Category: Uncategorized

The end of August in Texas is still basically mid-summer for us, so it’s still hot as hell here. There are very few recognized horse trials in the summer because of that, but the one we’re going to this weekend has a pretty good way to work around it:

Basically everything happens either before noon or after 6pm. Because no one wants to ride in 100 degree heat with 50% humidity. No one. But at 10am it should only be about 80 (granted, with around 70% humidity) and at 6pm is should be about 90 (with more like 35% humidity), both of which are better than 100 degrees in the mid-afternoon sun in West Texas where there’s not much shade.

I’ll be bringing a lot of ice, ice packs, and fans.

I will also try to keep our warm-ups under 15 minutes. Mostly walking before dressage, and just a quick canter and a couple jumps before Stadium and XC. This will be Henry’s second Novice and the rumor is that the courses will be set soft (and the XC speed is only 350mpm) so I just want him to hop around and get more confident at the level. We only need 3 more completions to qualify for the N3DE next year, so that takes a lot of pressure off. I’ll go with the same plan I had at Greenwood and Texas Rose with the dressage: calm and quiet, even if it means leaving points on the table. He’s still easily frazzled by dressage and Novice Test B doesn’t flow so well for us, so this will be our standard tactic for a while to come. I would not mind getting back another dressage test with comments like “lazy” and “needs more forward”. For this horse that’s a win.

Coats are waived so I’m gonna go pick up a purple sunshirt to wear in honor of my mom. It’ll match Henry’s purple braids.

It’s been a long 12 weeks since Texas Rose, I’m beyond ready to get this fall season on the road! Corona this weekend, AEC in 4 weeks, Greenwood 2 weeks after that, and then wrapping up 3 weeks later on Halloween at Pine Hill. Let’s do this. Also, Bobby is moving up to Novice this weekend because peer pressure totally works. And he’s going to kick everyone’s ass, as usual, including mine.

Normally I really hate doing how-to posts because it makes me feel like a little bit of a douchebag, but since several people asked, I’ll show you my process for a tail makeover.

Henry’s tail started out sunbleached, almost touching the ground, and pretty unkempt:

If he was a hunter I would have dyed it and left it alone. If he was a jumper I would have dyed it and banged it a few inches. Since he’s an eventer I dyed it, banged it about 6″, and trimmed the top.

What you’ll need:

• scissors and/or clippers
• hair dye (see more about that below)
• a plastic grocery bag
• vet wrap
• clothes you don’t mind getting trashed

I started off by trimming the top of his tail. There are a lot of ways to do this, my method of choice just being one of many, but it’s the one I’m most comfortable with and it works for me. A lot of people swear that pulling a tail is the only way to go – I’m not one of them. I will never pull a horse’s tail. So that leaves either the scissor method or the clipper method. I feel like I have a little more control with clippers, so that’s what I use. How far down the tail you go is up to you – some go quite a ways down the tail bone, but I personally just go the point of the rump, which ends up being about 6 inches. I pretty much do exactly what’s shown in the video linked above, making sure to go slow and be very deliberate about what I’m shaving off. Remember – you’re only trimming the hair on the sides, never ever ever the hair on the top.

With that done, it’s time to dye. You could bang it first if you wanted to, but I prefer to do it afterward when the tail is totally detangled and brushed out so you get a tidier cut.

Which hair dye to use has a lot to do with personal preference. My favorite is Clairol, either in Natural Darkest Brown or Natural Soft Black. If you get a very dark, blue-black color it will look a bit TOO dark and unnatural. Some people prefer to use dye specifically formulated for ethnic hair, but I’ve never had a problem with the Clairol taking and holding well, and it’s easy to find, so I’ve just stuck with it.

When you’re dying a tail, make sure that you’re either wearing black or something you don’t mind getting dye all over. Maybe other people out there are neater than I, but it’s inevitable that I get some on myself somewhere. Usually several somewheres. Also – fly spray your horse first. The last thing you want when you’re trying to dye a tail is to have them trying to fling it around all over the place.

Before I get started I put a nice generous coating of conditioner (Vaseline or something similar would work too, but I just use some of the conditioner that comes in the dye kit) on the sides of the rump near where the tail sits and above the dock. You don’t want any dye seeping onto the hair on the rump and making dark spots. If your horse has white on it’s hind legs and you don’t trust yourself to be tidy with the dye (I wouldn’t), put a layer of conditioner on those too.

