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Not all of those things combined of course… that would be weird and awkward.

As I mentioned after Greenwood, I made an appointment with the vet to come check Henry out. He was just so abnormal at GW in all respects and it got my spidey senses tingling. Once I saw the XC video I was even more sure that something wasn’t right – he landed cross-cantering multiple times and seemed a little shuffly off the ground in a couple of places. That’s not normal. While there was nothing outwardly “wrong” that we could find at the time, his stadium performance and those few little things on the XC video raised some red flags for me.

Before the vet got there I already had a pretty good idea of what we were in for. I’ve known since I bought him that he’s a little sticky in the hind end, and I’ve had him on IM joint supplements for a while in the hopes that we could support him that way for as long as possible. As soon as the vet starting poking and prodding and flexing the hind end it became clear that IM is no longer enough. He is a pretty textbook case of lower hock soreness. He was obviously sore on the left, just baaaaarely sore on the right.

I hate joint injections. A lot. Sticking a needle in a joint is not something that gives me any kind of warm fuzzies. I think the vet read my face pretty well because he pointed out that the earlier we address the inflammation, the more we can slow the degeneration. So I gave the go-ahead and we injected both hocks.

What does this mean for the future? Well, for the immediate future I’ve scratched our last event of the season. With Greenwood having been semi-disastrous and this happening only a week before show time, plus a few other factors thrown in, I’m just not comfortable asking him to compete right now. I’ll give him some time, re-group, and make a plan for the winter. We’ve already more than accomplished everything I had originally dreamed of for the year, and it doesn’t seem right to ask him to keep going when he’s not 100%.

As for the more distant future, I had no plans for him being an upper level horse anyway, but his schedule will likely be lighter and more consideration given for preserving those hocks. We’ll see later this week how he feels and if the injections helped.

On a lighter note – if you’re going to pay for sedation you might as well get the most of it. I took advantage of drunk Henry after the vet left and clipped all the areas where he normally threatens to knock my block off. He made a couple of “Noooo, not my bellllyyyyy haaaaairr” half-hearted threats, but man… drugs are great.

Saturday I finished the rest of him. He might be mad, but considering we’ve still been in the 90’s, he’s got to feel better. Poor Henny… rough weekend.

I just happened to stumble upon these, oh so innocently, last night while I was perusing Riding Warehouse. Because it’s normal to visit an online tack shop once a week to check the new Items and see what’s on sale. Naturally.

They have especially good deals on show coats… the Kerrit’s Kompetitor and Horseware Competition jacket are both only $69.88. Crazy cheap. And the Kerrit’s one is a super pretty blue with white piping. I’m trying desperately to think of a good reason why I need another blue coat.

They also have the Ariat Platinum Softshell, normally $500, for $299.

If you’re looking for a coat, definitely take a tour through their coats sale section, they have lots of good stuff in there at great prices.

Eventers – their Dalmar boots are only $66.88 per pair, fronts and hinds!

And – BROWN TALL BOOT ALERT! The Ariat Challenge‘s are on sale for only $279.

Plus breeches, helmets, show shirts, bridles… so much good stuff. Sadly I’m on a spending freeze at the moment, so everyone go buy something in my honor and then tell me all about it. I’m suffering from withdrawal.

It seems like AEC was not the end of the line for Uni the Eventing Unicorn. Last week she was made famous with her appearance in The Chronicle of the Horse, and this week she’s at Fair Hill with my coach, having all kinds of adventures. Uni’s goal, in addition to just being awesome, is to get photographed on/with and autographed by as many upper level riders as possible. Then she will come back to Texas and be auctioned off this winter at the Greater Houston Combined Training Association banquet for a great cause. There will also be a photo book of all of Uni’s adventures auctioned off with her. Here’s a sneak peak of what she’s been up to so far, while en route to Fair Hill from Texas:

If you want to follow along with Uni on her adventures, like her page on facebook

The Eventing Unicorn

And click the badge below to follow @eventing_unicorn on Instagram

 

IF YOU’RE GOING TO BE AT FAIR HILL: if you find Uni and take a picture with her, I will send you a $10 Riding Warehouse gift card! Snap the picture and post it on instagram, making sure to hashtag #eventingunicorn and tag @eventing_unicorn

And remember: Always be a Unicorn.

When I first sat down to write what is now my customary post-show “what I learned” blog post, I admit that I was a little stuck at first. On paper it would be pretty easy to be disappointed with how Greenwood went. Worst dressage score ever, worst stadium ever, and worst total score ever. It wasn’t an event that anyone would like to have in the middle of their fall season, two weeks before Area Championships.

I kind of wanted to just sweep it under the rug, shrug it off, and pretend it didn’t happen. But the more I thought about it the more I realized that I actually learned quite a lot about myself and my horse in “failure”, if you want to call it that. And the things that I came up with as learning points were so much BIGGER.

I learned that even when all else seems like a loss, Henry will still come through on cross country. He gets braver and smarter and more clever with every show. Of course, changes for the better in some areas can sometimes mean changes for the worse in others. He’s not a machine and neither am I. That’s what makes this sport so ridiculously hard – it’s three very different phases that ask completely different things of the horse and rider. Growing pains are to be expected, I suppose, and Rome wasn’t built in a day. I’m not William Fox-Pitt and Henry’s not Ballynoe Castle; we’re just doing the best we can. It’s okay if sometimes our best just isn’t that great.

What I also realized, after I moved past those silly little feelings of failure, was that I still had a blast. I crossed the finish line after XC smiling from ear to ear, every bit as “high” as I always am after running cross country with Henry. It’s such a joy to be galloping and jumping a horse that absolutely loves his job, it brings me a level of bliss that nothing else can. And at the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about isn’t it? I spend my life scrimping and saving and eating a lot of Ramen to afford this sport, and not because I get ribbons and glory in return. I do it because of the sheer joy the horse and the sport give me, and that joy certainly does not hinge on a score or ribbon. A score does not define us, so why was I letting it? It tells you nothing about my or Henry’s story. It’s just not a big deal.

I also learned that even the worst day at a horse show still isn’t a bad day at all. Lauren wrote about this a while back in her post Attitude is a Choice, with the poignant phrase “Isn’t it a luxury to have a bad horse show?”. It absolutely is. Spending the weekend at a beautiful facility on the back of a horse just can’t possibly be that bad, no matter how it ends. If the worst thing happening in my life at the moment is a bad horse show, things are going pretty darn well.

Either I’m getting better about this whole attitude thing or the loss of my mom in August really highlighted what’s important vs what isn’t, but my perspective has changed. A year or so ago a show like this would have definitely spurred a few private tears and I’d have felt pretty defeated/humiliated, but this time I was still all smiles on the way home. Here I am, four days later, still smiling. I feel lucky to be able to do this at all, even when I do it badly, and I still feel nothing but euphoria when we cross the finish. At the end of the day, the circumstances don’t matter. Nothing is permanent, for better or for worse… all you can do is enjoy the ride.

Yay, something that didn’t take forever to get! STILL don’t have my AEC pics, btw…

They managed to get all the jumps in the video except for 2, 5, 13, and 14. Greenwood’s course is so spread out and wooded, I’m sure it would have required a few more videographers to get it all.

And some stills from the video

    

Random question of the day – does anyone besides Ecogold make a shaped XC pad that comes in navy? And not the cotton one BoB carries, which is the one I currently have.