While we were off showing in Houston on Saturday, everyone here in Austin was getting slammed with rain. Like… to the point where it took me 3 tries to get home, because the farm roads I usually take were completely flooded and the police had them closed.

I finally was able to find a way through, after 45 minutes of backtracking and trying again, and then basically had to Tokyo Drift my truck (which does not have 4WD) and trailer up the very flooded, muddy driveway. But hey… we made it. The ground in the fields was getting quite hard last week so I was happy to have the rain, except for the fact that it meant that Henry had to sit in his stall after a hard day of showing rather than go out like he usually does. Poultice and Magic Cushion are my bestest friends but he was definitely tighter in his body than usual. On Sunday morning it poured AGAIN for a solid 4 hours, turning everything into WaterWorld and relegating the horses to their stalls for another day.

Luckily our barn has good soil and is on mostly high ground, so the barn itself stays dry, and the arena/turnouts dry out pretty quickly. By Sunday afternoon it was dry enough for a walk/trot in the arena and a hack around the barn, so I took Henry out to stretch his legs a bit. The barn was super quiet and no one else was around, so afterward I decided to put Henry and Presto out in the arena to chill for a while and give Henry a break from his stall. And also because I can seriously sit there and watch them for hours, they are so entertaining.

Being out with Dobby and Cannavaro for the past few weeks has definitely made Presto a little braver, socially. I mean, he still kinda curls up like a roly poly when Henry puffs up at him, but any smart horse would. He doesn’t immediately retreat like he used to, and he even thought about instigating a mutual grooming session before he wimped out at the idea of putting his teeth on Henry. Presto is naturally very low on the totem pole and probably always will be, but I’m glad that he’s at least learning how to Horse a little bit better.

By Monday everything was pretty dry again, so they got to go back to turnout and I was able to do a stretchy w/t ride on Henry in the field (which has softened up perfectly in the way that only horse people could possibly be this excited about). After I was done with Henry I brought Presto in and decided to put a saddle on him again. When my schedule with Henry gets really packed, Presto tends to get less attention, so it’s been a while since I’ve really done much besides groom him. He stood there in the crossties looking bored AF and didn’t even blink when I just tossed the saddle on him and girthed it up like he was a grownup.

I took him out to the arena and lunged him for a few minutes, then put the stirrups down and let them bang around as he trotted. After that we briefly went over some remedial stuff like giving to poll pressure, flexing his head, and doing some “leg yield” in hand. Those things all stick with him pretty well by now. What really pissed him off was the bath he got afterward… guess it’s been a while since I hosed his whole body down. You’d think that for a horse that loves water so much, he’d be less of a turd about getting sprayed with the hose. Jokes on him, we stood there under the water until he finally just stood still and glared at me. He just bought himself a lot of hose time.

For those who have been asking, Cannavaro has settled in really well.

The resident barn worker/colt starter spent the first week doing a lot of desensitization groundwork, which Cannavaro flew right on through. He’s smart, and he’s naturally pretty chill. Yesterday was his first ride on him, in the western saddle, and again Cannavaro was really good.

He worked on standing still at the mounting block, bending and flexing his head/neck, backing, whoaing from voice, turning, and w/t/c. Bobby has been riding him at the walk and trot very lightly since he came off the track, but this was his first canter work and first time being asked to do much. The first couple laps were slightly dolphiny (god, he and Henry really have so much in common) but he smoothed out quickly. You can tell that he’s going to have a REALLY good canter once he figures out his balance.

I totally claim dibs on Cannavaro if something happens to Bobby. Just putting that out there in writing.

I entered Henry in a show this weekend, just a couple dressage tests to crush his spirit practice, and opening date for Presto’s first FEH show of the year was yesterday so I gotta get on that. I love this time of year, there’s never a shortage of things to do with ponies!

I’ve also been considering doing a Q&A type of post, opening it up to whatever questions you guys have. I get emails and messages with questions all the time, but I never thought about publishing them until someone mentioned it. So if you have questions you want to ask, feel free to drop a comment or send me a message or email… I’m an open book and happy to answer anything!

