As you may have noticed, I finally got around to “rebranding” the site with it’s new name! Well, at least in that I got the new domain name, set up forwarding for the old one, put up a new banner at the top, and changed my socials. Considering how long I procrastinated about any of that (6 months, but who’s counting) it didn’t really take that long. I mean, I do have full intentions of actually updating the rest of the site too, which is woefully out of date, and maybe changing the layout a bit, but… those things are actual work and I ran out of give-a-shits by the time I got the banner figured out. But hey, new name anyway. The old domain will continue to forward for a while but update your bookmarks!

Why did I run out of give-a-shits? Well ya know… Millstreet was live streaming this past weekend. Priorities. Must always stop whatever I’m doing if there’s a chance to watch one of my favorite event horses.

Plus I found a new horse to add to my favorites list in Tim Price’s Spartaco (an Italian-bred, don’t see that very often) who went around the entire XC course with his tail straight up in the air and his ears pricked to the max. He was having the absolute time of his life and it was adorable. A bit green but his excitement was so pure.

It was a little bittersweet to watch Millstreet since that was supposed to be our next big destination event, now delayed thanks to covid. But hey, at least Millstreet is up and running again… hopefully next year spectators will be back. Ireland is calling to me in a major way and I must go.

Other than the blog rebranding, the biggest news around here is that it’s FINALLY stopped raining every day. I long ago lost my good humor about the radar always looking like this.

At this point we’ve been a whole 3 days without rain, which is the longest we’ve gone in… weeks. Texas is feast or famine, I swear. We did need the rain after an unusually dry winter, but once it started it just would not stop. We got like 6 months worth of rain in a matter of weeks. The rain gauges from last week alone were throwing out some pretty insane numbers.

The one benefit of this is that it’s kept our temperatures down in the upper 80’s/low 90’s, which is pretty mild for us for this time of year. Usually by June we’re hitting triple digits already. I mean granted the humidity is higher than usual too, but still… you don’t immediately liquify when you walk outside, nor does the sun feel like it’s scorching your actual soul. It’s not that terrible in the shade even in the middle of the afternoon. I’ll take this weather, thanks.

Naturally though this means everything here is very very very soggy. Normally we dry pretty quick but even our fields are still quite squishy. The forecast for the week looks fairly promising though, so I think the show this weekend might actually end up happening after all. Granted, I’ve hardly ridden in the past couple weeks thanks to the weather, and there’s a 0% chance that I’ll be able to jump a course at all this week, but… preparation is overrated, right? I’ve been able to flat Henry the past couple days (at least a little bit, in the center part of the field where it’s driest) and he feels good, so… meh. It’s fine. We’re just showing for fun anyway. I did decide to do my dressage test in my jump tack, we both seem more comfortable in it. Now I just need to like… look at the dressage test at some point probably.

Oh – one other thing did happen this weekend! I helped Willow Tree Warmbloods get set up with a TikTok account. If you want bonus baby horse content and videos, give them a follow. Obi is already a star, naturally.

I am convinced that what we currently understand of genetics is just the very tip of the iceburg. I mean, it’s easy to understand or measure heritability when it comes to certain traits, like coat color or conformation. What I’m dying to know is what part of the genetic code is responsible for the weirder, more “niche” attributes. Like, for instance… Henry’s tongue thing. I found photos with his sire doing the exact same weird thing. Or how Sadie and all of her foals all have the instinct to want to sit on things (water troughs, trees, other horse’s heads, they’re not picky, but they all come out of the womb wanting to tackle problems butt-first and smash it…). Like, someone please explain whatever genes are responsible for those kind of idiosyncrasies, because I’m 100% certain there’s a “weird tongue thing” gene and a “just smash it with your butt” gene. One day we’ll find them.

And part of the fun of watching the foals start to develop their little personalities is seeing what traits come through, especially compared to their dams or their siblings. Teddy, for example, has been interesting, because we definitely all remember Ollie from last year. He was not lacking in character, that’s for sure. At first Teddy seemed like maybe she wasn’t going to be Mischief on Hooves the way he was, but little things are starting to come out that make me go “Oh yeah, there’s Ollie.”

I mean, the most obvious thing is the sass level. But then again, she’s a pony, and I’m relatively certain that sass has been bred into them since the actual dawn of time. Is there a pony in the world that isn’t sassy? Probably not.

