If you pay much attention to my Instagram stories then you already know this, but on Saturday Presto left for 5 weeks of pro training.

The reality is that for the next 6-8 weeks I’m going to be super busy at work, don’t really have time to ride 2 horses properly, need to get Henry legged back up while the weather is still cooler, and didn’t want to just let Presto sit and do nothing when he’d really just gotten started. Plus, like, let’s be real, I’m the only person that’s ridden him so far and while I’m fine, I have no doubt that his overall education would benefit from a better rider. I knew I wanted to send him to someone, I just wasn’t sure where and if I could make it work or not. It had to be somewhere close enough to make the drive there and back in a day, since I also have the horses at home to look after. When I talked to Michelle about it she was like “What about Megan?” – being Megan Sykes, the 4* eventer that Michelle had been riding with, who happened to just move to a new facility up near Dallas, and who’s husband Reed also happens to be a colt starter/groundwork/horsemanship type of guy that has worked with Michelle’s young horses. She’s the one who’s owners just bought Mari. As soon as she said it a lightbulb went off – that could potentially be the perfect fit.

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Not to say that the thought of sending him somewhere didn’t still make me completely nauseous, but after talking to Megan on the phone about him and making a rough plan, I felt a lot more positive about it. I mean, I still spent most of Thursday and Friday internally panicking and wanting to back out, but ultimately I still felt like this was the best decision for everyone. Ideally I’d have liked to send him for 2 months, to get us all the way through Q1 at work, but Megan is leaving for Ocala in Mid-March so 5 weeks is what we could squeeze in. On Friday afternoon I packed his stuff, cleaned up his mane and goat hairs under his jaw (perhaps if he looks less trashy in those regards it will draw less attention to the fact that he has FIVE HUNDRED BITE MARKS?) and practiced loading him in the trailer a couple times since it’s been a while.

Still though, I tossed and turned on Friday night. I am really attached to and protective of the horse, probably too much so, if I’m being honest. I woke up on Saturday morning still kind of worried about the whole thing and second-guessing myself, and then he decided to refuse to get more than halfway up the ramp of the trailer. That’s a new one. In his defense, Henry did absolutely TAKE THE F OFF for the back of the property the second I started loading (thanks, friend) which freaked Presto out, but still. It took me almost half an hour of working with him to get him all the way on and the butt bar up. You know my biggest pet peeve in the world? Ok, that would be horses that don’t tie. But you know my second biggest pet peeve in the world? Horses that don’t load. Which is part of why he’s been loaded and trailered so much as a young horse. Why he decided to be a legit turd about it on that day I don’t know, but he bought himself some groundwork and trailer lessons with Mr. Reed while he’s away at camp.

On the plus side, I was so irritated about it that by the time I got there and unloaded him (he was a total freak coming off the trailer too – snorted and spooked at a wheelbarrow) that he had managed to erase all my doubt in one morning. The truth is that he needs a little bump from the nest so he can learn to exist within himself. He’s had a pretty easy, low-key, quiet life… even when he lived at boarding barns they were tiny, quiet ones where nothing much happened and things could be catered to him, in a sense. Going to a bigger boarding facility where he’s one of many horses, there’s a ton more going on all the time, and him having to adhere to their program rather than vice versa – I think it will do him some good. Time to cut the cord a bit, little one, you’re a real horse now.

He was definitely very wide-eyed about everything at first, but Megan says he’s settling in. She’s started working with him a bit, although of course we’re about to get hit with a major polar blast so that might affect his schedule over the next several days. Megan is used to dealing with enthusiastic young horses so seems totally undeterred by his shenanigans, and having Reed around is a major plus – it’s kind of the perfect duo in my eyes, ULR event rider plus good horsemanship trainer. The new facility is really nice too, so Presto is certainly not suffering at all, even if he’s slightly shell-shocked to learn that the world, in fact, does NOT revolve around him.

I’m planning on going up in 2-3 weeks to check in on him and bring some more feed, so we’ll see how things go. I definitely think that this is the best thing for him right now, even if I do miss him, especially at night check when his ridiculous little monkey face isn’t there waiting for a bedtime smooch. Such is life though, and it’s part of growing up. And for me I’m having to deal with being a bit less of a helicopter parent, trying to resist constantly asking about him (I’ve only asked twice in 3 days, that’s pretty good for me right?). I think he’s in good, capable hands, so that definitely helps.

I’ll update as I have news or things to share, but fingers crossed that Presto decides to be a good boy at camp!

So I do actually have some big news to share but that’s waiting for tomorrow because I think I’ll have more to add by then. For today you get the collection of things I was gonna post about last Friday before I decided to post about Presto’s ponying adventure instead.

