Am I the only one who can’t see the word shrubbery without their brain immediately going to Monty Pyton and the Holy Grail? Just wondering.

This post has absolutely nothing to do with that but I figured I’d just start with a tangent and get it out of the way early. Anyway, moving on.

The social media drama this week (aside from Bob Baffert’s drugged Derby winner, which I am not touching with a 10′ pole taped to another 10′ pole, Imma just sit over here and sip my metaphorical tea while that shit goes down, thanks) is Doug Payne’s DR penalty at Jersey Fresh. If you haven’t seen it, he talked about it on his facebook page and then the COTH forum picked it up and started a discussion.

Long story short, Doug made a creative route through some roped off galloping lanes (Doug takes “creative” routes a lot, just in very recent history you may remember him cutting through a bunch of landscaping at Tryon or jumping over a bush to tighten a turn at Kentucky) a few times on course and got handed a Dangerous Riding penalty. The debate is whether or not said penalty was warranted or fair.

To start with, let’s look at the current FEI rule for what constitutes Dangerous Riding.

525 Dangerous Riding
525.1 Definition
Any Athlete who, at any time during the Competition deliberately or unintentionally by
incompetence is exposing himself, his Horse or any third party to a higher risk than what is
strictly inherent to the nature of the Competition will be considered to have acted dangerously
and will be penalised accordingly to the severity of the infringement.
Such acts may include without limitation any of the following:
a) Riding out of control (Horse clearly not responding to the Athletes restraining or driving
aids).
b) Riding fences too fast or too slow.
c) Repeatedly standing off fences too far (pushing the Horse to the foot of the fence, firing
the Horse to the fence).
d) Repeatedly being ahead or behind the Horse movement when jumping.
e) Series of dangerous jumps.
f) Severe lack of responsiveness from the Horse or the Athlete.
g) Continuing after three clear refusals, a fall, or any form of elimination
h) Endangering the public in any way (e.g. jumping out of the roped track).
i) Jumping obstacles not part of the course.
j) Willful obstruction of an overtaking Athlete and/or not following the instructions of the
Officials causing danger to another Athlete.
k) Pressing a tired Horse

Exactly what scenario incurs this penalty and exactly how the reprimand goes down (warning, penalty points, yellow card, etc) is generally up to the discretion of the officials on site. Note that while many possible scenarios are listed outright in the rule, it also says “acts may include without limitation” – leaving it open ended for officials to apply this rule to any variety of scenarios that they feel may constitute a dangerous situation.

So, back to Doug. He posted some helmet camera footage of one of the times he left the specified roped off galloping lane to take a short cut through another area. According to people on site, he did it elsewher too, but we only see this one time so let’s just go with this one. He says himself that he planned this well in advance and even discussed it with the TD in advance, who warned him that if he did this he would be doing so at his own risk and could possibly open himself up for a penalty if they felt he endangered people, vehicles, equipment, himself, the horse, etc. As I mentioned above, he has a history of taking “shortcuts” through and/or around things that the course designer really didn’t intend. Whether that’s clever or dangerous probably depends on the situation and your own interpretation. Either way, the officials on site that day chose to issue Doug a DR penalty and penalty points when he finished his XC round.

To complicate things, someone else that day also got a DR (for riding through a pedestrian crossing), but instead of an actual penalty they got a warning. I have no idea if that person’s shortcut was intentional or accidental or what other factors may have been at play in that particular decision.

While jumping the ropes is clearly outlined in the DR penalty rule, it doesn’t really say anything about taking paths around openly roped galloping lanes or cutting through gaps at non-roped areas. Of course, I think it’s also safe to say that once you leave the track the course designer intended your horse to take, you’re quickly into a gray area. Will your path be clear of people, equipment, ropes, etc? Once you leave the specified track, who knows.

So the question is – did he deserve the DR penalties? Was it a fair application of the rule? What he did is not specified anywhere in the rule as constituting a DR. BUT, as previously mentioned, the wording of the rule allows leeway for other situations that have not been specifically listed. We can see from Doug’s video that other than passing sort of close to a photographer, he didn’t seem to come across any issues with the particular shortcut on that video. Not that time, anyway. I think that may be the reasoning though. If you make this kind of thing a standard practice, going in and out of roped off areas, crossing landscaping, jumping over decorations, etc, at some point it’s probably not going to end well. I have a feeling that intention (there was definitely nothing accidental in this case) and the repetition of the behavior may have had an impact on the official’s decision here. Of course, I’m definitely not an official so that’s purely speculation.

