With USEF releasing their new horse show covid guidelines, there has been a bit of a stir across the interwebs. Some people seem ready and willing to get back to horse showing no matter how different it looks, but other people don’t want to participate until the guidelines are able to be loosened.

I admit that when it comes to the latter group at first I was kinda like “damn, y’all have spent months whining about not horse showing, and now you’re whining about not wanting to have to horse show like that“. But as I read their explanations a bit more and understood where they were coming from, their reasons made more sense.

To me, horse showing is not a social experience. I mean… it is, by it’s very nature, being a large gathering of like-minded people, but it’s not the reason why I horse show. I tend to be the reclusive one that disappears somewhere by myself for hours and rarely goes to a competitor party. Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing all my friends (except Bobby, he’s a loser) but it’s not what draws me the most. For me, the biggest perk of horse shows is being able to spend focused one-on-one time alone with my horse, taking care of him myself, doing what we love to do, while enjoying time in our little bubble away from the real world. My favorite non-riding part of showing is getting up early and having some quiet time in the barn or hand-walking my horse in the quiet calm before the storm. None of the new covid restrictions would change that.

But not everyone is like me, obviously. There are a lot of people that really really love the social aspect of horse shows. Spending time with their friends, going to the parties, talking about horses 24/7, having their family come watch, etc. I am not a social person so that’s not me, but can still totally understand it. Especially those who don’t get a lot of “horse time” or “horse friend time” in their regular day to day lives. For them these new covid restrictions, while absolutely 110% valid and necessary and the right thing to do given what’s going on in the world right now, put a big damper on all the things they love so much about showing, so they’re opting to stay sidelined until things relax a bit.

There isn’t actually choice here for me to make anyway, about whether or not I want to start showing again. It’s summer now, already nearing triple digit temps in Texas, and my heat intolerant horse is unlikely to do much of anything until fall. Maybe a very local jumper show or a day trip for XC schooling, but definitely not any real horse showing. Our season was done before it started when he bruised his foot so badly in November, so this really isn’t even a debate for me personally. Seeing both sides of the fence though, I can see a lot of different reasons why someone would or wouldn’t want to get back to it – health reasons, economic reasons, social reasons, horse-specific reasons, you name it. It’s a strange new sea we’re living in, and not everyone is in the same boat.

I admit that I’m a little surprised USEA still says AEC (Championships) are a “go” for August in Kentucky, though. That seems like a Bad Idea to me for myriad reasons, but I sure won’t be judging anyone who wants to go as long as USEA is willing to make it available. Again, it’s not even on the table for me anyway due to the whole “August in Kentucky” part so it’s easy for me to not feel tempted.

I’m curious though, now that I’ve spent some time way overthinking all of this: why do you horse show? What are those little moments that keep you coming back for more? Are you eager to get back out there no matter what kind of covid restrictions are in place, or are you going to wait until things ease up a bit?

Considering how many things I order from overseas, I’ve had surprisingly few issues over the years. The odd thing stuck in customs forever, but nothing too crazy or dramatic. Guess my time was due.

I mentioned last week how I ordered a quarter sheet from PS of Sweden’s new outlet site, theHORSElet. I paid for it, including shipping charges, and two days later I got a shipping confirmation. All was going normally. And then, the next day, I get an email from UPS saying I owe $263 in import charges.

So off I go to investigate. First – was the email legit? I logged into my UPS account on their website and yep, there it was, a notice about owing import fees on the Sweden package. I have had to pay import fees here and there on some things I’ve ordered from overseas, so ok sure, but the rate is generally 9-20% of the value. $263 was… waaaaay off. Like, closer to 500%. So then I pulled up the UPS invoice itself to take a closer look. Turns out that actually none of that charge was import fees or duty fees or taxes – it was all freight charges.

At work my department is under the same organizational umbrella as Shipping, and indeed my best work friend was the head of Shipping for almost 10 years. And we use UPS, including for international shipping. I sent the invoice to him and he immediately said “They forgot to check the box”. On international shipping paperwork there’s a box where the shipper designates responsibility for the UPS shipping/export charges. If they don’t check that, then all the freight gets charged to the recipient. He told me that if I had already paid theHORSElet/PSoS for shipping as part of my purchase, I could dispute it.