Not only are we getting to recap the best phase today, I also have great news!

Course walks with Bobby are back! At least this time. And they also feature Bobby’s dog, Walker, because apparently it IS possible to get more derp into one picture.

My XC time was a couple hours after stadium, but a lightning delay added an extra 40 minutes in there. I started prepping my studs early, which is good, since I realized I was somehow missing some of my favorite grass tips. I had plenty of time to go down to the vendor and buy more (I feel like I’m buying studs at every show, wtf) and stand around talking for a while before I had to go get ready. Henry took a nap, as he always does before XC. He’s figured this game out by now.

All the rain over the winter meant that they really didn’t change the course much from the last time we ran here at the schooling show. It was a little disappointing, but I also completely understood why and agreed with the decision. Dragging all those portables around could have really torn up the footing, and none of us want that. So since Henry and I had pretty much already seen this course before, barring a couple minor tweaks, it gave me the opportunity to focus on ironing out some of the things I hadn’t liked about the last run. Mainly – let him keep coming forward at the fences. Last time I took an extra pull in a couple places where I didn’t need to, so this time I really wanted to focus on riding out of the forward pace and not try to micro-manage so much. As long as he’s balanced, I need to trust that I can keep coming at the jumps.

Full helmet cam footage is here:

He came roaring out of the startbox, again. I’m pretty insistent that he stands politely in the box, and he generally obliges, but it’s so funny how he’s gotten to where he knows the countdown. As soon as I told him he could go, his ears went up to my eyeballs and he was off like a rocket. Pretty sure he never showed that kind of enthusiasm leaving a starting gate.

The first jump was an inviting little house, the only challenge being that it’s positioned a bit oddly out of the startbox. I just came out pointing to the right, got him lined up, and let him hop over it. I landed clucking, encouraging him to open up, since the next two fences are galloping. The rolltop at 2 is wide but relatively small, and going uphill, so you can just keep coming at it no problem, and then the red wagon at 3 is off of a bit of a turn, which serves to help rebalance you naturally. I could have kept him coming a bit more open at 3 but they all jumped well out of stride and he landed full of running.

Then we were twisting through the woods over the Time Warp combo at 4, which… if you’ve ever felt a horse screaming “I AM SO FUCKING AWESOME” inside of his own head, that was where Henry was at by this point. There is no greater feeling in the entire world than galloping around cross county on that horse. I genuinely feel sorry for folks who have never ridden one like that, because they really haven’t yet lived.

Then it was around to the log stack with the big downhill drop, through the crater, and up over the skinny brush. They built the brush up a lot bigger than at the previous shows, which made me happy. I didn’t like how I rode it last time (I took a pull I didn’t need to take in the crater, rather than just channeling him forward between my hands/legs) so this time I took one half halt coming down the hill, then turned his shoulders, rode him forward back up the hill, and ping – he jumped it perfect. Like maybe a little too perfect, he rattled me a bit loose.

After that we went left to the Irish bank, then up through the trees to the chevron. He’s jumped both of these well every time, but last time I rode a little sloppy off the Irish bank, so this time I made sure to focus on keeping my eyes up. Definitely an improvement (funny how that happens). I also really let him keep flowing forward more around the turn to the chevron, and Henry jumped it perfectly right out of stride. He doesn’t need my “help”, which is really just interference sometimes, as much as I think he does. The horse is pretty well-schooled by now, I have to trust all the basic work that we’ve done to get to this point.

An Insta friend was jump judging the bank and got a cool view of us going through there.

Then we had a bit of a galloping stretch back through the woods, so I let him open up as much as he wanted. The approach to the trakehner is a little awkward because there’s a tree right in the middle of your path, so I took the inside route and let him keep coming, slightly angling the trakehner. I got him a little bit close there, but he gave precisely zero shits.

