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Hello from sunny-and-beautiful-at-least-for-a-couple-more-days Florida. As you may or may not have heard, there’s currently a hurricane pointed…. directly at us.

I mean, the good news is that we’re far enough inland to not get the bad hurricane shit like storm surge or the super extreme wind speeds. The bad news is, right now we’re in the spot to get all the rain and storms in the north east quadrant, so it should still be a lot of wind and rain. Right now the forecast has wind speeds up to 50mph and rain up to 9″, but it’s still changing a lot day by day, so we’ll see.

For us the wind in the storms is the biggest threat. It takes out trees, which takes out power. After one particularly bad storm a few years back, the power was out at the farm for 2 weeks. We’ve got a well, so no power means no water. Obviously that’s problematic on a farm with 40+ horses. I’ve been stockpiling water as much as possible (no empty container is safe from me) and we’ve got enough feed and hay for at least a couple weeks. We also got groceries, water for the humans, and topped off our propane. I’m hoping that since we’re prepared, it’ll be unnecessary. Growing up in New Orleans means that this isn’t my first rodeo with hurricanes, and I’m also still carrying the trauma from when Texas froze over and we had no power and water, so. Yay?

Shame about that hurricane, because otherwise it’s been just gorgeous here. Highs in the mid-80’s, sunny, and not really all that humid. I’ve been trying to keep all the horses worked in anticipation of missing some days this week, and they’ve all been pretty darn good. Presto’s persona of the week (I swear he shuffles through them like a deck of cards) was “half-dead lesson horse”. Like he kept trying to go to the shade, stop dead, and put his head like a foot off the ground as if he could not possibly go one more step. Which is of course a complete and total lie, as evidenced by the yeehaws when the neighbors rolled up with a trailer full of cows. I dunno how it’s possible to be this lazy yet this chaotic all in one horse… he is a case study in contrasts.

I did a course at home yesterday that was 3′-3’3″, the first time I’ve done like complete full courses on him by myself with no adult (er, professional) supervision, and he was super. Like 10 cookies. He’s getting more rideable, and he’s completely not at all bothered when I make a mistake. Which I do plenty.

I also did at least pretend to do some due diligence and look at the Novice dressage test. Which, ok I will admit that it’s been like 6 years since I really looked at one of these (ok I did do a N test with Henry last summer but I couldn’t tell you a thing about it) but like… this is interesting.

I don’t hate it (aside from the first turn from centerline to then go directly across the diagonal, and that 10m half circle onto center line – bc hello I ride a limousine) but I feel like my brain remembers Novice tests being like 20m circle, cross the diagonal, 20m circle, canter, 20m circle, walk, cross the diagonal, trot, canter, 20m circle trot, halt, boom done. Like when in doubt you just made another circle or crossed the diagonal, extremely basic. This one is quite different. Legit had to pull up a video to make sure my brain was understanding a couple parts. I think I like it though?

Otherwise this week we’ll be doing more hurricane prep and battening down the hatches around here. Fingers crossed Ian turns away, or at least isn’t too angry by the time he gets here…

As I mentioned earlier this week, sBs was here on Monday to inspect mares and babies. We had 11 horses total to run through, but Quinlee was the only 2022 foal of the group so she got to go first of the WTW horses.

She came up the barn with Inca, they got beautified, Quinlee got some braids put in, and ta-da, they were ready to go.

She did seem perhaps slightly offended by the man with the clipboard. He kept staring at her and just seemed a bit… judgy.

After he looked at her conformation, he watched her walk straight away and straight back, and then trot straight away and straight back. Then it was time for the fun part – letting her loose so they could see her free gaits. Presto, who is in the paddock across the driveway from the one we were using for the inspection, found this part to be very exciting.

They trotted and cantered around for a few minutes so that the judge could see how Quinlee moves, and then that was it. All done.

Quinlee got great scores for her confirmation and gaits, earning the designation of Premium foal.

Later she got branded (which she felt was also very rude of That Guy) and then the next day she was weaned! Inca loaded up and headed back to Texas with Michelle, and now Quinlee is out in the weanling herd here in Florida with all the race babies. They both handled weaning very well, it wasn’t a big deal at all.

Next week we’ll look at some of the other kiddos that got inspected. Quinlee just demanded her own post… for obvious reasons. #diva

Noodle went on another field trip yesterday!

