The boys will be moving again soon – not for any bad reason, but because I’ve gotten an opportunity I can’t pass up. I know, I need to explain the whole story, hopefully tomorrow! But as part of all this, I’ll finally be in charge of every single aspect of their care, including what they eat.

Henry was on Triple Crown for most of the time I’ve owned him – first Complete and then Senior. Presto was on Growth and then Senior (very similar formulas, actually). When they moved to the current barn they switched to the owner’s personal mix, which is along the same lines. But 1) I don’t really want to mix my own grain 2) I don’t love Henry’s topline on this mix 3) I think they both need more fat/calories in general. I’ve been eyeballing Bluebonnet, a brand based in Oklahoma, as I know several friends that have had really good luck with their feeds. While I was relatively satisfied with how the boys looked on Triple Crown, and know that I can always go back to that, I still felt like there was room for improvement, and I’m curious to see if I can find something that suits them even better. So now that I’m about to have full control over what my horses eat, I figure it’s a good time to try the Bluebonnet.

Bluebonnet ticks the most required boxes in that it’s a high quality brand with a locked formula that produces all of their feeds in ionophore-free mills, and contains no by-products. Since its a more regional brand it’s not as easy to get if we’re traveling, which is a bit of a “con” in general, but I take feed with me when I travel anyway, so it’s not a dealbreaker for me. They also have a line of supplements, Stride, that Michelle has used on a lot of her horses with fantastic success, especially when Presto was a weanling and still bouncing back from all of his issues. It’s not a particularly cheap brand, but in the same price range as Triple Crown. I have never really minded spending more money on my horse’s food, since I think it’s extremely important. Everything starts with nutrition.

I originally contacted Bluebonnet with some questions, as I was wavering between a couple different formulas that they offer. They put me in touch with my local rep/nutritionist, who lives very close to where the boys are boarded. She offered to come out and take a look at them and talk to me so that she could make her best recommendation, and while part of me was grumbling like “heeeeere we go with the upsell”, the other part of me was like “if you wanna come out here and listen to me tell you the life story of my horses for an hour, more power to you.”.

So the rep came out last night, and as predicted… she listened to me give her way too much information about my horses for an hour. But I did like being able to throw questions at her on the fly, in person, and get a real time response/reaction, and she was able to get a close look at both of them and ask me some questions too. I am naturally very skeptical of anyone who is clearly trying to sell me something, but at the same time I recognize the fact that it certainly doesn’t mean they’re wrong.

The feed she recommended was one of the two that I was wavering between – Intensify Omega Force. It’s a low starch, higher calorie feed, which is a requirement for me. The feed is formulated with Stride’s 101 supplement, all around diet balancer that contains vitamins, chelated minerals, biotin, Vitamin E, etc. Basically, the kind of quality you expect from a higher end feed. The Omega Force in particular has a higher calorie content via “good fats” like flaxseed, rice bran, fish oil, soybean oil, and beet pulp, so you’re typically able to feed it in smaller amounts than many other feeds. That’s one of the main selling points, anyway. One of the big things that I’m looking to get from the changeover is that I want to be able to feed them less grain than I currently have to, so that part certainly makes it appealing. The rep did say that sometimes super picky eaters are put off by the fish oil, but my two would literally eat rocks covered in dog shit (pretty sure Presto has done exactly that), so I’m not worried about it.

After we settled on a feed recommendation, we launched into the inevitable upsell side of things with the Stride supplements. I’ve always been reeeeeally on the fence when it comes to supplements anyway, and you’re gonna have a particularly hard time selling me a super expensive one. But I certainly don’t know everything, so I’m willing to hear you out and consider what you have to say. So starting with Henry, she took a closer look and starting asking me more questions. After my initial description, she ran her hands over him and then checked an accupressure point for hindgut inflammation. Honestly, given how sensitive he is about literally everything I thought he would have reacted more, but he just gave a very half-hearted tail swish. Not enough for her to call it a positive reaction.