Then we weaved around the little paths, dialing down to more of a showjump canter to hop over the little skinny rolltop out of the woods and back into the main field. From there we went to the water, jumping over the log down into it, then out the other side and over the bending line of arks. Henry slipped just a touch coming out of the water, so I rode a little quieter into the arks, but he handled it all just fine.

After the arks we had another longer gallop stretch back up the hill, with just a little bench along the way. He hopped that right out of stride like it wasn’t even there, then we were up the hill and hanging a left turn to the corner, then around the pond back to the boat table. He totally locked onto an unflagged jump before the corner (again – he did that last time too) and I had to turn him off of it, but he immediately locked onto the corner instead. The footing around the back of the pond was muddy so I eased off the gas, but once we were clear of it he was back up to speed in a flash.

From there we headed back down the hill over the rolltop to down bank to chevron combo. As soon as I turned to the rolltop he was like BYE FELICIA and I was like a kid on a school pony, just along for the ride. He was polite about it, and patted the ground at the chevron like I asked, but he knows that combo really well by now and didn’t particularly need my input.

The last two fences are pretty simple so I let him cruise again, hopping over the train car out of stride and then cruising over the last big box. I saw a little bit of a long one there, but there was no way we were fitting in another step without it being real ugly, so I just sat up and let him go for it. He pinged over it with no problem and cruised through the finish.

And just like that, we’ve got a USEA-official Prelim horse! We had 8 time penalties, which seems about right for my horse and a course as twisty and wooded as this one. Originally they had me as being a minute and 20 seconds over time, which… we all agreed there was NO freakin way… so for the first time in my eventing career I got to lodge an inquiry. I really appreciated the TD, she came over and I explained that they had me exactly a minute over what I thought I’d come in at, and she had seen me go so she knew there was no way I’d been that slow. That would have been basically Novice speed.

She immediately went in the office, looked at the sheets, and corrected it for me, no problem. I apologized for being a pain in the butt and calling her up to the office for that, but she insisted that it was her job and that it was important that it get recorded correctly. Super nice and professional, I really appreciated it. They also handled the lightning delays throughout the day completely by the book, which I have seen others NOT do at other shows in the past. So props to all the officials/staff/volunteers at this show, they did a good job of making sure everyone was safe and things ran as smoothly as possible.

Once again we were the only Prelim entry (which makes me really sad, this is SUCH a good show, but with all the rain and being a one-day and with how the season works out, the upper level people just didn’t come) so we won by default. I’m happy with a completion with a clear XC.

With how the rest of the shows work out schedule-wise, and the heat, we probably won’t run again until Coconino. We have a lot of little dressage and jumper shows planned though, and a lot of XC schooling. This show was exactly what I needed to give me a good confidence boost and make me feel like we’re ready to tackle some harder questions. Henry is still just eating it up, and I’m starting to figure out how to trust the more open pace a bit more. We have some things to go home and work on, and I’m really looking forward to it. We’re in a pretty fun place right now in our journey, with all kinds of new challenges. It’s hard, it’s intricate, and it’s unfamiliar, but I love it. This horse is pretty freaking cool, y’all.

Bobby’s alright too, I guess.

Somehow the weather gods were with us at Pine Hill on Saturday, because we majorly dodged a bullet! While Austin was getting 3-4″ of torrential rain and flooding, we only got a couple of very brief storms. Aside from two lightning delays, it wasn’t enough to impact the show at all. And really, I think the little bit of rain made the footing perfect.

It was VERY humid though, which concerned me a little. It was warm enough to make the humidity a little miserable, especially in the morning before any kind of breeze picked up. Since my horse doesn’t handle humidity well, and we had a very long day ahead of us still, I opted to keep the dressage warmup a bit light. Ha.

Ha.

Ha.

The first half of the test was ok. A little tense, a little behind my leg, but not awful.