This is what I call The Point of No Return. Once you start putting dye on the tail you can’t let go of it until it’s bagged. So before you start, make sure your hair is tied back out of your face and make sure you have all of your supplies handy. Put on the gloves included with the dye kit, follow the instructions for mixing, and apply the dye to the tail. I typically start at the top and work my way down so that I have more control over the tail as it gets coated (you DO NOT want the horse getting its tail loose from your grasp and whacking you in the face or itself in the body with a tail that is covered in dye!). This is a pretty simple process, just do your best to get full coverage. You can always go back later and touch it up.

When you’re finished applying the dye, it’s time to wrap up the tail. Before you start any of this, make sure your horse is okay with a plastic bag on it’s butt. None of mine have ever minded, but ya know… I’d feel bad if one of y’all died while dying. Take the bottom part of the tail and shove it into the plastic bag, tying a secure double knot at the top around the tail bone.

Some just leave it like this while the dye sets but I like for it to be extra secure, so I also take a roll of vet wrap and wrap over the knotted part of the bag, then all the way up the tail. That helps keep everything in place even if the horse starts swishing.

Let the dye set for however long it says in the instructions. I personally tend to err on the side of too long as opposed to not long enough. Usually that ends up being the perfect amount of time to pull/trim the mane, clip the fetlocks and bridlepath, and give Instagram a quick perusal.

After it has set, take all the wrappings out and rinse the tail until the water runs clear. Some people like to shampoo at this stage – I do not. I usually don’t shampoo for at least a few days after, but I’m not sure that it actually matters, it’s just how I do things. I rinse the tail and apply a good liberal coating of the conditioner that came in the dye kit, using the opportunity to work out all the knots and tangles with my fingers. Then I give it another good rinse, double check for any missed spots, and let it dry. Keep whatever left over dye you have and you can use it over the next couple days if you need to touch up anything… sometimes it’s hard to see missed spots until it’s all dry.

Once it’s dry it’s time to bang. Make sure everything is totally brushed out first, and then figure out how short you want to go. Typically if you have a horse that is built a little downhill (like mine) or tends to travel a bit on the forehand (like mine), you want to keep it a touch longer. A longer tail helps balance out a slightly front-heavy horse… or so they say. I’ll go with it. You also want to consider how high your horse’s natural tail carriage is.

My particular horse is pretty busy with his tail and tends to carry it a little bit “up”, so if I banged his tail at mid-cannon it would look very short when he was in motion. With all of that in mind, I banged his just above the fetlock, so that when he’s in motion it falls about mid-cannon. The finished product looks like this:

As I said in the beginning, this is just my particular process that I’ve developed over the years after a lot of trial and error. Feel free to experiment and use/do whatever works best for you, but hopefully this helps get you started!

Henry is the one growing, and it’s causing my wallet a lot of pain.

As many of you might recall, Henry lost quite a bit of weight last year at our previous barn, which is what prompted the move to our current place.

Since the move he’s really blossomed, putting on a ton of weight and muscle. His girth is 5 holes tighter and he’s rounded out so much that’s he’s starting to look like an applebooty. I’m pretty thrilled, because he looks and feels amazing and at this point I think his condition is perfect. Of course, there are other things impacted by the massive change in condition. It started a couple weeks ago when I went to put on his fancy PS of Sweden breastplate and had to basically crush his windpipe to clip it across his chest. A month prior I had to let it out several holes but this time there were no more holes left. Crap, he’s outgrown his cob. I guess that makes sense, since his chest has pretty much doubled in size from when I bought it. So I ordered a full, pulled out the backup breastplate to use in the mean time, grumbled a little, and got over it.

Then we had a couple of dressage rides in a row where he really tensed up any time I sat the trot and had some icky canter work. After the second bad ride I tossed my beloved Devoucoux up on him to check the fit and wow… there’s no denying it doesn’t fit at all anymore. The hollows that he used to have on either side of his wither are gone, and he’s significantly flatter from side to side across his back. My jumping saddle, which I was having to pad up six ways to Sunday before, is a pretty perfect fit now. So… at least there’s that. Because CWD = ❤ Unfortunately there is no denying that the Devoucoux is definitely pinching and sitting funny, and I can’t ride him in it anymore. Cue me feeling really really stupid for not thinking to check that before now.

Here we are a month before AEC and I’m basically dressage saddle-less. So now what? I can have the Dev repaneled, but it’s $900 and I don’t particularly trust them to get it done right or in a timely manner. The only viable option for me is to sell it and then try to find something else. That pains me greatly because I love the hell out of that saddle for me, but Henry has filled out in such a way that there’s just no making it work for him. I took pictures of it and officially listed it for sale last weekend. I’m hoping that it sells before AEC and that several vendors show up there with used saddles for me to try. But for now… it looks like we’re doing all our dressage work in my super forward CWD.