She explained to me that in her opinion he ticked all the boxes for Leaky Gut Syndrome, but didn’t react as she would expect to acupressure point test. Still, she said, she would send me some literature about it so I could see what I thought since I knew him best. I appreciated that. Due to all of his skin and allergy issues, she did recommend their Immune Health Program for a minimum of 30 days up to 90 days. This is, as you may have guessed, REALLY FREAKING EXPENSIVE, and initially I’m not feeling particularly convinced. I’ll research it more and see what I think. Reading up on it has only given me a lot more questions at this point, so there will be some follow-up conversation with her for sure.

Presto, ever the stoic beast, really had no issues other than the fact that he has to eat a lot more than I’d like in order for him to maintain condition. Of course, he’s also a big growing 2yo. Given what he’s eating she felt that his system wasn’t optimizing his feed as well as it should (which I can kind of agree with, honestly) and recommended 30 days of ADR powder. She described the ADR in layman’s terms as sort of a mega-dose of pre and probiotics to help reset or jumpstart a horse’s digestive system. That one is considerably less expensive, and I am a big believer in the power of probiotics, but again… I have more research to do before I decide exactly how I feel about it.

We talked for a while longer, then she sent me lots of links to different information when she got home, and left it in my hands.

In some ways the visit was definitely helpful, and I liked being able to talk to the rep face to face and let her see my horses up close and personal. There’s a lot to be said for real time feedback, and interacting with someone directly. Nothing she said was particularly surprising, and I did get the feed recommendation I was after, which I feel good about. I’m interested to see how the Omega Force works for my horses. I do have a large dose of skepticism about the recommended supplement regimes, but am at least willing to look into it more. I already have another list of questions for the rep just from the brief amount of research I’ve been able to do so far. One of the links she sent was to a presentation their head vet gave on Leaky Gut Syndrome, which was pretty interesting to watch. Definitely some new information there for me, and something to think about. We’ll see how I feel once I start looking into things a bit more.

Have you guys ever had a nutritionist out to consult on your horses? Is anyone else as obsessed with this stuff as I am?

 

If you are a fan of live streams, this was a great weekend to nerd out on a laptop with 3 different eventing options to choose from. I was glued to the Blenheim 4* XC, mostly because it suits my schedule much more to watch a live stream from 5am to 9am. But also because I’m already wondering why the eff we came back here, where it’s supposed to be 100 degrees today on the first day of effing fall, when we could have just stayed in the UK for a month or so and gone from one big event to the next. Poor life choice on our part. I could even SEE some of the shopping in the background of the live feed. Didn’t take long for those Burghley withdrawals to kick in.

I also popped in and out of the Plantation live stream throughout the day, mostly to try to catch some of the Mighty Magic offspring that were competing. He had FOUR spread amongst the 2*, the 3*, and the 4*. Turns out it was a great weekend to be sat on a MM at Plantation, because 3 of the four finished on their dressage score and the other added only one rail. All of them were double clear XC and two finished in 2nd place – one in the 3* and one in the 4*. And in the 3*, the two fastest rounds of the divisions both belonged to the MM’s. Sometimes it’s fun to be a horse stalker.

Another Mighty Magic won the 3yo FEH West Coast Championships too. “Magical” weekend, eh (yeah ok I’ll stop being punny on a Monday morning, sorry)? When you’re waiting for a baby horse to grow up, sometimes the only way to get your kicks is by stalking his relatives, so give me a break. It helps me stay sane(r).

Speaking of Presto, he also had some adventures this weekend. Some good, some bad. Very bad. On Saturday I stuck his bridle on and trotted the triangle a few times in hand, to make sure he still remembered how. The entry fee money for FEH championships officially left my account so I figured I should probably like… prep for it. For at least maybe 5 minutes. He was perfect, he knows this part pretty well by now.