What are your thoughts? Do you think a creative route should be ok on cross country as long as nothing bad happens? Or should riders not try to take the risk of trying to “outwit” the course design/roped off paths? I love a good rule debate!

I was kind of excited to take Henry to the little jumper show this past weekend since we haven’t been out anywhere in forever. Then they posted the schedule, and womp womp, our division wouldn’t go until after 5pm, which didn’t work for me. Very happy for the show that there were so many entrants, but sad for me that I had to scratch. Eventually we’ll make it off property and do something fun. Maybe. Henry doesn’t seem to mind.

My jump field is in need of a mow (that 6″ of rain made the grass quadruple in height overnight and there’s more rain on the way) so I can’t do too much out there right now, but I did set up a couple fences in the arena and hop back and forth over them on Sunday. I thought I would be clever and bring my little blue wannabe liverpool down to give Henry something different to see (I keep my jumps at home quite basic normally since he’s a fairly careless jumper… the fill and new “spooky” jumps at shows tend to work in my favor and perk him up a bit. Don’t want him to get too used to seeing that stuff at home all the time!). He spotted it from a mile away while we were walking into the ring and proceeded to turn into a snorting spooking dragon in a way that was kind of embarrassing for him as a Prelim horse who has jumped many a friggin liverpool in his day. It took me a while to convince him to just trot past it while we were warming up (I wish I’d turned my Pivo on for warmup, it was quite entertaining for those first few minutes) and he kept giving it major stink eye every time I went past it. Naturally though as soon as I pointed him at it and asked him to actually jump over it, he was like “oh yeah I know these, they’re boring, I was never worried jk”.

He’s always like that. He will spook sideways just having to canter past a Starter fence but then pop right over some hideous I/P weldon’s wall like it’s the most basic of crossrails. Passing jumps is scary, jumping them is fine. I don’t follow his logic, but ok I’m not complaining, that’s a lot better than the other way around. We didn’t jump a whole lot since it was humid and gross AF but he seemed to enjoy himself anyway. We’ll see how many rides I can fit in this week in between the rain before I go up to Texas Rose on Friday for Presto’s show.

Speaking of Presto, he’s basically a patience pole champion these days, having spent a lot of time there over the past couple weeks. He learned that pawing your anger out isn’t the right answer, and dancing in circles doesn’t get you anywhere. I mean, those lessons have been repeated to him throughout his entire life but I’m sure no one is surprised that regular refreshers are needed. Patience is NOT his strong suit, and he likes to express his emotions with his feet. This week the lessons are being transferred into the trailer, and then on Friday he heads over to the show. Hopefully he decides to haul quietly this time.

Which, turns out the venue double booked this weekend – a dressage show and a horse trial, which should be… um… interesting. A week after closing date they changed the schedule in the omnibus (without even sending an email to competitors or anything) moving the Training/Prelim/Intermediate dressage to Friday afternoon. People are not happy about the very late and not at all well-communicated change, and I don’t blame them. There are major clusterfuck vibes already happening.

Presto of course is in OBN, so his schedule isn’t really effected much, except usually they run dressage and XC Saturday and then showjump Sunday morning, but this new schedule has him with dressage and SJ on Saturday and then XC Sunday morning. Should be fine. I can’t quite wrap my brain around the complete chaos of a dressage show and a horse trial happening at the same time (what the actual…) but, um, I guess we’ll just deal with it?

My other main objective for this past weekend was finishing his next Futurity vlog, which is the first one about his actual training this spring. I put all the video clips together, sent it to Megan, she recorded the voice over, I stitched it all together, and voila… done. It’s way easier when someone else is doing the talking. I mean, it still takes me 9000 years to make the video but it went a lot faster than the previous ones. It’s been submitted so hopefully they’ll be posting it soon, keep an eye on their facebook page. This next round of vlogs isn’t actually due until the end of this week but since they already have mine they might post it early. It’s always fun hearing the rider/trainer’s thoughts instead of mine, so hopefully y’all like this one!

In between all that I came perilously close to pre-ordering a dinosaur fly sheet for Presto. Does he need one? No. But does he neeeeed one? Clearly. I mean… dinosaurs. Duh.

