Putting together stats on younger horses is always a bit more difficult. It’s harder to find info about them and harder to dig up complete pedigrees, which makes all the stats more challenging. I spend a lot of time digging through the depths of the internet trying to piece things together. One day we’ll have a nice, official, all-inclusive database right? A gal can dream.

But anyway, it’s Mondial du Lion time again, one of my favorite events of the year. It’s the World Championships for 6 and 7yo horses held every fall in France, with 6yo’s competing at 2* and 7yo’s competing at 3*. Some of the very best 5* horses in the world competed at MdL on their way up the ranks, with a whopping 35% of 2018’s entire WEG eventing field having competed at Lion. My research has shown that it doesn’t even necessarily matter how they place – some future superstars finished way down the leaderboard in their year – but just having competed here seems to give them a leg up. Lion is touted by riders as being a fantastic and essential learning experience, with a bit tougher courses than these horses have seen so far, and certainly A LOT more atmosphere. They tend to leave MdL much more seasoned, regardless of the score. Last year’s 7yo winner, Asha P (who has a stallion full-brother, Araldik), was just part of the gold medal winning Nation’s Cup team for Germany at Boekelo.

Looking at this year’s 6yo field, we see a lot of the typical bloodlines we’ve come to expect from watching the 4* and 5* horses: a lot of jumper breeding, largely holsteiner and selle francais, mixed with blood. The average blood percentage of the 6yo’s (the ones that I could verify for sure, anyway) is 51%. Six horses (14% of the field) have a full thoroughbred parent, and another 3 have a full thoroughbred damsire. The thoroughbred stallion Esteban xx has two offspring in the field, one Belgian Warmblood and one Holsteiner. Esteban is well-established as a sire of eventers, with multiple offspring having competed through 4* and 5* level.

The 7yo field boasts a similar average blood percentage at 50%, and also has 6 horses with a full thoroughbred parent. Interestingly, only one of those is the sire, the other 5 are full TB dams. An additional 7 horses have full thoroughbred damsires.

Several other stallions are represented by multiple entries across the two divisions. Trakehner stallion Grafenstolz (who we met in France last month) is the sire of 5 horses, Mighty Magic (also met in France last month) is the sire of 3, Quite Easy is the sire of 2, Rock Forever is the sire of 2,  King Size is the sire of 2, OBOS Quality 004 is the sire of 3 and damsire of 1, Shannondale Sarco is the sire of 2, Ramiro B is the sire of 2, Cavalier Royale is the sire of 1 and damsire of 3. Spoiler alert: you’ll see some of these names again next week in the Young Event Horse Championships recap.

A few dressage stallions are represented as well, something that you see sometimes at the middle levels but is quite rare at 5*. Most of the ones in this field, though, are not too surprising if you look at the actual pedigree. Rock Forever, while a Grand Prix dressage horse himself, is quite jumper-bred, from Ramiro, Landgraf, and Grandus lines. The stallion Catoo (sire of one of the 7yo’s) has a similar story – he had a GP dressage career but is completely jumper-bred. One stallion that is perhaps less expected to see as an event horse sire is Vitalis, sire of 7yo Victor 107, from dressage lines Krack C, Jazz, and Donnerhall.

As we’ve become accustomed to seeing by now, the French and Irish are sat almost exclusively on horses bred in their home countries. Only two French riders have non-French bred horses, and only two Irish riders have non-Irish bred horses.

Another fun fact – Leprince des Bois, another horse that we saw last month in Europe, was a 5* event horse in his own right (competed at Pau, Badminton, Luhmuhlen, and Burghley under Kai Ruder) and is the damsire of one horse – a Selle Francais ridden by none other than Chris Burton. He finished 7th in the 6yo class here at Lion last year.

Want to watch Mondial du Lion and try to pick out your favorite future superstar? The live feed is on their home page, along with links to the start lists and results.

The fact that Mondial du Lion, YEH Championships, and Fair Hill are all happening this week has got me absolutely knee deep in spreadsheets right now, so this fun blog hop from Raincoast Rider is super timely. I’m hoping I’ll have at least one In The Blood post ready to go tomorrow (I don’t think it’s possible to fit 3 events worth of horses into one post, I’ve got something like 300 horses to sort through) but we’ll see what happens. This morning I’m incredibly distracted by the MdL live feed. Who’s excited about watching 6yo event horses do dressage at 5am? Me. Duh.

