Boy oh boy have I been able to do some thinning of my facebook friends this week. I’m just gonna throw this out there, but if your response to someone being set down for sexual misconduct with a child is to petition to have SafeSport disbanded (I do think its kind of funny that people are submitting a petition to the very same government that put SafeSport in place, though. The irony. It kills.), or to blame the victim for not coming forward before now (what makes you think they didn’t?), or to make excuses like “it was a different time” or “it was a long time ago” (newsflash, molesting kids was illegal then too), or to try to give someone a free pass because of “all they’ve done for the sport”, I’m not interested in maintaining a friendship. Maybe that seems harsh, but if you’re a child abuse apologist and sympathizer, then well… that’s all I’ve got to say about that. That’s the only black and white part of all this.

Whether or not GM actually did it, we don’t know for sure. I’m not here to debate that or spread gossip about who said what when. We aren’t privy to the details, nor are we entitled to them. Guilt or innocence doesn’t even matter for that particular ethics debate. As soon as you start making excuses for child abuse or blaming the victims, we’re done here. I admittedly can’t wrap my head around this “I Stand with George” facebook group either. How can you possibly stand with (or against) a particular person when you have no idea what all the investigation uncovered? That’s not support, that’s blind hero worship, and that’s dangerous. That’s how we got here in the first place. Keep in mind that this was the exact same reaction when Larry Nassar was outed, by the way. If you still haven’t listened to the Believed podcast, I’m starting to feel like it should be a requirement. None of us have any idea what goes on in private, even with our closest friends.

Now, setting aside the ethics debate, if you’ve got SafeSport policy or process concerns, then I 100% get it. There seems to be a lot of confusion out there about SafeSport, how it works, what the process is, what it’s job is, and how it relates to USEF. It is certainly not a perfect system by any means. None is. Look at our exceptionally messy judicial system. But I’m pretty sure if I have to repeat the line “USEF is not the one that made this decision” one more time, my head is just gonna explode. If you don’t even understand which organization does what, much less what they’re doing and how, you should probably do some reading before you comment.

People also don’t seem to understand the difference between a criminal charge and a private organization’s sanction, and what constitutional rights (or statute of limitations, due process, or burden of proof) apply to which scenario. Please people, do some research. It’s all online. Handy dandy SafeSport flow chart is here. SafeSport Code is here. FAQ’s are here. USEF SafeSport policy and MAAP guidelines (with specifics) are here. SafeSport responses to specific questions and concerns put forth by the horse community are here. That should be enough to get you started. If you want to complain about it, great, no problem, but at least understand what you’re saying.

I know that most people won’t read any of that. They aren’t interested in understanding, they’re interested in reacting. Which… ok, fine. But what I have a major concern with is the industry professionals and trainers who don’t seem to understand any of this, nor seem to want to. Especially the ones that are standing here saying that SafeSport is going to destroy the industry, or that they simply cannot operate their businesses under these impossible constraints.

I’m gonna be really blunt and unpopular for a second here.

Welcome. To. The. Real. World.

Look, y’all. It is 2019. It doesn’t matter if you’re a lawyer, a doctor, a teacher, a janitor, a rocket scientist, an IT professional, a cashier at Walmart, or (now) a horse trainer. You can be removed from your job or have your licensing taken away at any time, for any multitude of reasons. My HR department could literally pull me in today and fire me. The sports world has never had an HR department, until now. The best way to avoid losing your job? Learn how to act like a damn professional. Learn how to make your business practices comply with society’s standard of conduct. Other sports are doing it. It’s possible, I promise. Is it a change? Yup. Does it require some restructuring of a lot of programs? Probably. This business has been flying under the radar for a long time, and look what kind of culture we’ve allowed to foster and go unchecked for decades, both towards horses and towards people. Clearly we needed something like SafeSport to police us, since we’ve been unsuccessful at doing it ourselves. The truth is, a lot more big names are going to fall from grace before SafeSport is done cleaning house. There is a very ugly underbelly to our industry, and we’re past due to pay the piper.

It’s bothering the hell out of me to see so many trainers choosing to go after SafeSport rather than seeking to understand it, or seeking to clarify it, or reaching out and asking questions, or, if they’re so compelled, trying to champion SS reform. I get it, people are running scared. The common panicked exclamation is “One client with a grudge and my career is destroyed”. Not true. Unless said claimant can substantiate their claim in such a way that the investigators think that what they’re saying is likely to have occurred, no action will be taken. Furthermore, if said claimant is found to have knowingly filed a false claim, they themselves can be sanctioned. Even furthermore, lifetime bans are reserved for only the most severe of offenses, usually involving sexual misconduct with a minor. You aren’t going to get banned for making a kid do push-ups. Everybody is being a little overdramatic. I have to give a lot of props to Kristin Hardin, she’s one of the few I’ve seen that actually seems to get what’s at stake here.