Henry is not allowed to change shape ever again after this, and every horse after him must be built the same. Saddle shopping is the worst. I have no idea what I want, no idea what will work for him, no idea what will work for me, and nowhere closeby that has lots of consignment saddles I can happily trial my way through. Ugh.

First I need y’all to understand the circumstances that this post is being written under, so that if it doesn’t make any sense I have a built in excuse. Quinn has chosen me as His Human, and as such my life apparently now revolves around him. It’s hard to type around fat corgi feet.

Friday was pretty lovely, mostly because lots of good food was involved. Good food is the gold standard. For dinner we went to a great ramen restaurant, then tried out a vegan ice cream place. I know what you’re thinking “Ew, vegan ice cream. Why would you ruin ice cream that way? That’s just wrong.”. That’s what I was thinking anyway. But I was 100% wrong because that place was awesome. The ice cream was good, period… vegan or not. We got something called the Rainbow Terror – two scoops of ice cream (we opted for chocolate and mint chip) – covered with peanut butter magic shell, sprinkles, toasted marshmallows, gummy worms, crushed oreos, and edible glitter. Yes I said edible glitter. I couldn’t get a picture to quite capture just how sparkly this thing was, but it made my little unicorn heart go pitter patter.

They also had cool stickers.

And a sign that I really wanted to steal for my house.

We will definitely be back for more Rainbow Terror, or perhaps a Glitter Beast next time.

Saturday was designated as spa day for Henry. It’s been a couple months since I did his mane, and I’m just going to braid into regular buttons for Corona next weekend, so it had to lose a few inches.

I also finally did his tail. I’ve been saying all year that if we got to AEC he would’ve officially earned a real eventer tail, so that’s what he got. The top got trimmed up, it got dyed back to a normal color, and I banged a good 6″ off the bottom. It now hits solidly mid-cannon when he’s in motion. Sorry hunter folk, but he’s all kinds of eventer-proper now.

Kinda wish I’d done his tail like this from the get-go, his butt looks so much more shapely.

Sundays have become our long-ride days, so we started out with 20 minutes of trotting in the ring and then headed out down the road for some exploring. I’m trying to get at least an hour in, and it can get a little boring. We cantered up and down a stretch beside the road a few times and then meandered around the backroads. I stumbled across this fantastic little patch of nothingness in between corn fields and it has awesome footing. Given how dry it’s been lately it’s become more and more difficult to find fields that aren’t getting super cracked and dangerous, but this one has survived really well. New trot and canter sets field? Yes please.

It also had a little wash out that made a perfect wannabe “sunken road”… hop down, one stride, hop back up. Henry thought it was great fun and tried to celebrate with a dolphinesque victory gallop. He thought it was less fun when I pointed him at an abandoned twin mattress on the side of the road on the way home, but jump over it he did. Cuz he’s an eventer and all that, and none of my bullshit surprises him anymore.

Tonight we have a dressage lesson and then mostly light work the rest of the week before we leave for Corona on Friday!

I have to admit, it didn’t really occur to me until I wrote yesterday’s post that doing a three day means that there are jog-ups. And jog-ups mean that there are jog outfits. We’ll ignore the fact that they say casual attire permitted and plan spiffy jog outfits anyway. Because this is my Rolex, and no one can make me jog up in barn attire at my Rolex.

Looking back through other N3DE’s, everyone’s jog-up attire seems to fall somewhere between “this is what I slept in” and “I was outfitted by the british monarchy”. Fist bumps to those who see this occasion the same way I do. If I’m braiding my horse, I’m not walking out looking like a hobo. That’s all I’m saying. Plus pictures. Everyone knows the pictures are the most important part. And everyone also knows that if you look supafly, you look more competent. I would love to fool people into thinking I’m competent, even if only for a few minutes.

Although eventers aren’t really known for being fashion mavens, the jogs always seem to be a whole ‘nother world entirely. Everyone seems to have a style that they prefer, ranging from

sleek and professional

to conservative

to dressy

to BRAVE (all white AND heels!)

to suicidal

to a pop of color

to badass

to a bold print

to avant garde

to looking like you’re definitely sponsored by Dubarry

to channeling Sharon White because you effin LOVE orange

to a human kite

Wait… nix that last one. Don’t do that.

Obviously there is a wide range of styles, from dresses to pants, plain to colorful, boots to heels, bold to conservative. I know what I like, but what’s your preference? This is the fun part.

As for me, rest assured that navy and yellow will be involved. There will be no dresses and no heels. And no, I am not afraid of yellow pants. Or yellow blazers.