1. Favorite show venue:
To visit? Nothing compares to Burghley for me. I loooove grass arenas on lovely turf like that, it feels so authentic and more in touch with the sport’s roots. No crazy huge grandstands or artificial anything or recycled golf course feel. It was beautiful.

2. Favorite discipline:
Eventing, for sure. It helps that there are 3 disciplines in one, so it’s pretty hard to get bored. I also love how pretty much any type of horse can compete successfully, it just has to want to jump. We get a wide variety, and I think that’s really cool. Even at the highest levels we’ve got anglo arabs, welsh cob crosses, draft crosses, connemaras, etc.

Anglo Arab, anyone?

3. Favorite horse color:
Dark bay. Preferably with either no white or just a little.

4. Favorite tack store:
Oh man. Riding Warehouse is my most frequented, for sure, and they’re great people so I love them a lot. Luxe EQ is a big sentimental favorite and always has the prettiest new stuff to drool over. My latest addiction seems to be Premier Equine.

5. Favorite breed:
Thoroughbred, or warmblood with a lot of TB blood. They’ve just got so much “try” and athleticism.

6. Favorite place to ride:
Give me a big pretty wide open space and I’m happy (still internally crying over my fields being paved over and houses put in, I might never recover). Although Coconino is pretty hard to beat too… riding through those big pretty pine trees on a nice crisp morning.

7. Favorite piece of riding apparel:
Hmmmmm. This is hard, I like pretty much all of my things. I live in my Kastel shirts like 9 months of the year, so those would have to go on the list. Also LOVE my Motionlite jackets, you can tell me it reminds you of a scrim sheet all you want, those things are magical AF. I’m tied pretty equally on my Champion skull cap (I’ve never had a skull cap that nice or one that fits me that well) and TraumaVoid helmets. For breeches, I’m still liking the Horze Grand Prix the best, for the money. Also, like… honorable mention to my interchangable helmet pompoms that I made, because I love the shit out of them even if I look like a massively overgrown 10yo. Yolo.

8. Favorite horse related web site:
I don’t think there’s one I visit super consistently, I see pretty much everything on facebook with all the stuff that I follow. I probably click on stuff from Eventing Nation, Horse and Hound, and The Horse Magazine the most.

9. Favorite piece of tack:
Wow just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse than the “favorite riding apparel” question. My god. I guess my saddles win this one (Devoucoux Chiberta and Devoucoux Loreak) but also really loving those Premier Equine merino wool pads and I have used Majyk Equipe boots daily for like 5+ years, so clearly they’re a staple. OH and my spiked Dark Jewel Designs browband. And my Freejump stirrups. And my Eponia and Lund bridles. Ok I’ll stop.

10. Favorite horse book:

Basic Training of the Young Horse, the newer edition with Ingrid. Ok so I’m a little bit of an Ingrid groupie, whatever. It’s a fantastic book.

11. Favorite horse movie:

Either Seabiscuit (love the historical angle it took) or The Horse in a Gray Flannel suit (cheesy but I love it). And International Velvet because eventing.

Do you ever have one of those moments when you see, with perfect clarity, just how effing creepy you are? This was me last weekend at the barn.

I was riding Henry, heading out toward the arena. To get there you walk up the fence line of Presto’s pasture, and he always comes up to the fence to be nosy say hi. So I stopped to talk to him, as one does, and just sat there on my best boy, rubbing my next-best-boy’s face, staring at them with hearts in my eyes and grinning my fool head off. In that moment I realized that I was looking at them the way same way Meghan looks at Harry.

You know that look… 98% adoration, with just a tiiiiinge of that super crazy stalker chick from Wedding Crashers.

I’m willing to admit that I might possibly be a little bit obsessed with these two horses, like way more than any others I’ve had before. Just looking at them makes me smile, no matter how bad my day was. I don’t even know if there’s a human on this planet that I like that much.

