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I was, in retrospect, a bit conservative with Presto’s workload leading up to this show, for a few reasons. First, my division ran on Thursday, and everything with Gemma happened on Monday. Kinda threw things off track a bit in many ways. Second, it was a really windy and dusty week, and there was a shitton of pollen in the air… Presto is always a bit affected by air quality. Third, it was going to be hot on show day, and all of our phases were within 2.5 hours of each other. I (stupidly) thought “maybe I should go a bit light on him this week so he’s fresher on Thursday”. Lol. Loooollllllllll. Go ahead and engrave that on my tombstone.

Its possible that he was perhaps slightly feral. To his credit he is not good at Long Game Feral, his tends to be released in small bursts. So he warmed up quite well for dressage, and went in feeling good. The test started off great, with a string of 7 and 7.5’s. And then when we turned right after the free walk in the middle of the test, he got an eyeful of the horses running cross country. And theeeeeen things got a little western. As soon as I picked up the trot to the right and made my half circle, I was like “oh dear”. He was now significantly more tense than he’d been. That movement had scored a 7.5 on the other side – this one got a 6. Then we got back to the rail and picked up the left lead canter. It was tense and tight. Another 6. Then we did our circle and I asked for the lengthening. And, well… we went to the rodeo.

@breed.ride.event

When you’re supposed to be doing a canter lengthening but your young horse is ✨feral✨ #sideeye #equestrian #horses #equestrianfail #horsegirl

♬ original sound – user6934054176375

I wish the original video had picked up the squeals he let out with every bounce. It was iconic. I mean, the judge didn’t think so, she gave it a score of 3 with a comment of “disobedient”. It probably says a lot about me that I started laughing so hard that I almost forgot the next movement (the transition back to trot at X, which he thought was very stupid, and also got a 6). If you don’t have a sense of humor this isn’t the horse for you.

Presto did come back to me for the rest of it and we finished up fine, but uh… the damage to our score had kinda already been done. What had been trending as upper 20’s before he had The Sight ended up a 33.6. It do be like that with enthusiastic young horses sometimes. To be fair, the judge and scribe were also laughing when I finished and I asked if I could get extra credit for the airs above the ground (apparently that’s not a thing).

After dressage I got off and handed the Noodle over to Hillary so Steph and I could walk stadium. It was kind of interesting in that it started with a bending line, and when I stood there and watched a few horses go after we walked, everyone did a different number of strides in every line. Cool cool. That’s fine. It’s a Choose Your Own Adventure. Finally Lauren Nicholson went in and did it how it had walked, so I was like alright that’s all I needed to see.

I will say – I chose to enter the 6yo Training division at this show for a couple reasons. Mostly because any time organizers offer age divisions and they actually work out for me, I want to support that. But also because it ran as a Thursday one-day and if there’s anything I love it’s getting in there and getting done as quickly as possible, not having to make the drive a second time, and not being there when it’s mega crowded. I will be entering the pro divisions all season to avoid the worst of the crowds. There were 650 horses entered at this show. SIX HUNDRED AND FIFTY. That is called a hard pass. Most go on the weekend, so by doing the Thursday divisions where really only one ran at a time, it was nice and quiet and peaceful.

Which is good because my horse was not.

Well, ok. We went up to SJ warmup like 10 minutes before my time (remember, we have learned by now that he knows exactly which phase he’s warming up for and when, and he has chosen SJ warmup as his designated ABSOLUTE MORON time). When I got up there I found that they were running early and there were only two horses left to jump, so I trotted a bit each way and then moved to canter. At which point he decided that he had never seen the logs outside one end of the arena before (they have always been there) and spun like a top, following it up with a big ol’ hi ho silver. He stood up and waved his arms in the air like this.

Which was right when Hillary happened to look over. The look on her face was priceless.

I booted him back to canter and was like “I think we need to jump something!” and we came around and popped over the vertical, which immediately plugged his brain back in. Presto is really convinced he’s there to party until you show him that he actually has a job to do. Then he’s fantastic. We jumped the oxer a few times, making it progressively bigger, then went to the ring.