First of all, let’s talk about the fly on the wall – That Kentucky Situation. OMG. That was some drama.

LRK3DE won’t be making an official announcement until later today, but it looks promising that they were able to raise enough money over the weekend to “save” the Kentucky 5* for 2021. I admittedly have a lot of mixed feelings about the whole situation. The way the whole thing transpired was a total cluster, for sure. The fact that we could raise that amount of money in a weekend to save a horse show when it took considerably longer to come up with less money for the frangible fund… those are major major frustrations that we need to look long and hard at. But at the end of the day I did want to see KY run in 2021, so I tossed in $25 (in my eyes the cost of a t-shirt, and a fraction of what I give to USEA’s various safety projects every year) and shared a couple of Sara K-M’s videos on my insta stories. And omg y’all, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten so many hate DM’s before, which is mind-boggling to me considering that I’ve certainly said and done considerably more controversial things. The main tirades (and that’s what they were, multi-message tirades) were either about 1) upper level riders never appreciate the masses unless they need us to pay for something, why should we care about them and their problems, 2) complete hatred of USEA because their “mismanagement” has “killed yet another event”… which was a head scratcher considering the fact that USEA has zero involvement here 3) covid is still a major problem, no one should be having horse shows at all, they should all be cancelled (don’t disagree, but if the 5* doesn’t happen a 4*S and a GP and maybe even national divisions will, which would bring considerably more people than the alternative 5* sans spectators would), and giving money to something like this when we have actual bigger problems is just ridiculous.

To be fair, I agree with some of the complaints. Still not quite sure why everyone was yelling at me about it for sharing a couple posts, but… ok. Clearly there’s some pent-up frustration. Anyway, we’ll see if KY actually runs in ’21 or not! The fundraising effort over the past few days was certainly impressive (if not indicative of where the sport’s priorities really lie… sigh).

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On a more fun note, y’all seen the new Pony-O prints that are about to drop? Hot pink unicorns, blue slothes, and a bright donut print. They’re going to be offering stable rugs, too. I have to be honest, I was real tempted to get Presto a hot pink unicorn one, even though he doesn’t need it since he’s already got the blue unicorns and the monkeys. I wish Henry could wear non-Hug blankets, he’d have a unicorn one FOR SURE. Anyway, the pre-order for these will be opening soon, so get yourself on their mailing list if you want to nab one. I love my Pony-O blankets, they really do bring a lot of silly joy.

In case you missed it, the US Event Horse Futurity has started posting all the entrants’ breeding vlogs. Presto’s is up, along with a handful of others that you can see on the Futurity’s facebook page. I always love these, it’s super interesting to see the parents and the offspring and hear why people chose the cross they did. As usual please like and comment on these posts, the Futurity greatly appreciates the interaction and support! (and speaking from personal experience it takes HOURS to put these vlogs together, so I know people greatly appreciate even just a like)

Speaking of vlogs, if y’all aren’t watching the Piggy March vlogs on her youtube channel, you’re missing out. She’s covering a wide variety of topics and I’ve found them to be pretty interesting. Also I’m just a massive Vanir Kamira fan, so getting to see more of her behind the scenes is a bonus.

Last but not least, fellow rule geeks mark your calendars for USEA’s Rule Webinar. I always love these, mostly to hear proposals that could be on the docket for next year so I can internally debate them with myself for days. But you know they’ll be talking about the new proposal where 5 or more rails equals elimination, so it’s guaranteed to be interesting discussion.

Hope everybody has a good week! Exciting happenings coming up tomorrow…

Henry has been ponying Presto (and Presto has been ponied) since not long after Presto first came to live with me just after his first birthday.

By now, Henry has ponied Presto just about everywhere. On trail rides, out cross country schooling, on road hacks… pretty much anywhere we could pony, we did pony. I thought it was a good easy way to get Presto exposure to lots of things. Henry took to the job just fine, never seeming exactly thrilled about it (then again I’ve never seen him thrilled about anything aside from food and cross country), but he didn’t put up any actual protest either so he can’t have hated it that much.

Over the past year the ponying has pretty much tapered off, as Presto has branched out to being a riding horse himself, able to take on All The Things under saddle on his own. I think all his early ponying time served him well, as he was able to pretty much go right into trail riding and hacking out without any fanfare or overexcitement. He’d already been there and done that, to a degree.

This week the horses got their vaccinations, so they got a day off and then I was going to hack each of them. But it was hot, and I was short on time, and I thought… why not just pony one? Which very quickly morphed into “omg I should pony Henry off of Presto!”. Because why not? New challenges!