I have full-blown conversations with Henry sometimes. I even tell him about the course before we go out on cross country (“there’s a corner out of the water, don’t be surprised” or “I’m legit terrified of the weldon’s wall, please help me out, I’ll give you a whole bag of cookies if you jump it” I have no problem with bribery, and yes I always pay up). He stands there and at least pretends to listen intently, humoring me most likely. He does that a lot. I know Henry so well at this point, and he’s so outwardly emotional, I swear I can tell what he’s thinking. It’s easy to have a conversation with him.

The discussions with Presto tend to be more along the lines of “let go of that, it’s expensive”, “did you just eat a rock?”, “he/she does NOT want to be your friend… see, I told you”, “you’re gonna scare yourself if you don’t drop it…. see, I told you”, “PERSONAL SPACE, BRO”, etc etc. Maybe someday I’ll be having full-blown conversations with him, too.

I haven’t always been like this. There’s something about these two horses that has turned me into a stage five clinger. Hence how I find myself sitting there staring at them like one of them hung the moon and the other hung the stars.

You know when you’re younger and you sit there imagining your Dream Horse… probably the perfect shade of dapple gray or some shit, with perfect markings, the perfect size, your favorite breed, with a certain personality, blah blah blah. Oh how little we know. I look at my two (like a creeper), both very very different horses, neither of them top level anything, but at they same time they’re both a dream horse for me in their own right. Henry, in all of his very emotional, broody, downhill, appendix-lookalike glory, who really HAS hung the moon in my world. And then Presto, the outgoing, happy go lucky, resilient, athletic homebred that represents the future. I’ve adored him completely from that very first second when I saw his tiny little white nose enter the world, and there’s already so much history between us even though he’s only 2 1/2.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking and you’re right… I’m definitely that crazy horse lady, no doubt about it. I realized that about two seconds after I realized I was staring at my horses like Meghan stares at Harry. Please tell me I’m not alone.

Last week I was watching a video from a meeting that happened last winter, with upper level riders talking about young horses. Yes, I am a boring person, these are the kinds of nerdy things I love to watch.

It was an interesting discussion, lots of different takes on what people look for in a young horse, buying from the US vs importing from Europe, the development of a horse as it goes up the levels, etc. As the session evolved, one particular very big name rider/coach said  “This country has to – HAS TO – want to win at all costs and it has to have horses that want to win to do that”. It was said in the middle of a statement about the top level horses really needing grit and heart and a strong desire to do the job, which I agree with completely. But then I was like wait, hold on… what was the first part of that?

I paused it, backed up, and listened again. “This country has to – HAS TO – want to win at all costs”. Paused, backed up, listened one more time. “At all costs”. At. All. Costs.

It kept echoing in my head. My heart sunk, to be honest. That kind of statement, in a sport like this, is enough to make me more than a little physically ill. Just the very idea of saying “win at all costs” in horse sports, much less living it… vomit. Is that really what it takes to win gold medals? What does “at all costs” really mean? Maybe, at least I really really hope, I’m reading too much into it. I’d rather this country never go to another team competition again, much less win, if it meant we had to do sacrifice horsemanship or welfare (or, well, a lot of things) to get there. And perhaps I’m just jaded or cynical, but that’s the vibe I got. I know there are people that think like this, it’s inevitable, but I’ve never heard anyone actually say it, especially not someone like that. Is that mindset more common than I thought? It has me questioning and rethinking not just the past, but also the future of the sport as a whole.

I’ve spent almost a week now mulling over that statement, playing it on repeat in my mind. It’s made me incredibly uncomfortable. Is that the kind of perspective it takes to get to and stay at the upper levels? If so, is any of this worth it? With all the issues we face in eventing, which ones are we sweeping under the rug and accepting as being just another “cost”? What all is disposable, exactly, in this quest for gold? Are there people at the top of every sport that share this perspective? I’m sure there are. Maybe this is the completely accepted normal among the elites and I’m just incredibly naive. I’m looking at things under a new light, especially the high performance aspect, and I don’t really like it.

Maybe it’s just this person’s perspective. Maybe she’s the exception, not the rule. Maybe she didn’t mean it in the way it sounds. I don’t know. I’ve tried to reason it away many times over, yet haven’t succeeded. The truth is – it bothered me, it still bothers me, and I can’t get it out of my head. What do you make of that sentence? Am I taking it the wrong way, overreacting, reading too much into it? Or does it give you the heebie-jeebies too?