Then we stood in the ring and watched the other horses work. He finds that to be equal parts boring AF and fascinating AF.

We went and parked it down at the end by the trailers, where he became very obsessed with the horse in the window. For a long time. He’s pretty entertaining, I’ll give him that.

On Sunday I was at the barn super early to load up Henry to head to Pine Hill for XC schooling. It started out really well when I couldn’t actually FIND HIM in the pitch black. He wasn’t in his usual turnout, and I guess I interrupted his beauty sleep, because he finally stumbled up to the gate looking only half awake.

I got literally zero pictures or videos from schooling, so… you’ll just have to believe me that it happened. It was our first time back out on XC since Coconino so I had a pretty rank horse for the first half, but everything clicked back together by the end. It would be nice if the ground would soften up a bit so we could get back to our regular gallop schedule. Someone needs it. Anyway, since I didn’t get pics I’ll just give you GIFs.

The first half went like this

And the second half went like this

When I got home I unloaded the trailer, unpacked everything and was flyspraying the boys, getting ready to leave, when…

Yes that is Presto.

Yes that is a couple of gross cuts.

Yes that is a really swollen hock.

You gotta be effing kidding me, you little shit. It’s as if he could FEEL that entry fee money leave my account on Saturday. HORSES. EFFING HORSES. How? I don’t even know how!

Luckily the vet was just getting in his truck to leave when I found it, so he climbed back out, looked at it, gave him some banamine and penicillin, and said “Jesus, this is getting ridiculous. I have my gun back here if you want me to shoot him.” NO I DO NOT WANT YOU TO SHOOT HIM, YOU ARE NOT FUNNY (also that’s not very believable from a man who has a farm full of animals that other people wanted to put down and he wouldn’t do it). “Okay well you should probably cold hose it then.”.

So I cold hosed. For a long time. And Hillary won the A+ friend award by bringing me a blueberry lemonade to make cold hosing seem less miserable. By the time I was done it looked like the swelling had already gone down a bit. I slapped some Surpass on the hock, sprayed the wound with Alushield, cursed Presto a few more times, and headed home. I guess we’ll see if we can get that swelling down and the wound looking better before Championships, which are… Thursday. And maybe, like… not accrue any additional injuries before then? That would also be great.

HORSES.

This blog hop has been making the rounds and I’ve really enjoyed reading everyone’s answers to these questions, plus it’s Friday and I can’t brain hard enough for other content, so here we go!

1. Favorite quirk your horse has?

Henry – his weird tongue thing that he does, where he flops it out the side of his mouth and sucks on it. If he did it under saddle it most definitely would not be my favorite, but luckily he doesn’t, therefore it’s cute.

Presto – I’ll be honest, I find his constant need to have something in his mouth to be hilarious. Mostly when he’s holding something he shouldn’t (like a crosstie) and you’re like “Presto!” and he just goes totally still but doesn’t drop the object. He’s like “what, there’s nothing in my mouth, I dunno what you mean.”. It’s a symptom of his general personality, which I love. Luckily it seems like he wants to hold things more than actually chew on them… most of the time.

2. Three adjectives that perfectly describe your horse?

Henry – cheeky, genuine, emotional

Presto – confident, goofy, curious

3. Plan your next ride. What will you do/work on?

Pole work! We do a lot of that.

4. Have you ever trained an OTTB? If yes, what was the biggest challenge?

Many. I think they’re all quite different, you can’t really come at each of them exactly the same way. The most important thing is to be realistic about the horse you have, what it’s holes are, and what it needs physically and mentally. I also think that it’s important to remember that there are huge changes in their body happening in that first 6 months to a year off the track, and they might need extra support or help, changes in diet, extra care, etc etc. Stay diligent and be ready to alter your program as needed.

5. Have you ever groomed or worked for a professional rider?

Yes to both. I’ve been a working student for a couple different upper level riders and have done some work here and there (mostly when I was younger) as a groom.