We had a nice first bending line, but I didn’t really keep the balance up through his shoulders through the tight turn back to 3, and he ticked that rail. After that he went into No Touchie mode (see above photo) and was really good. I had a couple deep distances but he’s getting better at jumping out of those and keeping his balance up, which is what we’ve been working on for a while. There is not a world that exists in which I will always get him to a perfect distance, so how he jumps out of a less than ideal one matters, and he’s figuring it out. It’s hard for a big lanky horse, but it’s important because the long one or the weak one can’t be the default on a horse that has to jump solid things for a living.

After that we put his boots and my vest on and off we went to cross country warmup!

Well, I had a couple more posts drafted for last week, but after what happened with Gemma it just kinda… didn’t feel right. It was a somber week here, and to be honest I just wasn’t feeling it with carrying on here as if what happened with her was just a “blip”. Because it certainly wasn’t, not by a long shot.

The thing about having horses though, and living on a farm, is that life keeps on trucking along and the world keeps on turning whether you want it to or not. Other horses still have to be ridden and fed and cleaned up after. There’s still work to do. So you carry on, not because you aren’t devastated by what’s happened, but because you have no choice but to keep going. And the thing about horses is that while they can drop us to the lowest of lows, they also take us to the highest of highs. They wound, but they also heal.

So I took a few days to kind of retreat from “public” things a bit, like the blog and social media, and just spend some quiet time with the horses. At the same time I was getting ready for a show with Presto and let me tell you, it’s a weird thing to reconcile in your brain, being deeply sad but really excited at the same time. At least for me… admittedly I’m not the best with understanding or expressing emotions.

We also had the first WTW foal of the season born last week. And again – it was so exciting to meet the new baby, but also had a tinge of sadness because it also reminded me of the breeding plans we’d started to make for Gemma. There are lots of little kicks in the gut like that, from seeing her name on her grain bucket to putting away her blankets to having her cute face pop up on my facebook memories. It sucks, and it’s going to be like this for a while I imagine. I sure did love that silly little mare. At some point Hillary and I will start to keep an eye out for another nice mare, and if something super special comes along then so be it, but we won’t be going out of our way to look for one.

In less depressing news, tomorrow we’ll get to the horse show recap and then of course a new baby means that this week marks the return of FOAL FRIDAYS! That is probably the best news we’ve had in a while. This little one is super cute, too, y’all are in for a treat (pssst Patrons, check your dashboard for a preview). In the meantime here’s a quick catch-up on what else has happened in the past couple weeks.

The week before last, Presto went to another Wednesday afternoon jumper show to do the 1m class. He is quite unfazed by this height now and is legit just loping casually over things. We did learn at this show that the chin strap on my bit did not want to stay hooked (it came undone at fence 2 and flapped around the whole rest of the time, so that was cool), which was definitely good to know BEFORE that happened at a real horse show. I swapped the hook for a clip – problem solved.

Hillary and Lex moved up to Novice, bossing it around Rocking Horse like a couple of little baddies.

Henry ponied Nunez (who also got body clipped) and it was pretty freakin cute.

Nunez also went on his first XC school, with Sarah in the irons. That too was pretty freakin cute. He popped around all the Starter like a little champion.

I think that catches us up on the bigger events… that I can remember anyway. Life feels like a blur at the moment.

If you follow me on social media at all then you already know this, but a couple days ago we lost Gemma.

It is, to be totally frank, wholly devastating. Losing a horse always is, and it’s the worst part of loving them. It seems especially awful when it happens so suddenly, without warning, like a complete sucker punch out of nowhere. Just a few weeks ago we had a discussion thread in the Patreon group about who we were going to breed her to this year, and now all the sudden… here we are. As Bekah so succinctly put it, “it isn’t just the loss of a good mare, it’s the loss of dreams”.

I won’t get into a lot of detail here because to be honest it was very traumatic and I don’t think most of you really want to hear it, but the short version is that she had a very nasty and severe colic. I found her down at breakfast (she had been totally fine at night check the night before) already in severe distress. It was very clear that there was no saving her and we had to make the humane decision to end her suffering.