So I started calling UPS. Five transfers later (including one VERY FREAKIN RUDE lady) I finally got assigned a case rep, who seemed very confused about the whole situation. I told him that I had already paid the company for shipping, and it looked like they messed up their paperwork. He asked me to send him any invoices/receipts I had from the purchase and he would look into it and call me back. That was Friday morning.

I had also emailed theHORSElet to let them know of the mistake. At this point I am still willing to assume it’s a mistake, anyway. I got an auto-response from PSoS saying they would get back to me ASAP, and since it was Friday I was fine to wait until Monday.

Yesterday came and went with nothing from them. I could see both of their accounts active on Instagram, so I contacted them there as well, telling them the whole situation, what was happening, and saying I had sent them an email about it but not heard anything back. While I was waiting for a response I heard from someone else who also ordered from them last week and ALSO got a big invoice from UPS. It looks like my issue was not unique. I know that last week was the first time theHORSElet offered international shipping, so I’m still inclined to believe this is a mistake made by their shipping department on the paperwork. However, it clearly wasn’t an isolated incident. They need to fix this.

They messaged me back on Insta, but only addressing the part where I said I had emailed and not gotten a response – they just asked me when I emailed them. That’s now as far as we’ve gotten. Hopefully they will actually be helpful in getting this resolved. If they aren’t, I definitely will not be happy.

I also have another email in to the UPS rep, asking for an update. This is a mess, start to finish. There is some added complication in that the receipt I have is of course from theHORSElet, but they shipped it under their PSoS company name. That could cause some problems when it comes to proving that I’ve already paid them a shipping fee.

We’ll see what happens. For now I would definitely recommend holding off on ordering anything from theHORSElet (or honestly even PSoS) since my situation does not appear to have been a one-off. Hopefully we can get it cleared up quickly and they can fix whatever happened in their shipping process. I’ll update once I get some resolution!

I feel like this year so far has been one big Adjusting To Change exercise. Learning the new normal, and then learning the new new normal, and then learning the new new new normal, which just keeps evolving. Really kind of brings home the Heraclitus quote “The only thing that is constant is change”.

Working from home from my actual home is definitely a different ball game than working from home from the farm. I’ve changed the structure of my day, although every day looks a bit different depending on what’s going on. It’s not as easy to duck outside for an hour and go ride Henry before it gets hot… now “ducking outside to ride” is a minimum 3-hour thing. I am lucky to have some flexibility though, and indeed my day is actually most productive when I break it into two parts. Sometimes I have a day packed with meetings that makes it more challenging to unshackle myself from my laptop, and it doesn’t give me a whole lot of time at the barn during the week. But in this particular era where everything is temporary, I’m just taking it day by day and making it work as best I can.

Because of that, I don’t really have time for both horses on weekdays. I have to pick one or the other, and of course Henry has priority. This is always the time of year that I dread the most with him, heading into summer, because of his struggle with the heat. I’m trying to get him ridden as consistently as I can before I start having to back off. Despite being a bit of a chonk he does feel really good right now. Maybe a little too good. The sass level is high. Later this week I’m going to try to get him over to the giant field across the street so he can gallop, because he definitely feels like he needs to blow off some steam.

Presto, on the other hand, has been shelved for the past few weeks. After I bonked my head I thought it was probably a bad idea to ride the baby horse for a little while. Although now that I think about it, Presto is generally the far less spooky one. Hmmm.

But anyway, now I’m healed up and I finally had time for both horses yesterday, so Presto was called back into duty. And how was he after 3 weeks of doing absolutely nothing? Clearly he was quite feral.

Yeah no just kidding he was super quiet. It was as if not a single day has gone by since his last ride, everything was retained and there was no silly behavior. That’s the longest he’s gone between rides since I started him, so I was curious to see if he would backtrack a little or not, but nope. This was ride #9 and I continue to be fairly pleased with how he’s going despite our slow progression. He’s had as many rides in 2 1/2 months as most have in their first 2 1/2 weeks, but our atypical program seems to be working just fine for us.

I always put Presto on the lunge line for a few minutes before I mount up, just to get him focused. We do a lot of transitions to get his brain into “it’s work time, pay attention to me” mode. It also gives me an idea of where his head is at. Sometimes the upward transitions come with sass, other times you can’t even get the whole word “whoa” out before he’s stopped dead. Yesterday was the latter. After a grand total of 3 minutes lunging, I got on.