6. Favorite horse and rider combination?

I tend to be drawn to the ones where you can really see and feel the connection they have forged together over time. To me that’s what it’s all about. You know, the people who clearly worship their horse and maybe can’t even talk about them in an interview without getting a bit choked up or beaming like a lunatic with pride. Historically I’ve really liked duos such as Buck and Ballynoe Castle RM, and Michael Jung with Sam. They’re both retired now, so I think my current “famous” favorite is Ingrid and Hale Bob, although there are so many (at every level) that I really enjoy.

7. Have you ever ridden a horse at the beach?

Yes, twice! Once in Half Moon Bay, CA and once in Jamaica. A beach ride in Texas is on my bucket list to do with Henry, maybe this year or next.

8. If you could experience the equestrian community (i.e. ride and compete) in another country, what country would you choose and why?

The UK, hands down, for practical reasons. 1) I know the language. 2) SO many competition opportunities. 3) it’s cheaper. 4) it’s highly competitive. 5) it’s so saturated with top level riders, horses, and coaches. I feel like I could learn a lot with a year in the UK.

9. In your opinion, what is an item of tack that is given unnecessary hype?

Having come from the h/j world, the first one that pops to mind for me is standing martingales. I don’t really understand the whole “martingale as an item of apparel” thing, even though I’ve been guilty of it in the past (lord, the h/j life feels like it was such a long time ago). It’s silly. There are plenty of other things that I think are totally useless for me personally, but if other people like them then whatever.

10. What was the first horse you rode called? Are they still alive?

I don’t remember exactly which the first one was, but considering that was 30 years ago and they were schoolmaster types even then, I highly doubt any of those early ones are still alive! Thanks for making me feel old though.

Yeah I know, I’m slacking a bit on this one seeing as Burghley was 2 weeks ago. I fully intended to post this before we left but I had only gotten about 3/4 of the way through my spreadsheet by that point. And now I’m kind of glad, because I broke things down a little bit differently this time considering the heavy influence that cross country had, and looking back at the XC finishers and the top 12.

There was nothing particularly unusual in most of the statistics. By now, after doing these breakdowns on a lot of the big events, they are generally pretty consistent across the board. The average blood percentage (how much TB or arabian blood a horse carries in it’s bloodlines) of the starters – 62% – was a bit higher than we’ve seen at some of the European “majors” before (that tend to average around 57-59%) but a tad lower than we saw at Kentucky (65%). This is probably because with that big contingent of Americans we brought 6 fullblooded horses with us.  Fun fact: all 4 of the fullblooded horses that completed cross country were American (Vermiculus, Indy 500, Tight Lines, Unmarked Bills). Leamore Master Plan, who had the fastest clear round from an American, is 80% blood by full TB stallion Master Imp xx.

More interestingly, the average blood percentage of the top 12 was 73%… higher than the field average of 62%. However, if you look at the average blood percentage of the horses that showjumped clear, that dips to 57%.

The usual disclaimer about the facts and figures in this post applies: several horses, especially those of Irish descent, don’t have complete pedigree information. In those cases I have to exclude them from any datasets where I can’t verify the numbers or the parts of the pedigree I need. The record keeping (or lack thereof) around the Irish pedigrees is incredibly frustrating. Every breeder in Ireland will soon know that I’m a complete psychopath, because if I can find out who the breeder is I will definitely message them and ask if they know more about the pedigree. But hey it did benefit me this time when I saw that the winner was listed as being out of an “unknown” dam. I messaged and was told that they were fairly certain it was a full TB dam, but the ISH board was working to confirm that.

About 25% of the field had a full TB sire, where 40% had a full TB damsire. Sky Boy xx, Mr Prospector xx, Hoist the Flag xx, and Danzig xx all made multiple appearances, but the most common sire to show up in the first 5 generations was Nijinsky II xx, present in 5 horses. Lots of Northern Dancer (and Native Dancer).