We’re starting to see a little bit of a comedian start to show, too. Teddy’s got some jokes. I mean, usually they’re at Stormie’s expense (I think Stormie’s already got a “days til weaning” countdown on the wall of her stall), but she’s definitely got them.

But there’s one thing in particular that Teddy’s started doing that made me go “oh my god, it’s freaking genetic”. Remember how Ollie made a game out of climbing over the top of round bales? You’ll never guess who else has adopted the exact same game.

Her technique is slightly different, so far she seems more inclined to attack it from a gallop rather than just climb straight up it, but the end result is the same. Thank goodness the round bale is so small for now, while she’s learning the game and figuring out the moves. I have a feeling that by the time a new round bale comes in she will have totally mastered it and we’ll be getting some truly impressive leaps, just like Ollie. This little filly is a powerhouse, I wouldn’t be surprised to see her scale a whole round bale.

None of the other foals show the same “gallop and leap into the round bale” proclivity, they prefer to nap in them more than anything else. It’s so bizarre the traits that siblings share sometimes, I swear.

When somebody finds the genetic markers for Round Bale Leaping, let me know.

Happy Friday!

Well, our 2021 foal crop is officially complete. Unfortunately last week when Michelle checked the mare that was carrying Lissa’s second ET, she found her to not be in foal. She must have aborted sometime early on, after all the initial pregnancy checks, and being a chonky little QH mare it wasn’t really obvious until the end of term. Definitely sucks to not get Percy a full sibling, but at the same time it’s been a long hard stressful foaling season and there’s some relief at finally being at the end of it. Plus, like, who can complain about the 5 little cuties we did get? The class of 2021 is pretty cute.

Pippa is spoken for and Teddy is a keeper, but the colts will be available for sale. There were a few big moments with this crop, particularly with the birth of WTW’s first embryo transfer foal (Patrick) as well as Michelle’s much coveted grulla sportpony filly – exactly what she ordered. We also had no red-based foals this year, only bay and black (although Patrick and Percy will go gray), and a couple daytime births: one at 3pm and one at 5pm. Comparing and contrasting the two full siblings, Obi and Patrick, has been pretty interesting. There are some similarities but also plenty of differences, not only in how they look but also in their personalities. Genetics are funny.

As for the Baby Bets contest, while in years past it’s been a really tight race right down to the wire, this year we had a very clear and decisive winner. Bethkira finished with a whopping 80 points, with the next closest competitors having 65. Much of her success is attributed to the fact that she very impressively (what kind of voodoo magic are you working with, girl?) guessed all 5 colors correctly, and 4 out of 5 genders. She also got Lark’s foaling date and Stormie’s foaling time, plus some of the markings. That was a much deserved win. Bethkira please shoot me a message or email so we can get you your $100 gift card!

We do also want to recognize a couple other really good efforts. Two runners up had 65 points each, Kelly Synnott and Sydney Salle. We’re in the process of setting up a WTW merch store with Two Socks Designs, and as soon as it’s open we’d like to comp you guys an item of your choice up to $30 value. Drop me a message with your email and once Two Socks is ready to open the shop we’ll get you guys hooked up with something. I think Kelly deserves a special shoutout too because she guessed the foaling date, color, gender, and leg markings of Teddy, along with the comment “all I want for my bday is Michelle to get her grulla filly out of Stormie!” – that’s exactly what happened, so the good juju paid off and was much appreciated.

Thanks to everyone who played along with the contest this year, and congrats to the winners! Whether you won or not we hope you’re enjoying the Foal Friday posts, and now WTW is hard at work creating our 2022 crop.

On Saturday afternoon my friend Stacy proposed that we meet at Dover and then go get Indian food. Which, if you’re after my heart, that’s the surefire way, it takes about 0% convincing to get me to go along with a plan like that. I didn’t need anything at Dover, but I’m always up to poke around and see what they’ve got. Plus, like… if they had some white breeches that I didn’t hate, I wasn’t opposed to adding a pair.

And then, a couple days before, I found myself lusting after a coat and shirt online.

They’re in the UK, naturally, because every damn thing I love is always from overseas. The brand’s size chart was a little wonky looking, and in centimeters, so I figured I’d do the responsible thing and actually measure myself instead of guessing at size. I measured… looked, and… huh. That measurement was a couple inches less than it used to be. So I measured two more times. Yup, that shit shrunk. This led me to go pull out all my Motionlite coats, which used to fit pretty well, and son of a bitch if they weren’t too big. Like… the bust and arms were saggy. I could fit an arm down the front of the coat. That’s not a cute look for riding clothes, y’all.