I did notice on the lunge line that he’s a bit unbalanced in the canter at the moment. He’s definitely growing, as you can see in his picture, and the canter quality and balance tend to come and go during these spurts. Because of that I decided not to ask him to canter this ride, so we just rode around the ring for a few minutes, walking and trotting and doing some circles and figure 8’s and transitions. Then I figured… he’s being so quiet, lets go out to the field.

He perked up a little bit out there, but was still a good boy. After we walked for a little while I decided to see how he felt about trotting out in the open, and it was very anti-climactic. We trotted a lap of the field, I told him he was amazing, and we quit with that.

I think he’s ready to start riding out in the fields more now. That was my whole goal for the spring – getting him “broke” enough to be able to hack and trail ride this summer, and I think he’s pretty much there. Or at least ready to start small and work our way up. Obviously with 9 rides he isn’t a super quiet broke reliable horse but he’s got an excellent whoa and he’s not particularly spooky or anything, so at this point I feel pretty comfortable riding him out.

We’re still waiting for his tongue-relief bits to arrive (there was Bombers back-order, they’re supposed to ship this week) but Presto seems content enough on a loose rein in the Myler for now. Knowing horses, I will be shocked if he actually likes the fancy expensive bits that I spent hours discussing and agonizing over, because they’re turds and nothing can ever be that easy.  But we’ll see. I have a long weekend coming up so I’m hoping we can do some more exploring.

Hope everyone else had a good weekend!

Since Ellie is the last WTW foal of 2020 I figured she could get this edition of Foal Friday all to herself before we get back to including all the babies. Plus I have like a bazillion pics of her from this first week, and it’s hard for me to pare them down because I am admittedly biased towards Presto’s little sister and her beautiful dam.

But first and foremost – the Baby Bets contest winner. This one was a nail-biter right up until the very end. Austen came out swinging, being the only person to guess Remi pretty accurately. That was impressive, because nobody else saw a chromey chestnut colt coming, that’s for sure. Getting the date right was what sealed the deal for her there with the early lead. But then Madelyn guessed Ollie pretty close to spot-on, tying things up. It all came down to Ellie, and even that didn’t break the tie because they both guessed bay filly. For the second year in a row Michelle had to pick a name from a hat, and the winner is Austen! We will start getting your prizes together and be in contact with you shortly. Thank you to everyone who participated, I always think it’s really fun to see who guesses what.

Ok, back to Ellie.

It took her a few days to really figure out those crazy long spider legs. As you can see she’s still in the process of unfolding, but she’s managing herself pretty well, getting more and more sure of her stilts by the day.

She’s brave and curious, not scared of things but always wanting to figure them out. That sounds pretty typical of Sadie and her foals. The first day she was turned out in the paddock with the poles Sadie took her over there to let her sniff it and take a look, then made slow deliberate circles over the pole with her, leading the way and showing her how it was done. I told Michelle she owes Sadie a bonus for her training services.

Every time I see Sadie with one of her foals I remember how awesome it is to have a mare that really “mothers” their foals like this, teaching them things calmly and clearly. She’s so intelligent and deliberate about it. Not all mares are like that.

Both Sadie and Ellie have continued to do well over this first week. Those couple days around the birth might have worried us a bit, but luckily everything has been good. Ellie got plasma as a precaution, and while some foals are a bit backed off from humans after that (running a bag of plasma requires an IV catheter, time, and restraining the foal to keep them still while it runs, so it’s not particularly pleasant) it didn’t seem to phase Ellie at all. She was still just as friendly and kind afterwards as she was before. Sounds like someone else we all know.

As she’s figured out her legs she’s gotten more and more playful, galloping around, leaping over the pole, and even managing some fairly impressive bucking.

It also looks like she has a registered name now too, although I’m not sure if the spelling/format has been finalized yet, it has been the center of much debate. It’ll either be O’Tembo or Otembo. Tembo is swahili for elephant and O’ kind of combines the english “of” with the swahili “elephant”. Otembo is a creek/wildlife area in the Congo right in the heart of African forest elephant territory. Although just for fun, go google translate “O tembo” from Swahili. Spaces and capitalization change the meaning, and it kind of had me rolling. But anyway, whichever one it ends up being, I think it’s a pretty word, and unique, and kind of makes for a good story. (Also this did lead to me googling the Swahili word for giraffe so I can use it on Presto)

It was a great foaling season for WTW and I’m excited to see how these four kids continue to grow and interact. For those who have asked, Ellie and Remi are sold (to the same person, so maybe we will get to see a continuation of their adventures over time!) but Oakley and Ollie are still available. You can message the WTW facebook page if you’re interested!