Initial necropsy results show that she had a severe epiploic foramen entrapment. Surgery would have been the only option (which she wasn’t a great candidate for) and likely still wouldn’t have ended well – the tissue was already starting to die. Her odds for surviving even the actual surgery itself would not have been great and her risk for complications would have been high. It does help a little bit to know (and have several vets say) that our decision was the right one, because we all know how terrible of a decision that is to have to make.

Our time with Gemma was heartbreakingly short, but she left her mark on us none-the-less. She will always be the sweetest, funniest, hardest-trying little chestnut mare I’ve ever met, and I will always remember how brave and smart she was, and how it was impossible to give her a treat without at least a couple fingers ending up in her mouth. And I’ll definitely miss hearing her bellowing impatiently at me from across the farm when she demanded food and/or wither scratches.

Despite how it ended I feel like it was an honor to be her person and a privilege to know and love her. Rest easy, clever girl.

I’ve been working on drafting a post about how all the new equipment is going, but that’s been a bit slow coming along. Until then, let’s do a quick catch-up.

Since we’re in the middle of show season, we’re kinda going from show to show to show and then working stuff in in between. There’s literally a show every weekend through like April, so at least we have the luxury of choice. This weekend is Rocking Horse again, which Hillary is doing but I’m not. I opted to enter Ocala 1 at Florida Horse Park next week instead, and I chose the Thursday One Day division so that I can be done in just one day and not on the weekend. It’s easier that way. I dig having the option.

So basically since we always have show entries at this point, the other things get planned out accordingly. This past weekend we had a jump lesson, joining the Assistant Trainer and her super nice young horse who is the same age (and has a real similar personality) as Presto. They are two peas in a freakin pod, man. A good lesson match though, because we’re working on a lot of the same things and are at a fairly similar place in their training.

It’s also kind of nice lessoning with someone again. I love having one on one attention of course but I also see a lot of value in being able to watch someone else go and hear their feedback… especially since it’s so relevant to me too. I wouldn’t mind having a lesson buddy!

Something else we’ve also decided to add into Presto’s life is aquatred.

We have two places very close to here that offer it… one is a little cheaper and has a nice package option, so we decided to do a package and see how it works for him. I’m hoping it will help strengthen his hind end and give him a bit more fitness, but without the wear and tear on his body. Steph does it with hers and loves it, and our chiropractor thought it could be great, so I’m interested to see how he looks after doing it once a week for a few months. Watching his motion while he’s in the aquatred is fascination, you can really see him using his back.

I mean, he was real salty about the whole thing and not always the most coordinated, but I can see how this could potentially really help him. I’ll take progress pictures and videos as we go along so we can all compare.

For the first session they gave him some light sedation to introduce him safely to the machine, and slowly let in the water, only bringing it to about mid-cannon. Next time they’ll work it up to his knees, and then finally to just below his belly. They do it slowly though to make sure the horses are comfortable and understand what it’s all about. They’ll also gradually work up his time in the machine so that it’s not overly fatiguing. It’s a really nice place so I’m very interested to see how it goes.

Today he has his regular chiro appointment, tomorrow we’re gonna go do some jumper rounds, and on Thursday morning we’ll go pop over a few XC fences… not much, but maybe some skinnies and combos so that we keep building his education at that. Then we’ll just be coasting until next week’s show.

I did XC about half an hour after stadium, but it needed it’s own post because – good news – I have so much freakin media!

Well ok, I have no video. But I do have XC course walk photos and I bought the All Images package from Xpress Foto, and they got TONS. So ya know. Win.

First: the course.

We hadn’t seen any of this before, of course. When we were here in December we ran the Novice, so aside from passing through the water complex, all of this was new… even the start box was in a new place.

I took pics of all the jumps but these below are a mix of mine and ones from Jana Lyle Ellerbusch in the XC Course Walks group on Facebook… hers were generally a lot better than mine.

The only one missing is the last jump, which was a simple coop shared with Modified.

1 and 2 were both running right beside the trailer parking, so honestly this was my main point of concern. If he’s going to get nappy or distracted it would be there.

