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Guess who was in Austin? HILLARRRYYY from Equestrian at Hart, one of my very favorite fellow bloggers! We have always had a lot in common (obviously she has impeccable taste) and chat constantly, so it just makes sense that one day we’d actually get to meet up in person. When she let me know that she was coming to the area for work, I immediately started planning.

The most important item on the to-do list was riding, of course. The second most important item on the list was food. Hillary loves food as much as I do (we have bonded over it a lot via facebook and instagram), and I will happily seize any excuse to eat my way around town and be super fat. I picked her up from the airport on Sunday morning, and after a quick visit to Henry to give him cookies and see how he looked the day after his event (awesome), we headed out into Austin in search of sustenance. After some tacos we roamed around and did a little shopping, including a stop at the best candy store ever. It has EVERYTHING, to the point of being overwhelming.

She claimed in her day 1/2 recap that she didn’t buy anything while we were downtown, but I have photographic evidence to the contrary.

Then we met up with Karen for an early dinner of shared appetizers before walking a few blocks over to Gourdough’s, the best food trailer on the planet. They make ridiculously amazing monstrosities out of donuts, and I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen anyone completely dominate one before… until Hillary. She polished off the entire Fat Elvis and didn’t even throw up. Much respect, I was really impressed.

 

On Monday I had to work so she was left alone in my house with the most traitorous corgi ever. He decided Hillary was his new mom and pretty much stuck to her like velcro the whole time she was here. Worst dog, no loyalty.

After work I picked her up and we headed to the barn for a little hack. She took Henny for a spin in the hay field, which he thought was great fun, even if she was about to die in the heat. I’m not sure which thing she marveled at the most – the oppressive heat that feels a little bit like living in an oven, or the fact that our mud turns into concrete when it dries. Yay Texas.

Then we went out for dinner (with Bobby because he’s gotta insert himself into everything, naturally), featuring fancy ramen followed by vegan ice cream – because I can’t imagine anything more “hipster Austin” than that particular combo. When in Rome, right? As we were standing at the ice cream place Hillary said “I think I take too many showers and don’t have enough tattoos to live here.”. Nailed it. Austin hipster experience: complete.

On Tuesday I picked her up after work and again headed to the barn. This time I tossed her up on Henny and made her jump him. Ok – it didn’t take much arm twisting (read: none) to convince her to take him for a spin over fences. That’s where he really shines, after all. First she hopped over the little fences in the ring, then I raised them all to 3’3″ish. She gave me a slightly hairy eyeball but off she went around the course, and after the first couple fences she was like “I NEED A HENRY!” and tackled everything with gusto. You can’t have him, he’s mine. They got along really well though, and seemed to have fun together. Henny is great, and I like seeing other people enjoy his greatness.

After the barn we met up with Karen one last time and had breakfast for dinner, featuring my favorite cinnamon roll pancakes, at a restaurant near my house. I feel like there are still so many food experiences left to share in Austin, but we did our best at hitting a wide variety.

It was a super fun time getting to visit with Hillary, and we’ve made some horse show plans in the fall, so hopefully we’ll be seeing each other again soon! Quinn wholeheartedly agrees.

Cuz it’s Friday, and we’re leaving for the show today! BYE!

That was a massive case of ADD on my part, but anyway…

Yes, Henry is sound after the nail incident, thank goodness. We still opted not to do our jump lesson yesterday just to save his feet from unnecessary pounding, but it worked out well because Trainer got to hop on for a dressage ride. Her very first dressage ride on Henry, at that… she’s only sat on him twice before, for XC schooling.

They really click well though, she’s used to his type of horse and he liked her sympathetic and quiet ride. He gave her some good work and she declared there is a fancy horse in there somewhere (I’ve been thinking that for the past few months too… he’s SO close to some good quality work).

I still have some work and then some packing left to do, then we’ll be on the road. I’m kind of excited to play owner/groom for once, this never ever happens! Much less stressful this way. Fingers crossed for a successful first Training for Henny. Ride times:

 

No two ways about it, it’s freaking hot. Not just hot, also humid. 95 degrees with 55% humidity is just disgusting. It seems like summer is here to stay now, and we’re all looking a little bit ragged and sluggish. I’m quite certain that I’ve been sweating out at least 5 gallons of water a day… it’s rolling down my back before I’m even done grooming my horse.

With the change in the weather comes the usual change in Henry’s general outlook and temperament that I’ve now come to expect every summer. He’s grumpier, like a 25 year old school horse that has been woken up from a lovely nap to cart an overenthusiastic little kid around. Mare glare is fairly permanent. Not that those things aren’t pretty normal the rest of the year too, but they’re definitely more intense when it’s hot.

There are also a lot of things he Simply Cannot do, including but not limited to:

Trot and poop at the same time. He stopped dead in the middle of trot sets to have himself a nice long poop. Like screeched to a halt and blatantly refused to move until the last turd was expelled.

Contain his drool. He spends his afternoons licking his salt block and drinking water. This is awesome, because he stays super hydrated. But it also means that he oozes out of his mouth like a faucet when I get him out of his stall. Combine the salt and water drool with his cookie drool and he’s a bit gross.