I mean, yes… since I got my spin bike in late February I’ve been riding it 6 days a week without fail since the day I got it because I love it. And I added weights 5x a week a couple months ago because turns out I really like that too when I’m in the privacy of my own home and not in a gym being leered at by creeps. I haven’t done it to lose weight though, I’m doing it because I took one look at Presto with a pro on him and was like “Damn bitch, you’re going to have to get a lot stronger if you think you’re going to stand a chance at riding that thing right”. And it’s true, I needed to – and still need to – get a lot stronger. He is a big horse that is A Lot to manage and I want to at least be physically up to the task by the time he comes home. I don’t even own a scale though (bad things happen when you give me metrics like that to obsess over, I learned that a long time ago), or even a full length mirror in the tiny house yet (who knows what I ever look like when I actually go out in public, I sure don’t have a clue). Plus like, 99% of the time whatever pants I have on are elasticized since I work from home these days. I did have to go buy new jeans a month ago and ended up with a size smaller than before so I knew there had been some changes in my size at least. Mostly I’m just excited that I can tell that I really do feel A LOT stronger, my core is noticeably improved, and my arms are starting to get some nice shape and tone. I totally failed to consider what these changes meant for my riding clothes though, particularly my show clothes.

Confession: I don’t put on real breeches that often, I usually wear my tights with the phone pocket when I’m riding at home. So after I tried on my coats I pulled out my whites and they were a bit sad-sacky too, although mostly in the waist. I always shrink from the top down (the boobs are the first to go, and that’s a-ok with me), I’ve got these big old child-bearing hips (that have never and shall never bear a child, thank you very much) and meaty thighs that always stay proportionately bigger than my top half. So now I find myself kind of in between sizes on breeches and all of mine are gapping majorly at the waist. I was hoping Dover might have some that either ran a little big or ran a little small and would fit my in-betweenness nicely, but no luck there. Mostly because out of the many racks of breeches there was only ONE model that I actually liked the feel of the fabric, but they were full seat with way too much silicone. I didn’t even try any on. We need to talk about fabric and how to use silicone appropriately, breech companies. It doesn’t need to look like you used 15 sticks of hot glue on the ass.

Since we were at Dover anyway, I found my way to the rack of Motionlites and tried on the size down from what mine are. I expected the smaller size to be too small still (because in-betweenness) but I’ll be damned if it didn’t fit way better. No more saggy arms or bust in the smaller size. DAMN. IT. My carefully curated collection of Motionlites – 3 to be exact – was undeniably too big. One of mine still had the tags on and another had been worn a grand total of once. I thought for a second that maybe I could just forget how much better the other size was compared to my current ones, but no… it was one of those things you can’t unfeel. Hence me coming home and listing all my coats for sale the next day. As soon as I sell the last one I will replace the navy and the hunter green ones with other size and we’ll call it a wash. All of this to say that if you see me with new coats and shit, or selling things, don’t be judgy… this is why.

I did order the pretty coat and shirt from the UK though, and since I sat kind of perfectly between sizes on their chart (OF COURSE I DO) I ended up just ordering two sizes of the coat and two sizes of the shirt. I’ll sell whichever ones don’t fit for what they cost me to buy it, and someone here will get the benefit of not having to pay UK shipping, and I’ll get the benefit of not having to make a decision and end up with the wrong size. Win-win?

I did buy one thing at Dover though, and that was a sun shirt. As much as I don’t like most of their house brand stuff, I do think their sunshirts are decent, and they had one in a gorgeous steel blue color that I loved. I wore it for my lesson on Monday and 10/10 would recommend, it’s my new favorite color sunshirt I think. Looks on point with navy.

I have a few other sunshirts I need to sell, as soon as I can wrap my brain around it. There was one boon in all of this unanticipated spur of the moment clothes-trying-on at least – my beloved yellow and navy Boy O Boy belt that hasn’t fit in like 3 years actually fits again! And looks smashing with the steel blue shirt/navy pants combo. So glad I kept it!

I need to get another sale post organized when I have the energy. Today is not that day.

Well guys, guess who’s entered in an actual event?