2 and 3 were both simple jumps, getting into the flow. 4 was a flag table, not too big or wide, with a pretty quick right hand turn to the first combo at 5AB, two ramps set on an angle with four strides between them. You had to make sure not to come in too hot to the flag table lest you miss your line for the ramps.

6 was another gallopy jump (this one is one of my favorites, it’s big and wide but the profile is so friendly), and then you were at the next combo at 7AB. It’s really hard to tell in the photos, but the ground did a little roller coaster thing in between these two. You went up a bit of a mound to 7, then down a bit, then up a bit, and then downhill to the sharks tooth at B. Nothing crazy, but you had to ride it almost like a coffin so they had time to figure out the terrain in between. 8 was a big open MIM oxer, with a quick 90 degree right hand turn to the water. The “in” was pretty friendly, a small rolltop a couple strides before the water, and then directly out of the water there was a big hanging log.

After that was another table with a long gallop out to the crater at 11 and 12. We had a mushroom table, down into the crater, back up the steep edge, and then a brush skinny a couple strides out of the edge. Presto hadn’t yet seen a brush skinny, so that one could be interesting.

Then it was a wide brushy steeplechase fence at 13, straight ahead to a half coffin at 14AB. The ditch was a stride before the jump, and the jump was set on an angle to the ditch. Cool question, I liked it. After that you hung a right to another brushy gallop fence at 15, over to 16AB. This was a ramp, swing a left around a tree, to a corner. You also went from light to dark here, so it was important to get their eye on the corner ASAP and ride positively up to it.

From there it was a relatively easy gallop home over a coop, then another skinny brush, and a little house at the last.

So how did it ride? Let us begin mediapalooza. For some of the jumps I have a photo series, so I made GIFs for those. It’s sort of like video right?

By some strange miracle, when I got down to XC warmup there was literally no one there. It was crickets. SJ had been running a good 20 minutes behind so I think it just kind of became XC ride time mayhem. Which kinda seemed to work better, since they were just sending people out as they were ready. I cantered a couple laps each way, making sure I could go forward and back, then popped him over a little coop, then a bigger coop on an angle, then a bigger log oxer. Presto was feeling keen and ready to go, so I trotted over to the start box. They asked me what countdown I wanted and I asked for 10 seconds… the less we dwell, the better. I also think for this horse the way we leave the box is important, so I kept him on contact in a marching walk, bending him left and right to keep his attention. At 3 seconds I pointed him through the opening on the side and by “have a great ride” we were cantering out, keeping Presto’s mind on the business.

I also have noticed that if he’s going to try to spin, it’s almost always through his left shoulder. So I made sure to come out with my whip in my left hand and with a bit of a left bend to make sure that shoulder stayed on track. No worries though, he was all business. We popped over one and I asked him immediately to go a bit more forward and keep his attention off to the left towards the course rather than gawking at all the trailer parking on the right. Presto was very much Game On though, no problems at all. We hopped over the bench at 2, the green rolltop at the 3, and then made the turn to the first real question on course, the flag table to the angled ramps.

I made sure to get him straight to the flag and try to get him deeper to the base… if you took a flyer there or came in too hot you’d have a hard time making the right turn to the ramps without ending up way off your line.

We landed, half-halted, and I turned him right and I could kind of feel him going “huh” and when he saw the ramps “oh wow more?”. Things come up faster and closer at Training than they did at Novice. To his credit his response to things like that is “NEAT, LET’S DO IT” not “oh geez that’s a lot”… he’s super keen.

In over the first angled ramp

And out over the second. This 4 stride rode tight for us.

After that it was a little ways to the triple step bench thingy, which he jumped freaking amazing. Right out of stride, shoulder up, all I had to do was shift my own shoulders like 6 strides out and he did the same… like a real boy. He’s already figured out so much since we ran the Novice here a couple months ago. He got a Good Boy and a pat for that one.

Then it was the little roller coaster at 7AB, which I’d heard had been riding a bit spooky. Because of that I rode a little bit strong into that one, which ended up not being necessary, and made the line a little bit tight getting out. I dunno what some of the other horses were seeing there, but Presto was not bothered.

Things came up pretty rapid fire at his point. We swung around to the big MIM oxer at 8, which I have different views of.