Out of curiousity, how long do you guys want me to keep doing Foal Friday? I figured the world needed some weekly cuteness this spring in particular, but how long do you want me to keep it going?

The barn owners made it back safely from Florida on Sunday, so I am officially living back at home in the city. It’s necessary of course, but I’m suffering a little bit from horse withdrawal this week. Although the farm is a lot of work, there is so much to be said for having your day bookended by horses. First thing in the morning, feed the horses. Last thing before bed, check on the horses. I am still a pony-loving kid on the inside, so I thought it was awesome.

But, everything already got pushed back a month thanks to covid, so it’s time to get the ball rolling again. The SO started his new job on Monday THANK GOODNESS, so the timing was pretty perfect on that. He’s a mechanic at a luxury dealership (Bentley, Maserati, Lotus, Rolls Royce, and Aston Martin – and apparently they get paid more hourly for working on the Maserati’s for some reason? who knew.) pretty close by. He was originally a mechanic by trade but got burnt out on the business a while ago and went a different route. He was hesitant to go back, but the money is good and so far he seems to like this particular dealership. It definitely looks and feels like a high end shop, and they prefer quality of work vs just pushing things through as fast as possible. Plus it’s naturally a solo job, they all have their own tools, are spread out, and they’re cleaning things/wearing masks and gloves, so his risk of exposure is quite low.

I’m still working from home for as long as my company will possibly let me… I know they plan to start bringing certain groups/people back in starting June 1 but I don’t know yet where I’ll fall within that plan. I’m thinking of trying to see if they’ll let me work from home at least a couple days a week permanently. My company has been very against that in the past, but I think we’ve proven it’s totally do-able. Productivity has actually increased, if you look at the metrics. We’ll see. It would make things a lot easier for me, especially in the summer when it’s too hot to ride in the afternoon.

I did miss Grem though. I hadn’t really realized how much I love that cat until now. And the corgi, of course, who is really starting to struggle with his DM (I don’t think I ever talked about that, but yeah he’s got DM). I’m not sure how much longer he’ll be with us, so it’s nice to get more time with him now. Plus there’s also a new cat in the house since I was last living here, the black cat that SO got during Black Friday. I’m a total stranger to him, but he seems to be warming up to me.

Naturally, as Texas likes to do in the spring, it rained absolute buckets on Tuesday. Like 5″. With some tornadoes peppered in for good measure. One passed pretty close to the farm but luckily no damage was done, just lots and lots and lots of rain. And there’s supposed to be more rain coming this weekend. Figures, since I’m now pretty much recovered from my tumble and ready to get back to my regular riding schedule. Presto is going on 3 weeks now since his last ride and his Pest level has been steadily increasing along with his boredom. He needs to get back to his “job”. And Henry is looking an awful lot like the retired broodmare, physique wise. His dad bod is legit.

Which is mostly fine I guess. Yes USEF/USEA is starting horse shows again on June 1 but that’s not happening for me. The summer is way too hot for Henry, and at this point we haven’t shown since last July anyway. Plus I’m just… not convinced that starting horse shows again is the right move just yet. The smaller one day shows where everyone can work out of their trailer? Yeah, sure, that’s doable. But multi-day horse shows with shared bathrooms and stabling and travel and hotels and restaurants? I don’t think that’s a good idea yet. Especially not in places that are starting to see a rise in covid cases again (which is a lot of places right now). If some very local shows happen I’m not opposed to taking Presto for the day, but otherwise I just can’t see us doing anything until at least the fall. And I’m totally fine with that. It just needs to not rain buckets so I can get more rides on that punkass baby horse.

Speaking of which, since we have had a big gap in his schedule, I decided to forego Presto’s training vlog this month and do a combined April/May edition at the beginning of next month. The idea of making the vlog was too much for my concussed head at the beginning of this month, and honestly there wasn’t a ton to cover anyway. Hopefully we can get a little bit done in the second half of this month and be a little more interesting.

Today I’ll finish tallying up the results of the Baby Bets contest to publish with tomorrow’s Foal Friday post! May the odds be ever in your favor.