Anything that requires a hint of effort. When I tried to jump him last week he was so quiet I had to ask Bobby to bring me a stick. (Side note: never say that exact phrase to Bobby, he’s very immature. Also he doesn’t know WTF you’re referring to unless you specifically call it a crop.) Leaving all the rails in the cups is optional while jumping, because it’s too hard to clear just a couple more inches of height. And after our lesson I practically had to drag him out of the crossties to put him on the trailer to go home, because 45 minutes of dressage with a whole bunch of walk breaks was obviously too much. Nevermind that as soon as we got home he popped out of the trailer like a whirling dervish because it was DINNER TIME. Drama queen mode, fully engaged.

Keep his shoes on. This one is a problem. How he managed to get through our entire wet/muddy season with his shoes, yet keeps pulling them off now, I don’t understand. Probably has something to do with the whole lack of effort thing, he keeps stepping on himself. He’s lost two shoes in two weeks, the second of which he just trotted right out of during trot sets. And of course, when the farrier came out yesterday to put it back on, he accidentally nail-quicked him. He caught it immediately, pulled the nail, and poulticed the foot, but I’m not sure that he’s going to be sound for the show this weekend. We’ll see how it looks this afternoon. I’m gonna be pretty sad if we have to scratch Henry’s first Training.

Physically, he’s handled the heat pretty well so far. He never gets super hot, he’s sweating great, and he cools down really quickly. He’s fit and looks good. But mentally, he ain’t into this summer thing and he’s not shy about sharing his opinion.

Summer Henry is right, working in this weather is hard. I’ve been running in the mornings before work a few times a week and by the time I get home from the barn in the evenings I’m about ready to pass out asleep.  Just a few more weeks (20 days, but who’s counting) until we get to hopefully escape from this misery and go hide out in the mountains. I think we can hang in there until then, albeit very unenthusiastically.

Now I just need his foot to be better today…

First of all – shout out to Westporte baby West River for finishing 6th in the CCI 2* at Bromont (with one of only 4 double clear XC trips)! I spend a lot of time stalking this horse since she has the same sire as Sadie.

I love seeing another one out there proving that Westporte isn’t just a hunter sire. It makes me even more excited for The Mighty Little Nugget.

Who, by the way, is a…

COLT!

It took a while for the vet to determine, but once he got just the right view it was pretty clear. Coincidentally I had only decided on a colt name, so this works out just fine. Say hello to Magic Word, barn name Presto.

Of course, this is Sadie we’re talking about here so I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if it pops out a filly. She likes to mess with me like that. Never trust a crafty mare. The only thing we know 100% is that it’ll be bay or brown, since Mighty Magic is homozygous. For now we’ll just assume it’s a bay colt.

Here’s an instagram video of his head on the ultrasound. You can see his ears, his eyes, and his TEETH! Little bitty teeny tiny baby Presto teeth!

 

As for her BFF Lissa, well, these two apparently have to do everything exactly alike, because she’s having a…

COLT!

This one could be a legit stallion prospect, with world class parents like these. He’s for sale in utero! 😉

So there we have it – two colts. Impressively, 11 of you guessed that particular combination! The winner of the awesome gift basket from KJ Creations is (drum roll please):

Steph at Hand Gallop!

Thanks to everyone who participated, congrats to Steph, and many props to Michelle for taking those hilariously adorable gender reveal pictures.

 

But with me in the irons this time. I haven’t jumped Henry XC since Holly Hill at the end of April, so I wanted to get out and gallop a few fences since I figured it was probably my last chance before Coconino. Bobby wanted to do the same, and since Trainer was away at a show we decided to just haul over to MeadowCreek together for an informal little mini-school. Spoiler, it was hot as balls. Humid too, because why not be as miserable as possible.

We unloaded, got on the boys, did some trot sets, then Bobby went off to do some gallop sets while I hopped over a few warmup fences. After that we headed over to the big field that has the most Training fences in one area, because I wanted to jump the first half of the Training course.

I came out of the box and tried to really let Henry flow forward, since I have the tendency to micro-manage the hell out of him and pull. I perhaps took that idea a little too far at fence 2, where I saw a flyer 6 strides out. Luckily Henry saw it too and moved up, took a hell of a leap, and made it work. Pony has plenty of hops. Bless him.

Fences 3, 4, and 5 are all pretty basic. A little bit narrow faced but nothing big or scary. Fence 6 is the giant ass cliff drop that I swore I wasn’t gonna be the first to jump him off of, but he was going so well that I just did it. And he was super. Like.. he even jumped down it like a semi-normal horse instead of his signature crackhead leap. Maybe he’s figuring it out?

Then we went around and jumped 7ab, the half coffin, which he’s schooled before. Ain’t no thang. I went back through fences 5 and 6 a few times… I was trying to get him to land from the little house and TROT off the drop, but after the first time he was cocky and having none of it. Pretty sure he was saying “Moooom, only babies trot off the drops, you’re embarrassing me!”. We compromised with the teeniest canter ever.

It was disgustingly hot by that point, and the boys had been great, so we called it quits. Henny was forward and happy and super game, so I’m good with that! He feels so confident right now, I can’t wait for his move-up this weekend. Training is starting to not look big anymore, we’re getting more comfortable carrying more speed, and he seems to have no problem with the more technical questions. He’s hunting the jumps and taking me to them. Still glad that Trainer is going to be the one in the irons for his first couple of Trainings, but I’m also feeling more and more confident about it for myself. It’s starting to feel more like a “we can do this!” instead of a “we can do this?”.

And of course, no XC post is complete without Henny ears! I have something fun in the works for those helmet cam ears, hopefully y’all will see at Coconino…