That thing looked big in person, I’m annoyed it looks so small in photos. Also note the newer yellow MIM clips which break more easily than the original red ones. I do love seeing all the frangible fence technology out here in Florida.

From there we had a quick right turn to the water, which had a very friendly rolltop in, but that hanging log out had also been causing some problems. It was pretty big and spooky and right up on the berm edge of the water, so it definitely was requiring some gritty riding from a lot of folks. I was one of them. Not because Presto was bothered by it, but because this big dingdong sometimes just can’t resist a good cannonball into the edge of the water.

He didn’t do that at the December POP show and I foolishly thought that maybe now at Training we’d given him enough to think about to where he would no longer feel the need to add his own flair. Incorrect. What he didn’t realize here was that there was a jump OUT, and it’s only a few strides across the water. He landed 1/3 of the way through the water, way to the right of our jump out. I had to do a major course adjustment while he was out there like DERRRRR WAAATERRR IS FUUUHHHNNN.

We ended up trantering out over the log on an angle, at which point he was like “Oh… whoops… didn’t know that was there… perhaps I made an error…”. To his credit, if I can get him pointed remotely in the right direction, he’s game to jump it. On the other hand COULD WE STOP INVENTING MORE JUMPS THAT DON’T ACTUALLY EXIST.

He did get a big ol Good Boy and a pat for jumping out, because I think there are plenty of horses that wouldn’t have. But he also got booted back out in front of my leg and told to knock off the Fuckery.

We had a decently long gallop stretch after that, with one table along the way between the water and the crater. That one also came up nicely out of stride.

At the crater I knew my priority would be to make sure he saw the brush as soon as possible, and to make sure he stayed straight. Jumping into the crater just looked like a sea of flags. He immediately locked on to the double up banks (which I appreciate your gusto kiddo, but those aren’t ours) and I really had to dig in to get him turned to the left and up out of the crater. He saw the wedge and wobbled from the line a bit, not understanding that it was his jump, but when I dug in and went THAT ONE he was like “Ooooohhhhhhh… never seen one of these before but sure!” and popped over it. We were crooked and deep, but he was genuine, so I was proud of him for that. Another big pat and a Good Boy.

From there was the line from the steeplechase fence to the half coffin, which rode very easy, he popped right over that like it was a baby gymnastic. Then we had the turn back to the other brush fence, which he also jumped really well out of stride, and a long gallop to the corner combo. There I switched my whip to my right hand, in preparation for what was coming at 16AB with the left turn in the shadows.

I jumped in a little bit quieter at A to make sure we had a good turn back to the corner at B, and he was super game. Easy through that line.

From there we had another gallop stretch, and I asked him to gallop on a bit more. By this point he was kinda like “whew this is longer and faster than usual isn’t it?” I’m no expert but perhaps if we didn’t leap into the water like a drunken orangutan we’d have a little more wind left? Just saying.

He hopped over the coop at 17 easily, and then at 18 I was interested to see if he’d learned anything from the other brush wedge at 12. Indeed he did, because he locked onto this one immediately and stayed straight on the line. No question mark in his mind that time. Smart boy.

It was an easy gallop over the last, and a clear round at his first recognized Training! Was it a perfect round? Definitely not. There were a couple gritty moments. But I was super proud of his willingness and how genuine he is – there’s not a “no” in him, it’s just a matter of learning and getting the experience and getting him to stay focused.

I hadn’t put my watch on and we ended up a little slow, with 4 time penalties. It’s about time I step on the gas a bit more, and we need to up his conditioning a bit too. At every show we both learn things, and that’s what it’s all about at this stage. The time penalties dropped us down to 7th, which still got a pretty purple ribbon.

While I don’t think that I was riding very well at this show, what I did like a lot was that Presto really wasn’t even remotely bothered by it. He knows the game by now, and he loves it, and at this point it’s still very easy for him. He doesn’t take things personally or get upset by mistakes. Once he’s got more miles under his girth I think he’s going to be so freaking cool. Also he’s still so unimpressed by anything at this level and just loping right over – there’s a lot more in the tank. That’s pretty exciting. He’s so freakin fun, y’all.