SafeSport doesn’t have to be the enemy here unless you want it to be. People might hate that they have to get with the times, or resist change, but the truth is, it’s going to happen anyway whether it’s SafeSport or someone else. There is no going back. Following SafeSport guidelines will actually protect the industry professionals too, if we let it. We live in a pretty litigious society, you would be wise to protect yourself.

Now, if you don’t like something about the SafeSport process – fair enough. There are plenty of holes in any process. Learn it. Get involved. Ask questions. If there need to be changes, find out how reform can happen. But SafeSport isn’t going away, and resisting it isn’t good for any of us. It’s up to us to figure out how to make this work. I also think it’s really important to remember why it exists in the first place. The mission statement: Our mission is to make athlete well-being the centerpiece of our nation’s sports culture. All athletes deserve to participate in sports free from bullying, hazing, sexual misconduct or any form of emotional or physical abuse. 

If you can’t get behind that, you don’t belong in any sport, and especially not in a position of power. Period. Full stop.

Y’all were exceptionally helpful last week when I asked for suggestions for fuzzy pads to help with Henry’s random and sporadic saddle pad rub issues. There were a lot of options, and I was really overwhelmed, but I appreciate you guys reaching out with your own experiences and product feedback.  It helped tremendously. I did finally make a decision, after much hemming and hawing, and then ended up adding another purchase a couple days later. Safe to say, I think I covered all my bases. I hope. Come on Henry.

I ended up getting three pads, from two different brands. I started out with two Merino Wool lined pads from Premier Equine in the UK. Several of you recommended these, and Premier just happened to be in the middle of a 25% off sale, plus I found a coupon code that stacked, plus VAT is removed from the price. I ended up paying $108 total for both pads with shipping, which seemed like too good of a deal to pass up. I was bummed that they didn’t have a style that was shimmable, but theirs are half lined on the bottom, and they came in colors I liked (ie navy), and they have both a jumping style and a dressage style. That ticked most of my boxes, and I didn’t have to spend $500 to do it. Sold.

I ordered those on Friday night, and then on Saturday Hufglocken reached out to me because they had gotten a lot of traffic from my site thanks to the links that were left in the post comments. I ended up getting a Mattes pad from them – a half pad with sheepskin bottom and the correction system. That should tick all the other boxes that the Premier pads didn’t cover, giving me something that can go under a regular pad, or be used by itself, and something I can use on Presto to help Henry’s saddle fit him better as he’s growing. Ta-da – all boxes checked! The Mattes will take a while to get here since it’s a custom order, but in the meantime I have the Premier pads, so… I think it worked out perfectly.

I have to give two huge thumbs up to Premier for their ordering and shipping process. Like I said, I ordered the pads on Friday night (my time) and they shipped out from England on Monday, arriving at my door in Texas before lunch time on Tuesday. It was crazy fast, especially considering that shipping was only $15 and they were in the middle of a huge sale. Like… if this was SmartPak my order wouldn’t have even been in a box yet. (I know this because I recently ordered a gallon of fly spray in their summer sale and it was 6 days before they even shipped it, calm down SmartPak fans)

Both pads also came with zippered carrying cases, which is a nice bonus. Much easier to tote around and keep clean for shows, especially if you have white.

It’s too early to give an opinion on the pads themselves aside from the initial positive first impression. They aren’t as super fluffy and soft and plush as Mattes, but a) they’re Merino Wool not sheepskin, and b) they were literally 1/4 of the price. They are definitely really pretty, and appear to be well made. They fit my saddles well, which is sometimes a rarity given that one of them is an extra forward monoflap. It was too hot to do anything but a quick hack yesterday so it’s tough to gauge Henry’s opinion for sure, but he acted completely normal so we’ll call that a positive for the princess. His back did seem to get less sweaty under these than usual, for whatever that’s worth. We’ll see how it goes with more time, and how they wear/wash.

So, many thanks for all of the input and for helping me make a decision. As usual, y’all came through. Hopefully we’ve found a solution! I’ll circle back and give all the pads a proper review once I’ve had time to use and abuse them.

You know what’s really annoying? TWO YEAR OLDS.

 

Good lord this thing is mouthy. I’ve had other people tell me that their Mighty Magic’s are really mouthy, and I’m starting to think they aren’t joking. Presto isn’t happy unless there’s something in his mouth. Preferably food, but anything will do really. He’s such a BUSY horse, he’s always got to be engaged with something. I’ve had my fair share of busy, mouthy babies, but none quite as extreme as this one. He is kind of a pest. If he was a human kid the doctors would be trying to put him on Ritalin. And apparently the other horses feel the same way, because:

His level of pest seems to get higher when I don’t interact with him as much. Like he was ignored for most of July and the barn owner has about had it with his antics by now. He also destroyed two buckets just for funsies. So I’ve secured a few things to try to make toys for him (maybe he can destroy those instead?) and his ass is officially Back to School.