So I went and got both of them, tacked Presto up, stopped to laugh and take a picture, and then mounted up. I had set up my Pivo in the little courtyard area in front of the barn to get some video, figuring we’d start there to make sure they both understood their new roles. Honestly Presto seemed to get it immediately, understanding that he was the leader (he’s always thought he SHOULD be, anyway) and seemingly fine with having Henry tagging along beside him. My only real concern is that Henry would be a total jerk to him and Presto would be worried about him and not want to let him get too close. Shouldn’t have worried, even when Henry made a few rude faces Presto was 100% unperturbed. He was enjoying his power trip too much.

We made a couple laps of the courtyard and that was no problem. I mean… poor Henry’s legs are like 6″ shorter than Presto’s, so even with Presto walking slowly Henry had to walk faster than he’d typically prefer. He ended up lagging behind a bit.

Once I felt pretty confident that they both understood what we were doing, we headed out into the fields. We covered pretty much the entire property, just at a nice walk (for Presto it was a leisurely walk, for Henry it was a marching walk). At one point Presto hopped over the little natural ditch and trotted away a few steps, and Henry followed suit perfectly. I honestly think I expected him to be a bit more curmudgeonly about the whole thing. I mean… his face was VERY unamused (“who the hell decided that little anklebiter should be in charge? this is bullshit…”) but it never went beyond the grumpy face. And Presto seemed absolutely delighted by his role, never once did he even try to reach over and bite Henry or grab the lead rope or pull any of the theatrics that he loves so much when he’s the one being ponied. Who knew he just needed a leadership role to excel?

That was a fun and successful experiment! Good to know that if I want to just hack them both or take both of them for a long walk, I have the option of taking both at once and using either horse in the pony role. Plus Presto gets to officially add “lead pony” to his resume. Not bad, kid… not bad.

Epplejeck broke my heart in December. When I ordered my fleecey neck rugs from them I also tried to order a set of these absofreakinglutely gorgeous navy sparkle boots

but after I placed my order they emailed me and said they were out of stock and weren’t sure when they’d be getting more.

I’m not a quitter though, so I’ve gone back to their website at least twice a week to check stock. Since one does not just casually pop onto a website, check a single item, and then pop back out (at least I don’t), naturally this has also meant that I’ve spent a lot of time perusing the rest of their site, which… is always dangerous. Once you start wandering into danger zone categories like breeches and gloves (for some people that might be saddle pads), you know trouble is looming on the horizon.

And the thing about Epplejeck in particular, being a lower to mid-budget European shop, is that they have A LOT OF FUN STUFF. Not just brands we can’t get here, but things that are maybe a bit more out there or less conventional than most of what you see here. For instance, Epplejeck even has “Theme shops” – there’s a unicorn shop, a leopard shop, an orange shop (they’re Dutch, after all), etc. Shops by discipline (a cross country shop, you say?), shops by horse type (got a foal or a Friesian?)… it’s pretty darn thorough.

There’s also (are you ready for this?) a glitter shop. I feel attacked.

It took me many visits to the site, stalking those boots, to actually fall that deep into it where I discovered any of this. But once I did, well… it spiraled. There isn’t a ton of stuff in the glitter shop, but if you search the site for “glitter” you get over a thousand results. I also discovered that they like the word “glitz” and “shine” to describe glitter. Yeah, I fell deep into the rabbit hole. In my defense, they also make just about everydamnthing with glitter. Like literally all of it. In any color you want. Also, things you put in your cart on that site stay there for a long dang time, so what started with just tossing these sparkle tights in the cart to sit there and wait until the boots came into stock

seemed to spiral a bit more with every visit. Especially when things were 20% off. They love a good sale, something we have in common.

The tights soon found themselves joined by navy glitter gloves

And then I reasoned my way into a glittery navy helmet for dressage. (ride along with me on my reasoning: I always do dressage in navy and white, but the only navy helmet I have left is my daily use MyPS which has been scraped under enough tree branches by now that it’s starting to look a little roughed up, thus I clearly needed a nicer-looking navy helmet for the dressage phase. Why are you laughing at me. Stop laughing. That’s rude.)

Anyway, that’s how I found myself with three navy glitter items in my cart, none of which are the brushing boots that have been the actual purpose of this quest all along since they still aren’t in stock.

And because I’m truly a great friend I shared the site with Hillary, who is buying a few things for her new little guy. And, ya know, I just casually threw it out there that if she wanted some things we could order together and split the cost of shipping. Win-win. And then there was a coupon code. Nothing was expensive at all to start with (I swear Europe has way better “cheap stuff” than we do). OKAY UNIVERSE, YOU CAN STOP TRYING TO SELL IT TO ME I’M ALREADY SOLD.