Steph is gonna be gone to Stable View this weekend, so instead of pushing off our usual late week/weekend lesson to next week, I asked if she had any time before she left. She said she was planning on taking a couple horses over to Majestic to XC school, and I should bring Presto with. Zero arm twisting required for that. Sign me up.

So I put his saddle on, tossed his bridle and my helmet and my vest in the trailer, and off we went. This was the first time I’d taken him XC schooling by himself, and I was curious to see if he would be any different about the nappiness when being asked to leave the group. I got on and started warming up a couple minutes before the other two horses that met us there, so that he had to go off by himself with no hand holding or moral support. He was definitely in giraffe mode for the first few minutes (so many things to see, so little time to noodle) but he did listen when I asked him to pay attention to me, and we changed direction, played with opening and closing the trot and canter, and then popped over a couple warmup jumps. Once we got down to business, so did he.

Once we were warmed up we started making our way around, picking some things to jump. Courses are always set at Majestic, so it’s easy to follow a level all the way around if you want, or pick and choose bits from different courses. We wanted to see how he would be leaving the group, so the first mission was to string together jumps 1 and 2 and then swing back around past the group to a Novice table. He was totally fine leaving the group, good over one and two, and though I felt him give an eyeball to the other horses as we passed, he kept going to the table. Completely biffed the distance to that, but ya know… it wasn’t because he was being nappy, his mother just makes bad choices sometimes.

After that we went over to the ditches. I think I’ve only ever really jumped like one ditch on him so I wasn’t sure if he’d be looky about it or not, but no. No he was not. Popped right over like he was bored with us. So then we left the group again, catching a ramp a little ways away

then swinging back toward the group and jumping through the coffin first the Novice way (ditch to smaller hanging log) and then part of the Training way (just their ditch, bending line to a bigger hanging log). He was super good about all that too.

From there we headed over to the banks, first walking up and down the smallest one (he was a little *yeehaw* about the bank when we schooled a couple weeks ago at Magnolia Sands, so doing it the boring way first seemed wise) then trotting up and down the middle one, then trotting down and adding the BN house. That was all easy peasy so then we jumped the middle one up, cantering away to a N coop, turned around and jumped the coop back, down the bigger drop with the log on top, and then jumping the N house. Aside from strongly considering spooking at a couple jumps on the fence line near the N coop (for funsies), he was super good about all that.

Then it was off down the hill to complete the holy trinity: the water. We took the N line through here first, cantering over a little house a few strides before the water, then through it, out up a little bank, straight ahead to a shark’s tooth (their N is legit, I love it). Completely biffed the distance to the upbank and he had to sort of climb out at trot, but I booted him forward again and he jumped out over the shark’s tooth happily. He’s fairly undeterred by things on XC (ok he’s fairly undeterred by what he’s doing on XC, but quite easily deterred by whatever else may or may not be happening around him). We turned around and cantered through the water again, out over the Training roll top.

Since the bank was not great we came back through and did that again, and this time he was staring off to the right at what another horse was doing and I’m not quite sure what all of his legs did at the bank, but somehow he made it up the thing with the strangest yet somehow entirely effective hop while not paying one iota of attention to it at all. It was the most graceful awkwardness I’ve felt in a while. Presto to a T. You can always count on him to entertain. Wish we had that one on video.

We called it a day with that, and Steph said “I think it’s horse show time”. Alright then. She suggested a Florida Horse Park show in 2 weeks, but it’s a recognized and I’d rather save a bit of money and do schooling shows with him for a while. Plus I expect we’ll have plenty of kinks to work through in the beginning, so… better to do it in a lower pressure environment. Luckily this is Ocala, and a big part of why I wanted to move here is because there are so many show options. There are two schooling shows in October too, one at Majestic and one at FHP, so we’ll aim for both of those.

Naturally instead of doing the wise thing and looking at the dressage test, I am focusing on the fact that the FHP show is a Halloween show, and people dress up. Punk Rock Presto totally needs an outfit.

Ok so I missed my Monday recap post but it was for a reason you hopefully find acceptable – yesterday was sBs inspection day!

Michelle drove in on Saturday with another load of mares, and yesterday morning the Belgian judge and his entourage came over to look at the mares and babies. Since there wasn’t an inspection last year we had 10 horses to do this time between mares, yearlings, and the foal from this year. Luckily a private inspection is a fairly relaxed affair, so we were able to get through them all by lunch time.