I got to looking at the weather forecast and the temperatures actually look pretty promising for the MeadowCreek show in two weeks. Mid 80’s in Texas in June??? That’s just not a thing. Normally we’re at or near triple digits by now. But indeed the temperatures are supposed to be pretty good, so I was like hmm… Henry could go run around the Novice right? He isn’t the fit, svelte Prelim horse that he used to be, but he still gets ridden a lot and he’s definitely plenty fit for Novice. I mean… is he “tuned up” at this point? Not particularly. Has he worn a bit more than like 5 times in the past 2 years? No. Do I ride him in my dressage saddle at all anymore? Not really. Have we jumped a full course in the past like month and a half? Negative. But even if we’re mega rusty he’s still an experienced event horse, Novice should theoretically be a pretty easy hop-around for him (the after-the-fact benefit of all those years of hard work).

Of course, the reason that the temperatures are staying so mild is that it won’t quit freaking raining. Like for real. Every other day it pours buckets.

Is there a chance of rain every single day in the 10 day forecast? Yup. But, ya know… worst case scenario the show gets rained out or if the footing is too muddy I can just scratch (Henry isn’t drilled and tapped these days, nor was he much of a mudder even when he was). This is clearly a very low key, low pressure affair. If we can go, great, if we can’t, oh well. We aren’t working towards anything, it’s purely just for fun.

But I did start to get a few things together. First, I ran my idea past my trainer who responded with a resounding “DO IT!”, and then I scheduled a jump lesson. It’s rained so much here that my jump field is just a soggy squishy overgrown jungle and that probably won’t change anytime in the near future. I had a jump set up in the dressage arena, but.. ya know… that doesn’t really mimic a jump course nor can you really jump at pace in a small arena. So we scheduled a jump lesson for Monday, come hell or (literal) high water.

Which meant that on Sunday, Henry got clipped.

I usually clip him every summer anyway, to help him deal with the heat, I just moved it up by a couple weeks. I used to be skeptical of the summer clipping thing until I realized just how much hair comes off some of these thicker-coated horses. It’s a lot more than you would think, especially over their back half. Henry always seems noticeably cooler after it’s all gone, so even if there’s nothing worse than clipping a horse while sweating profusely and getting it all completely stuck to you, it’s still totally worth it for him.

I can already tell that I’m cursing myself by even putting this much preparation and thought into it. The show is gonna rain out for sure now…

Anyway. After Friday night’s complete deluge (I haven’t seen rain like that in a very long time, it was INSANE) it was too wet/slick to ride all weekend so on Monday I loaded him up for our lesson with Henry having had two days off. Not a big deal at all, by age 14 he’s pretty much the same horse all the time anyway, with maybe just a little more dolphining in the canter depending on how wild he is. It was the first time I’ve hauled him anywhere in a while though, so there was some mournful screaming for the first few minutes before he settled into his hay.

My trainer’s place got a lot of rain too, so about half of her jump field was quite squishy. What I really needed though, was to jump some lines, and to just have more space to open the canter up to what it needed to be. We had two lines where the footing was good enough, a regular one and a bending, and enough space to get the pace, so it worked just fine. I warmed up, we popped a few singles while I tried to remember what the appropriate jumping pace was (it’s always more than I think, I’ll catch on to that eventually right? Probably not.), and then jumped each line twice. By the third line I remembered how to rev the engine in the corner, re-balance, and then maintain the canter out of it, and tada everything clicked back in. I will say though, I think it’s harder to see a good distance to a smaller fence – they were set Novice height – than it is a larger one. There are just so many tempting options, I want to sample them all. I swear it was easier when they were so big that your only choice was to just keep coming at it no matter what.

Mission accomplished though, and hopefully it’ll dry at least enough to jump a little bit at home in the next couple weeks. If not, well… we’ll wing it.

I’m still waffling on what to do about the dressage part. I’m very tempted to just do it in his jump tack and not really worry about it, mostly because the few times I’ve sat in my dressage saddle lately I’ve just felt really displeased with it, like I’m fighting it a lot. I was never totally in love with how the block hit my thigh (I have a pretty long femur and prefer something more forward), but I think after taking so much time away from it it’s become even more obvious how it’s not really helping me out. Of course, the thought of buying a new dressage saddle for Henry is like… hilarious. Why bother. Granted, if I’m not going to use the one I have I should probably just sell it. All it’s really doing at this point is sitting in my tack room depreciating in value. Not that I want to deal with selling a saddle, which is about as fun as getting a root canal. Anybody want a Devoucoux Loreak? *cries in equestrian*