He’s ponying a couple times a week, and lunging once or twice. The timing kind of works out anyway, because we’re about 7 weeks out from Championships, and it would be nice to get him a little stronger. I ponied him a lot last year before FEH Championships and it seemed to help (a little strength is never bad for their gaits or topline…) so he can do it this year too.

Ponying is admittedly not as easy as it used to be either. He knows the rules, and he knows how he’s supposed to act, but… two. Did I mention he’s two? Because he’s two. His favorite thing is to randomly slam on the brakes and yank his head down so hard that I can’t stop him, grabbing as much grass as he can get before I wrestle him back. He’s a turd, guys. Too smart and conniving for his own good. I’ve already started to imagine all the ways I’m gonna end up falling off this thing. I think I’m going to have to be very crafty about keeping him occupied so he can’t use his powers for evil. As soon as he gets too bored with something, out come the tricks.

Also, he’s big.

Luckily he’s still rightfully terrified of Henry (who is probably the one that gave him that swift kick in the ass) so I get a little bit of assistance keeping him in line when we’re ponying, at least. Granted, Henry is the one that taught him the sneaky grazing trick.

We’ll be going back to the round pen a little bit too, so he remembers that manners aren’t optional. When he’s good, he’s really good. He knows “whoa”, “walk on”, and “trot” really well from voice commands. He wears a saddle and bridle happily. He steers and stops on the long lines… mostly. He loads and trailers well. You can tie him up and leave him alone. But when he gets the devil inside him, he’s got a naughty streak that rivals that of a Thelwell, and he can turn himself into quite the pest.

I have to be honest though, don’t tell Presto but I secretly am pretty amused by his cheekiness. It reminds me of Henry, and what’s not to love about Henry? They both know where their boundaries are, even if they quite enjoy toeing the line and driving me crazy. There’s something that I admire about that, even when it’s really really really really annoying.

So if you want to know what it’s like to own a baby horse you’re welcome to come over and spend a day with Pest-o any time. He is the babiest horse that has ever baby horsed. At this point I’m just counting down the months until I can actually ride this creature. I think having a job and purpose and something more mentally and physically difficult to do will help him a lot. Also… not being two… that would be greeeaaaat.

We are 3 weeks post-Coconino and already I’m going a little stir crazy. Normally this is the time of year where we take some time off, relax, and decompress. I usually quite enjoy it, and so does Henry. But we kinda did that in May when I hurt myself, and now it seems like neither Henry nor I am really feeling the need to do it again. I’d like to just say screw it and spend the rest of the summer hitting jumper shows and XC schooling, but two problems that: the VS outbreak and the weather.

My horses are in Bastrop county, which – NATURALLY – has the biggest outbreak. So far we’re up to 51 quarantined facilities in the county, and it’s rapidly rising. The VS itself, while gross and painful for the horses, isn’t usually a huge deal, but the mandatory quarantine can go on for weeks or months, so there are multiple reasons to try to avoid it. VS is a virus that can be spread either via direct contact or via blood-feeding insects, thus while I can’t do a whole lot about the latter aside from smothering my horses in clouds of fly spray (I went through a bottle of fly spray in a week), I can definitely do something about the former. I don’t know that it’s actually possible for us to avoid getting VS at our farm considering that we’re totally surrounded by it, but we’ve voluntarily quarantined ourselves for now to at least try to lower the risk a little bit.

So, no jumper shows, no XC schooling, no lessons.

Of course, it’s also way too effing hot for most of that anyway. We’re supposed to be in triple digits all week, and the humidity has been gross too. Some changes at work combined with the new barn location have made it basically impossible for me to ride before work, and it’s really too hot to do much in the afternoon. Henry has been getting a couple days off during the week, and when I do ride it’s usually either a long walk to pony Presto or a short bareback dressage ride. That’s about the extent of what I can do during the week without feeling like I’m killing him. The “real” rides happen on the weekend.

We’ve also not gotten any rain in weeks and the ground is like concrete, so it’s just an all around good time right now.

I did pull a few jumps out this weekend to take advantage of the freshly-cut hay field. I set up a jump on a short steep hill, a jump on the edge of the arena, and a coop near the fenceline. Henry was Pumped AF to be jumping and ran around like a crazy dolphin. I think he’s as bored as I am right now.

I will say, the weekends do seem a lot longer when you don’t have a lot of horse stuff taking up your time. We finally went to see The Lion King, which was awesome except they ruined my favorite song. And the lady next to me in the theater started bawling before we were even 2 minutes in. Still, it was good.

And on Friday our regular horse-friends happy hour finally got to hit up the fancy milkshake place that opened a while back. Although they were out of the ice cream that serves as the base for the one I really wanted, so that was a bit disappointing. Still though. Behold.