Plus my anxiety has been a bit high lately anyway so I needed a little hit of dopamine. Sweet sweet sparkly dopamine.

We’ll see how long it takes to get here. I was pretty pleased with my first order from them, and interested to see the quality of these items. Of course, I’m STILL stalking their website, checking back all the time to see if those sparkly boots are in stock. So far no luck but you can bet I’m gonna jump on it ASAP if/when they ever do reappear. I’m sure by then my cart will have mysteriously re-filled itself again, too… weird how that happens.

I’ve gotten so many questions and comments about Presto’s leather bit, I thought we’d talk about it today!

This experience is my first foray into the world of leather bits. Mine came from Sweet Billy’s Bits (after ordering I figured out that I actually know the lady that runs this shop, small world!) and is the loose ring rounded version.

Admittedly I went for it at first because I was just a little perplexed about Presto’s bitting. I tend to start everything in a Nathe and go from there, and for Presto the Nathe was a bit too thick to sit comfortably in his mouth, he couldn’t quite close his mouth around it. Since that was the case I went for thinner, to a Myler comfort snaffle. I didn’t hate that bit on him, but he was still chompy and hesitant to really go INTO it. I tried a mullen happy mouth (too thick and he didn’t seem to like the rigidity). I tried tongue relief bits, which were a big hell no. I tried Henry’s Neue Schule, because it’s not too thick, but something about that link in the middle made Presto start playing with it and almost fall into a trance-like state where he just couldn’t stop. His mouth was busybusybusy fussyfussyfussy. My trainer had mentioned a leather bit, because one of her horses was very particular/fussy and they went through a lot of bits trying to make him happy before settling on the leather one. For less than $40 I figured what the hell – worst case scenario is that I add to my bit collection.

And while it wasn’t a quick fix, instant rainbows and daisies type of situation, there was no doubt right off the bat that Presto’s mouth was MUCH quieter in the leather bit. After a few wears he also started reaching for it when I bridled him, too, something he had never done with any other bit. He seemed more comfortable just wearing it, at the very least, and was instantly less chompy when he was bridled. After the first couple weeks as he settled into it, he also got steadier in the bridle and less fussy with his mouth. Definitely not perfect, but also a lot better than anything else I’ve tried.

Now that I’ve owned it for a couple months and have gotten familiar with it and how it works, I can 100% see why fussier horses like it so much. It’s got a nice soft warm feel as soon as you bridle them, much different than putting metal in their mouth. It’s super flexible, like you can completely bend this thing back on itself. As you use it on the same horse it also starts to mold to their general mouth shape, taking on a bit of a curve that makes it sit in there like it’s custom. If you have a horse with a larger tongue, fleshy lips, low palate, or smaller mouth space, I think the thinness of this bit also makes this sit pretty comfortably in their mouth.

The only real cons I’ve seen with are two fold:

1. It’s only legal for eventing dressage, not for regular dressage. I mean, this isn’t a problem for ME, but it’s a problem for other people. Also for eventing dressage you need the rounded style, not the flat one.
2. If you have a horse that chews, they can destroy it.

Naturally, Presto is a bit of a chewer. If you have this issue Sweet Billy’s suggests that you wrap the bit in Sealtex, something I haven’t done in years but am familiar with from back in the day. I ordered Presto a new one last week (because caveat – as the bit starts to mold to the horse’s mouth and takes on a curve, it will fit a bit smaller. I originally ordered his normal size of 5 1/4″ but really he ended up needing 5 1/2″) and this time I wrapped it in Sealtex to try to keep him from chewing on it.

It’s pretty straightforward, and didn’t seem to make any difference in how he felt about the bit. The Sealtex is still soft and flexible so there’s no difference in the action, but obviously it does make it a little thicker. How thick depends on how much Sealtex you use and how tight you wrap it. I didn’t want to go with too thin a layer of Sealtex lest he chew through it immediately, but I tried to avoid going so thick as to make the bit not sit well in his mouth anymore. We’ll see how well that approach works, and I’m sure it’s something I’ll have to dial-in as we go along. And we’ll see how long the Sealtex lasts before I need to cut it off and re-wrap it.

The only other slight con of a leather bit is that it does require a tiny bit of maintenance. Before I had the Sealtex on it, I wiped mine with water after every ride and then used a little bit of oil every couple weeks to help keep the leather from drying out. It’s not a big deal, but a little more maintenance than a regular metal bit.

Overall I’m glad that we tried it, and for now it seems to be Presto’s bit of choice. I’m for sure glad to have yet another tool in my toolbox going forward, in case I encounter another horse like this. Having more options is always a good thing!