to prevent myself from devoting that much thought to it.

But really, we’re approaching this as one big schooling opportunity. I’m not braiding. I’m not wearing a watch on XC. I’m not even wearing a show coat. These are very weird concepts to me, but I think they’ll help my brain remember that we’re here to get experience, not to compete. The goal is to not fall off and not get eliminated. If I can like… stay chill and not ride like a drunk monkey, that would be a bonus. Aiming high over here. But after a couple years of always feeling lots of pressure, and sometimes crumbling under it, I have to admit it’s pretty liberating.

It’s nice to not be like “I have to get under X in dressage if I want any chance of placing, and I def can’t afford a rail blah blah blah, and I have to get my qualification for X”. I do not give two shits. We can finish dead freaking last… as long as we finish, I’ll be thrilled. Big fat whatevs. We’re just gonna do our best and have fun with it.

That’s how I’m playing it anyway. Gotta somehow make this attitude channel all the way through the weekend. Oh, and if the rain could hold off until after we run XC, that’d be great too.