Yes, OF COURSE I felt like absolute shit after that, for about 12 hours. Still worth it though.

Otherwise I spent a lot of time this weekend obsessively checking scores for shows that I was nowhere near. Not having any PanAms coverage was a real bummer, especially when I was just hitting refresh over and over again during XC. It was kind of a bloodbath with all the eliminations and refusals, so not being able to see what was going on was stressful. But yay Team USA for getting it done. The other show I was stalking was Millbrook HT, where there were FIVE Mighty Magic offspring (that I know of) competing. One at Advanced, two at Intermediate, and two at Training.

One of the Training ones withdrew after dressage, but the other 4 all jumped clear XC (the three upper level ones were all double clear XC, just some time for the young one at T) and had only one rail between them in stadium. Is it weird to stalk horses like this? Probably. Am I gonna do it anyway? Duh. I don’t have anything better to do.

With most horses, it’s easy to look at them and be able to get a good idea of their sheer athletic potential. The ones we pick out as being talented tend to move with a certain swagger, a natural suppleness with hints of raw power. Their reflexes are fast, and the work seems to come easily to them. All of our young horse classes are centered around gauging a horse’s sheer natural physical ability, by looking for things just like that.

But what you can’t see, watching a horse in the beginning of it’s career, is the horse’s heart. A horse that wants to please. A horse that really loves and wants to do the job. It’s a quality that’s pretty important in any sport, but especially eventing. You see it all the time, horses that have all the talent in world but they just don’t have the heart.

You also see horses on the other end of the spectrum – horses that don’t have great conformation, great gaits, or a whole lot of natural ability, but they have a heart like a lion. Those horses might not look like much, and they might not be the ones that score the best, but they exceed expectations because they love what they do and they really want to do it. It’s not as easy for them, but they achieve beyond their initial potential because of qualities that we can’t see with the naked eye.

Owning Presto and Henry really highlights just how much of the latter that Henry really is. Watching Presto gallop is enough to make anyone stop and watch, with his long fluid strides that seem relatively effortless. He’s naturally uphill, and just looking at him you can tell he screams ATHLETE.

Henry, while I love him dearly, is kind of the opposite. He is a naturally thicker-bodied horse, built downhill, traveling always a bit croup high. Everyone who sees him go thinks he’s an appendix. His stride is a bit short, and he’s not naturally very fast. None of this job comes as easily to a horse like him as it would to a horse like Presto. Which is why I never really expected that he could make it past Training level.

Well – let me clarify that. I knew the horse could jump 1.10m, that wasn’t the problem. What I doubted (a lot) was his ability to get us out of bad situations at that height. If I spectacularly missed the distance at a max Prelim fence, I wasn’t convinced that he had enough athleticism to save us. What I didn’t really take into account were those internal qualities that actually matter so much… his brain and his heart.

He’s smart enough to say “No, this isn’t a good idea” if I’m that wrong and he just doesn’t think he can make it (or, uh, if he’s real tired of my shit). Self-preservation is a great quality in an amateur event horse. But he’s also got enough heart to where, if he can make it happen, he’ll dig deep down into that little QH-looking body of his and pull out just that liiiittle bit extra that no one would really expect. It’s not as easy for him to get us out of those situations as it would be for a more athletic horse, but he gets it done because he he’s dedicated to it. He really wants to find the other side of the fence. He loves his job.

I was wrong about Henry. He’s got that little extra inside of him that you can’t see with the eye, but it matters a lot. It gives him the ability to go a bit beyond where his conformation and natural ability say he should be able to go. He’s scrappy, and he’s got the “lemme at em” attitude that makes all the difference.

Owning and riding Henry has taught me a lot about not judging a book (er, horse) by it’s cover. I find myself watching a little more closely these days, looking for that horse who might not be as attention-grabbing, but quite clearly just loves the hell out of whatever it’s doing. The ones who are all-in.

It’s so hard to see those things in a young horse, or be able to pick out from a quick assessment which ones will want to go that extra mile for you and which ones won’t. We really don’t know until we ask, and I do think that part of it (not all of it, but part of it) comes from how the horse is raised and trained. It makes me look at Presto and think of all the things I need to do to try to cultivate those qualities in him. Positivity. Confidence-building. Understanding. Trust. Patience. It’s a very interesting perspective to think about, when you approach it as if you’re trying to develop a partner with a lot of heart, one that really loves the job it’s doing. I got lucky with Henry, and I find myself thinking about how to encourage those golden inner qualities in other horses. Especially if I could get those qualities into a horse that was naturally more athletic, like Presto.

In this way Henry has taught me something very valuable, and made me look at horses and training with a new set of eyes. Have you ever had a horse that proved you wrong, or had enough heart to make up for some of their natural shortcomings? What did that horse teach you?