I did opt to go ahead and present Gemma to them, because they were here so why not. I hadn’t really planned on doing a mare inspection for her yet but it was just way too easy of an opportunity. I pulled her out, hosed off her legs, pulled her bell boots, and in she went. Some of the other mares were running around in the front pasture so she stood a bit like an Arabian, and didn’t show her walk to it’s full potential, but she was still approved, and with scores of 8.5 for her trot and 9 for her canter. Not bad for a Thoroughbred with a warmblood registry! Now that’s done, so if we do decide to breed her next year (I have no idea what the plan is at this point) at least we don’t have to worry about getting her to an inspection when she’s pregnant.

Let’s see… working backwards, what else has been happening…

My weekend mornings were pretty full with Pratoni. XC day was bonkers but in a way that made for good sport (the Slide was iconic and the course was kind to the horses, so that’s a success in my book). I ended up tossing breeding info out for people most of the weekend but not writing anything else myself, although now that it’s over I need to go back through my data with the scores and see what kind of story there might be.

Admittedly my eyeballs are a bit broken from staring at spreadsheets all day every day last week, between the Pratoni data and the PFI data. Kind of a big weekend for Breed.Ride.Compete. … it was nice getting shoutouts on EN and on the PFI live stream. Now we get a bit of a break from that part of things before Maryland 5*, but we’ve got a lot of pedigree reports to complete in the meantime, so no rest for the weary around here. It’s ok, that’s the kind of busy I don’t mind.

BTW my standout “one to watch” from Pratoni was Duke of Champions, for the Italian team. My type of horse. He’s got the same sire (Duke of Hearts xx) as Cornelia Dorr’s newly minted Burghley horse, Daytona Beach 8, who is also a favorite of mine. I’ve liked DoH for years so it’s fun to see some of his offspring starting to show up at the top level.

I feel like I cursed both Team France and Vassily de Lassos by picking them publicly on the EN Staff Predictions article so I’ll just be over here keeping my bad juju to myself next time.

Noodle and I also had another jump lesson this past weekend. We’re putting together more courses, and working on his rideability and adjustability. He’s getting better and better, and he’s been jumping well too. He’s a bit cocky sometimes, but he does find this stuff to be pretty easy. I’m having to adjust my ride a lot (this is definitely not Henry and they aren’t even remotely the same ride) which is a learning curve, but I gotta hand it to the kid, he’s a total good dude about stuff like that.

He’s just so game and down for anything. And he does not give a shit about any kind of rider mistake, he can and will jump from anywhere you get him without so much as ruffling a feather. It’s still a lot of horse to try to package together, but he’s really fun. I’m glad that he keeps his Fuckery out of his work life.

I also really like how we’re focusing on these rideability and adjustability exercises now, early on, and while the jumps are still small. Taking the time to get all these basics more firmly cemented now, I feel like will pay dividends later on.

Mostly we’re still solidly in the partnership building phase… I’m learning how to trust and support him (he doesn’t really need my help the way Henry did, but he does need a lot of support) and he’s learning to be a more rideable noodle. It’s a fun time, although I do feel like my learning curve is steeper than his. He would probably agree.

Anyone else up at 4am to watch the live action from Pratoni? No? Just me. That’s fair. Honestly I was awake anyway, and I spent so long (like… 3 days) making the breeding data spreadsheet for it that I now feel like I absolutely must watch. Not such a hardship though, I do love these big Championship events. If you want to follow along here’s the link to watch (it’s a paid subscription service but it does offer a free trial month, so you can sign up and then cancel after).

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We’ve also got the breeding data spreadsheet up on the BRC webstore. This might be the best one yet, I feel like we learn a little bit more with each one, and this time I went down some seriously wild rabbit holes to get some missing data. Like… WhatsApping people in the Netherlands and Australia. It’s fine.

The end result is that we’ve got a ton of data that the results site doesn’t, and some that isn’t in any of the main databases either, so there’s that. I find it endlessly fun to sort and filter everything in different ways. Cheap thrills, y’all.

I should also have an article coming out sometime today on Eventing Nation on some of the familial connections of the horses at Pratoni – keep an eye out for that. If you missed my article from earlier this week about the incredible depth of the mare families of the Burghley top 10, you can read that one here. I hope I’m not boring anyone to death with the breeding stuff but for real there are some tidbits that are just so fascinating.

I’ve got a busy day today getting live stream data ready for PF, so I can’t linger, but what a great week/weekend to watch some good eventing!