Normal people equate autumn with things like pumpkin spice lattes, changing leaves, making soup, and arguing on the internet about whether or not candy corn is disgusting (it’s literally a chunk of sugar so it’s delicious by default, but if y’all don’t want to eat it that’s fine, more for me). To equestrians autumn mostly means fresh horses, lots of shows, and… body clipping.

Back in the days when I was more desperate for money (or, really, before I branched out into other side gigs, because as a horse owner I’ll probably always be desperate for money) I used to do a lot of body clipping. It can be pretty lucrative if you’re willing to do it and can do a decent job, although year after year my willingness has definitely lessened. I’m relatively certain that I will have horse hair in my eyeballs forever after a few particularly busy winters in my heyday. Nowadays pretty much the only way I’ll body clip is if it’s my own horse or a friend’s horse.

Henry, bless his extremely hairy and also heat-intolerant heart, feels the same way about clipping as I do. He permits it because he has to and he enjoys the results, but he really isn’t much of a fan. He stands politely for the most part, but he’s so flinchy and sensitive that I get whipped in the face with his tail pretty much the whole time I’m doing his belly.

I’ve bodyclipped Henry so many times over the years that we’ve come to a few agreements by now:

1. Legs and ears are off limits. He really can’t stand the clippers on his legs at all, he tries to be still but just CAN’T, so he ends up constantly shuffling his feet the entire time. I think I clipped his legs twice ever before I was like SCREW THIS SHIT and agreed that he can just always keep his leg warmers. Thank god we’re eventers and a hunter clip is a normal thing in that world. He genuinely is very uncomfortable/borderline terrified about clipping his ears, even with sedation, so I just get as close to them as possible and he keeps a little fur bonnet. I could push the issue if I wanted (there is a major double standard in this household, because Presto isn’t allowed to have opinions like this), but honestly he does a lot for me and if his hard limit is “no ear clipping” then I’m ok with that. Looks dumb as hell but he wears an actual ear bonnet at shows so who cares. I like my horse more than I like other people’s opinions.
2. We keep a pretty big saddle patch. Because he’s the most sensitive, easily-rubbed horse ever. The patch is the same size front-to-back as the pad. If I don’t do that, he is uncomfortable and will get rubs. Period.
3. I use my “little” clippers as much as possible, especially on his belly.

I have a set of Lister Star clippers, which are more powerful and faster, but they also have more vibration and are louder, and Henry doesn’t really like them on his midsection. And when I say he doesn’t really like them I mean he acts like he’s being murdered one inch at a time. So unless I’m in a hurry for some reason, I just clip him with my smaller Andis clippers. They’re still pretty powerful but he takes less objection to them on his sensitive areas (let’s be real, he’s a walking sensitive area).

Normally he gets his first clip around the beginning of October, but I waited a little later this year since we aren’t showing and he’s really just coming back into a regular, more rigorous schedule. I was hoping if I waited a little later I wouldn’t have to clip him so many times. I think that was a mistake though, he was hot even in the 70’s weather we had this weekend. His coat is so thick, and he already has problems with heat regulation. I won’t do that again.

But yesterday we got down to it… I bathed him (wow he was FILTHY, he lives in a much sandier place now and I think he’s taking full advantage), got all my stuff ready, and went to town. Usually I use T-84 blades but this time I opted to go a bit shorter with T-10’s (thanks for that 30% coupon, Dover, well timed), hoping it’ll maybe last a bit longer before we have to endure do this again. I found a gross mega-flaky skin patch under all the hair on one side of his butt, too, which again made me feel like a bad horse mom. So he got a fungus bath when we finished and then I turned him back out. He didn’t even pause for a cookie, he just stalked away angrily to the back of the pasture. Two baths and a body clip in one day… I guess he hates me now.

I cleaned up and packed my things away, pausing to make a little mini-Henny in the process (look, I’m a child and it’s the only real fun I get to have in all this, okay?) and he still refused to even look at me. YOU’RE WELCOME, HORSE. I know he has to feel a lot better, and it’s supposed to be almost 90 tomorrow so he’d have been legit dying otherwise. But, ya know… I’ll just plow him with cookies until he’s over it, like always.

Anybody else body clipping already? Nothing quite like a bra full of tiny stabby horse hairs to officially ring in the fall season.