While stallions are mentioned the most due to the fact that they produce way more offspring and therefore show up way more often, any breeder will tell you that mares tend to be more influential to the offspring. So it’s definitely worth mentioning that one mare had TWO offspring in this year’s Burghley field. Faerie Dazzler, who competed through 4* before becoming a broodmare, is the sire of Xavier Faer (by Catherston Liberator) and Faerie Dianimo (by Dimaggio). Faerie Dazzler’s dam, Mudlark (a full TB by Ben Faerie xx), produced two advanced level event horses herself. Great mareline!

As usual we have some stallions showing up more than once within the first few generations: Courage II is the sire of 3 horses (2 finished top 15, one DNF), OBOS Quality is the sire of 2 (the winner and one DNF), Fleetwater Opposition is the sire of 2 (both DNF), Mill Law is the sire of 2 (one top 20, one DNF), Cavalier Royale is the damsire of two and the sire’s sire of two (2 top 10, one top 20, one DNF), Marlon is the sire of 1 and the damsire of 1 (top 20 and DNF), Cruising is the sire of 1 and the damsire of 1 (one top 25, one DNF), Chellano Z is the sire’s sire of 2 (2nd place and DNF), and Master Imp xx is the sire of 1 and the sire’s sire of 1 (one top 10, one DNF). We’ve seen most of those names before.

This time I did a little more digging, looking further back in the pedigrees to pull out more sire lines. This was a little interesting. Galoubet shows up in 4 horses, Landgraf in 4, Capitol in 5, Ramiro in 6, Clover Hill in 9 (by far the most represented Irish horse), and Cor de la Bryere in a remarkable 13 horses. Five of those 13 are via his grandson Contender, who was by Calypso II out of a Ramiro mare. Even more incredibly, 6 of the top 12 horses – HALF – have Cor de la Bryere in their pedigree at least once.

Corde was a prolific showjumping sire, becoming a legend in the Holsteiner breeding history books. He’s pretty common in jumping pedigrees these days. And while he found much success being crossed with the Holsteiner mare base, if you look at his pedigree he is actually Selle Francais – and 2/3 TB at that. He is by TB stallion Rantzau xx. His jumping prowess combined with a good bit of blood seems to help make him a prevalent ancestor of event horses.

The other more interesting thing (to me) that showed up was the representation of particular registries. For instance, 38% of the field had one full TB parent. When you look at just XC finishers, that number drops slightly to 37%. However, if you look at just the top 12 final placings, 50% of those horses could be verified as having at least one full TB parent.

We saw a  similar trend when it came to Selle Francais, traditional Irish Sporthorse (ie contains Irish Draught), and Holsteiner bloodlines. The percentage of horses in the field that carried Selle Francais bloodlines in the first 4 generations was 29%. For XC finishers that figure rose to 35%, and for top 12 horses it rose a little more to 46%. Same story for traditional ISH. The percentage of horses in the field that carried traditional Irish bloodlines in the first 4 generations was 19%. For XC finishers that figure more than doubled to 41%, and for top 12 horses it rose even more to 55%.  Holsteiner blood was also largely represented. The percentage of horses in the field that carried Holsteiner bloodlines in the first 4 generations was 49%. For XC finishers that rose to 55%, and for top 12 horse it went up to a whopping 73%. To lend some comparison, 17% of the top 12 carried Hanoverian bloodlines, and 0% of the top 12 carried Trakehner.

So when compared to the overall starting numbers, TB, Holsteiner, Selle Francais, and traditional Irish blood have a higher amount of representation in the top 12 horses.

But once again, even amid all of the more predictable pedigrees, eventing also showed some diversity, with an Arabian x TB cross (Vermiculus), a Connemara x TB cross (Feldale Mouse), and a Clydesdale x TB cross (Harelaw Wizard). Cross it with a TB and it still has a chance.