I’m trying to behave myself though because I have a feeling his summer adventures will be expensive, and while he got good use of his fly sheet in Florida, we don’t really use them much here. That and the UK shipping is not cheap, so… I’ve talked myself out of it. For now anyway.

I’ll be honest though, I freakin’ hate Mother’s Day, and was feeling particularly dumpy yesterday (the BO gave me cake though, that helped. Cake always helps. Write that down.) so I did buy myself one little thing I’ve had my eye on to help cheer myself up.

I have two spike browbands already – a brown one with gunmetal spikes and a black one with gunmetal spikes. They live on Presto’s bridles, but I do sometimes borrow the brown one for Henry’s XC bridle. The Bling Bay has lots of different color spikes on offer though, their prices are super reasonable, and ya know which of my bridles doesn’t have it’s own pretty browband? Henry’s La Cense bitless that he wears pretty much every day. That’s a travesty, right? It needs some pizazz. It’s still wearing the plain flat boring browband it came with.

I waffled a bit between the darker blue spikes and the rainbow #2 spikes, but in the end I just had to do the rainbow ones. It’ll bring me joy on a day to day basis I think. How could it not? It’s supposed to ship today and they’re based here locally so hopefully I’ll have it within the next couple days.

Hope everyone had a good weekend!

Finally, the moment we’ve all been waiting for! The first two babies are now officially co-habitating, and their introduction to each other was every bit as entertaining as I had imagined.

Sometimes mares and foals are a little slow to integrate at first. The mares can be a little overprotective, and the foals can be a bit shy. I kind of had a feeling that wouldn’t really be the case with these two though (at least not Pippa) and it definitely wasn’t. They spotted each other right off the bat and were very much interested right from the start.

It took almost no time at all for Pippa’s curiosity and boldness to get the better of her, and unsurprisingly it was her who made the first move and initiated first contact. She left her dam and marched up to get a closer look at Patrick.

At first Lark wasn’t too sure about this little hellion trying to corrupt her sweet little Patrick. You can pretty much hear her yelling “PEYTON! Come get your little demon kid!” and Peyton yelling back “I GAVE UP ON HER A LONG TIME AGO, DEAL WITH IT!”. Which is true, Peyton cannot control Pippa whatsoever and has mostly given up trying. She’s a helicopter mom no more, but not by her own choice, by Pippa’s.

With no assistance from Peyton it didn’t take Lark very long to give up either, and ta-da, just like that… Pippa and Patrick had their first nose touch!

Which, true to form, Pippa quickly turned into their first gallop. I’m not sure how much of a willing participant Patrick really was, but he, uh… humored her.

Pippa, having such a high % thoroughbred and bred to event, really loves to gallop. It’s her jam. Patrick on the other hand, bred to jump the big sticks, is more of a bouncing kind of guy. He’s like a little rubber ball all the time, and given the choice, that’s definitely his favorite activity.

He tried to get Pippa to try out some bouncing instead of just galloping laps all the time, but I think it backfired on him a little bit.

Poor Patticakes. He learned a lot about fillies this week. Mostly that they’re scary and cannot be trusted.

I mean, I think we all felt a little sorry for Patrick in advance with this one. Pippa is an absolute spitfire, scared of nothing and no one, and very much likes to have things her way. Patrick is pretty bold and smart too, but there’s just no match for a filly like Pippa. She runs that pasture, for sure. Her way is THE way.

That’s not to say that Patrick was a total shrinking violet or a pushover either, though. He held his own at least some of the time and definitely isn’t scared of Pippa despite the fact that she can be… a lot.

Ok maybe he’s a teeny bit scared of her though. Honestly that’s for the best. Safe choice.

When he gets too tired of playing Gallop (ok being chased, Pippa flat out chases him for entertainment) he pretty wisely retreats back to Lark. Pippa is bold but she’s not stupid, and she knows better than to try to cause too much trouble right there while Lark is within reach. Lark is his safe zone when he needs a time out.

Really for the most part they seem pretty well-matched. Pippa is the clear boss, for sure, which… I think she’s going to be the boss of this whole crop. Maybe Ollie’s full sibling could give her a run for her money when it comes to sheer chaos and anarchy, but I don’t think it’s possible to out-alpha Pippa. She’s a born boss mare and she isn’t shy about making that clear. Patrick seems to like her though, and they’re having a lot of fun chasing each other around and playing.

Most of all it’s really fun to see babies out there playing together again, and I’m more than ready to keep adding more to the baby herd. Just wait til there’s 6!