Next up on the In the Blood series we’ll be keeping an eye on all the Young Horse Championships that are happening in the next month or so, both here in the US and in Europe! Hope I haven’t bored everyone to death yet.

When we last left off with our intrepid baby hero, he had tried to rip one of his feet off. Like… a week before entries closed for FEH Championships. Because horse.

The vet had to nerve block the foot, trim off the flap of hoof, and do some magic to try to preserve as much of the tissue as possible. Presto pretty much took off the entire heel of that hoof, and ripped a flap of tissue up into the coronet band. How, I still do not know, but he was pretty thorough. It took the vet a while to get it cleaned up and situated as he wanted it, and he bandaged it up and advised me that Championships were very likely off the table, and the heel of that hoof may or may not ever grow quite normally again. Depends on how much he really damaged. Good job baby horse.

When I left town Presto still had the bandage on, and the vet said he’d take it off in a couple more days and see how things looked, fully expecting to have to put another bandage back on so Presto would be able to walk comfortably. But it looked a lot better upon removal of the bandage, so he checked for soundness and against all odds, Presto was sound. Still a bit tender on the gravel on that foot if he steps on a big rock, but… sound. None of us really have any idea HOW, because it still looks like it would hurt.

The farrier was able to trim his feet without a problem, and we’ll just have to keep an eye on that one as it starts to grow out. It’ll be a while before he actually has a heel again. You can see there’s still a bit of open wound at the bulb, but the sublayers have already closed up so he doesn’t seem to feel it at all. I’m just keeping it clean and trying not to mess with it too much. Luckily its the outside of a hind foot, so it’s not a place he’s likely to step on or reinjure with his own feet (I said LIKELY, not impossible. If anyone could do it, it’d be Presto…).

The vet filled me in on all this when I got home and said “he hasn’t taken a lame step since I took the bandage off – go ahead and enter him.”. Times when it’s great having your horse at your vet’s house… he’s seen him every day. So the original 3-6 week timeline for soundness (originally the vet gave me a 50/50 shot of him being sound in time for Championships) really ended up being like 5 days. THANK GOODNESS. I will give Presto credit, he is a pretty tough little dude. Looking at the foot, none of us feel like he should be sound, yet he is. I know Henry definitely would not be.

I got Presto out this weekend and walked and trotted him on the lunge line for a grand total of 3 minutes. I wanted to make sure it wouldn’t bother him as he went, and it didn’t. The cellulitis that had developed in his giant effing butt hematoma (or as I called it – the 3rd butt cheek) is mostly gone now too… still slightly lumpy, but it’s hard to see. He’s looking growthy again (although for him he looks pretty good) and is covered in bite marks (we’ve given up) but… I think he can go to Championships. Knock on wood, cross your fingers, pet that rabbit’s foot, pick up a penny, find a four leaf clover… ANYTHING. I’ll take ANYTHING. It’s possible that I considered hanging an evil eye from his stall. Maybe I should just braid one into his tail.

So the entry is back in the mail (I went and retrieved it from the outbound mail box just in time when he first injured the foot) and I put in my PTO request for next Thursday. There’s no going back now, money wise, since there are no refunds. And that entry was really expensive for a 5 minute in-hand class. Hopefully I can keep him together and he can stay out of too much trouble until then? I dunno. Now I’m just nervous. This animal is walking T-R-O-U-B-L-E.

Presto has definitely racked up his fair share of vet bills this year. I remember his mother did that in her 2yo year too… hock infection, crazy ass wolf teeth removal that required all kinds of extra shit because they were GIANT (it’s never good when the vet is like “WOW, do you mind if I take pictures of this?”), x-rays, stitches, staples, something with her foot that I’ve blocked from my memory. I’m starting to think 2 is the worst age. At least for this particular line.

He also had his half-birthday a couple days ago. Officially 2 1/2! We’re getting so close to 3, guys… that’s exciting.