Another week, another big dramafest on horsey social media. We’re on a roll lately.

This time it was Dani Waldman née Goldstein (either revered or loathed for her trademark feathery hairstyle, which caused a lot of drama in and of itself for various reasons that I’m so tired of hearing about) when she casually mentioned in a comment that her horses never get turned out. The backlash was quick and furious, leading her to make a longer “statement”:

Hi guys! Wow…I certainly and inadvertently sparked a controversial topic today…first off, I love my horses, often more than I love myself! Secondly, no one is going to win this battle as we simply cannot ask the horses their opinion. Thirdly, cyber-hate only encourages us to stop listening to each other—and that doesn’t do anyone any good…(and telling me to be ashamed of myself is downright heartbreaking). Lastly, this is clearly a very debated topic…whether the risk of physical injury outweighs the risk of mental health for our wonderful animals. My decision to limit their uncontrolled movement is a strategic choice, made in consultation with my entire team of vets, farriers, chiropractors, nutritionists, and my own 20+ years of personal experience in the field. I will say, unequivocally, that an injured horse’s mental health suffers far more than one that isn’t turned out, and since our sport is inherently dangerous, limiting any unnecessary movement that could result in injury is paramount in my program. I will soon post a day in the life of my horses at home so you can see an in depth look at the great detail and attention that goes into caring for my horses, including the 3-5 times per day that they are outside of their box hand grazing or moving around for hours at a time!

I have to be honest, I think what surprised me most about this whole thing was that anyone was actually surprised by this at all. Regardless of how you feel about it, it really isn’t that uncommon for a lot of top dressage, hunter, and showjumping horses to get no turnout (or maybe an hour a day in a very small paddock). Especially in Europe. Maybe a lot of people didn’t know that?

Now, is that my ideal? No. I like for my horses to have lots of turnout. Granted, I have that luxury. We have big pastures and plenty of space. Other people aren’t so lucky. I know a lot of horses on the west coast that don’t get much if any turnout, and certainly not in a very large space. The same is true in many places in Europe or other areas where land is at a premium. I totally understand that not everyone keeps horses the same way I do, or has access to the same things, or thinks the same way, or has the same experiences. There are lots of different methods, lots of different types of horses, and people seem to make it work.

I think in everyone’s ideal world horses would live outside 24/7 in a herd that they love and all would be sunshine and rainbows and happiness. This works for a lot of horses in a lot of places, but it doesn’t work for all of them or every climate or every place. I think we can all agree with that much at least. There is no such thing as “never” or “always” with horses. Generally as long as someone’s horse is happy and healthy, I really don’t have the desire to make it my business how their horse is cared for on a daily basis. There are many roads to Rome and not everyone’s looks the same as mine.

I did have a little bit of an issue with her reasoning though, I will say that. I think it’s hypocritical to ask horses to perform at the upper levels of sport, which certainly contains significant risk of injury, but then not turn them out because they might get injured. It seems a bit… selfish? You’re willing to risk the injury to use them for sport but not willing to risk the injury by allowing them to have any turnout? Especially to then say that stall rest from an injury is harder on them mentally – I mean, if that’s your theory then don’t jump them over huge fences and risk injury either. That reasoning falls very flat for me. It’s definitely great that they get time on the walker/treadmill, handgrazing, hacking, etc, that certainly helps so they do get to move around and aren’t just stuck in their stalls all the time. It’s not ideal maybe but a lot of horses live their lives that way, and her horses seem generally well-loved and well cared for otherwise. Granted it’s also a little sad to see her property tour with perfectly nice little paddocks that literally never have horses go out in them, just because she wants their every step to be controlled. She’s certainly not alone in her horsekeeping practices though, that’s for certain.

What are your thoughts? Were you surprised to hear that her horses never get turned out? How did you feel about her reasoning behind it?

Pippa and Patrick had their first turnout together this week, which resulted in A LOT of great pictures, so Foal Friday is already reserved for that. BUT we did have a new addition at WTW on Monday, with the birth of Patrick’s full sibling! Chanel finally released her hostage, a big bay colt, in the middle of the afternoon. He doesn’t have an official name yet so we’ll wait to do his intro post until maybe next week, but I thought everybody could use a little mid-week cuteness and this dude definitely delivers! Nobody’s going to complain about a bonus bebe day, right?

More to come from this kiddo later on! Happy Wednesday.