And then it started raining, which coincided with exactly when our canter work started. That was the excuse he’d be waiting for. So began the rodeo. He never actually bucked but his hind end bounced like a basketball through literally all of the canter work. If I put my leg on, it just bounced higher. The tail was spinning like a helicopter (I’m assuming for extra lift?) and I could practically hear Henry’s evil cackling.

By the second canter loop I couldn’t help but start laughing. What else do you do? There was no salvaging that. He even spooked at A as we came up centerline at the end, like he’d never seen THAT before. Real nice. Much grace. So dressage. And that’s how we got our worst dressage score ever, with a 40. But hey, there are worse things than having a horse that feels a bit too full of himself to dressage. I just could not stop laughing at him the whole way back to the barn.

Jokes on him, he has to go to a show this weekend and do ONLY dressage. HA.

I only had an hour between dressage and stadium, so I pulled his tack off, stuck him in his stall to pee (and he peed A LOT, which made me wonder if that contributed to all the bouncing…) and drink some water, then ran down to stadium to look at the course one more time. This was our first time having both a triple and a double combination in stadium, but the only jump I was really worried about was the big square oxer at 6. It came off of kind of a weird turn and looked a little big, and have I mentioned I hate square oxers? Surely you can see where this is going.

I should also say that the ground at home had been so hard for the past couple weeks leading up to this show that I wasn’t able to jump much. Henry has literally been living in Magic Cushion, and I jumped maybe two fences that were of height and maybe 10 total. We haven’t had a stadium lesson since before the last show, in February. We were definitely rusty, and rusty isn’t great for either of us when it comes to stadium.

The rain stopped by the time I got back on, and Henry warmed up great. The issues we had in stadium warmup last year seem to be resolved (knocking on wood) thank goodness. I went in the ring focused on getting the job done, and not feeling too terribly nervous. We had a rail at 2, a big vertical, where I think I just didn’t keep his balance rocked back quite enough. It doesn’t take much for him to pull a rail at Prelim, so millimeters matter. The turn back to 3 was fine, and I was actually really happy with how 4 and 5a/b rode. 4 was another tall vertical off of a tight rollback turn, so lots of potential to mess that one up, but we didn’t. Then it was around to 6, the big square oxer. In all of my carefulness to make a good turn, I really ended up hanging out a bit too far, and then the distance was long. I had to ride up to it quite a bit, and while he cleared 6 with room to spare, we landed with WAAAAAAYYY too big of a canter and I didn’t react quick enough to put him back together in time to make the striding work. That resulted in a gross yucky half stride out, taking the rail of the vertical with us. 100% my fault. Not a good ride into that line at all. I overthought that fence, for sure. Lesson learned. Maybe.

The rest rode well, although he did tick the front rail of the oxer out of the triple. I was happy with how I rode that line, so oh well.

Aside from my mistake in the line from 6 to 7, I was happy with it. That was the only real oops. Mostly though, I was pleased that Henry felt so confident at everything. He was looking for the next fence and taking me there (albeit sometimes a little bit too enthusiastically). The size of the fences are much more comfortable for both of us now, and I’m glad that we could make a mistake and keep going like nothing happened. I’m getting a lot more confident too. And honestly… I was kinda just thrilled to have our first two recognized Prelim phases in the books. I just wanted to get it done without doing anything monumentally stupid.

After that, it was time for the good stuff! Cross country recap tomorrow…

I’m getting ready to head out to a show (our first recognized Prelim! That looks a lot like it might get rained out…) and I’m short on time, so today you get a short PSA and lots of pictures. Happy Friday!

For anyone who, like me, was drooling over the Schockemohle bridles, RW has them 15% off right now (not sure when it ends, maybe today?). Buy me a black one. K thanks.

Moving on to the best part: more Nalah pictures! She is a week old now but these pictures are from the 4-day mark I believe. She is VERY active and spends most of her time in the air, bouncing from one place to another like a rubber ball. She’s pretty independent, loves to canter everywhere, and has already started jumping things in her pasture. These jumper-bred babies man…

Hope everyone has a good weekend!

I think it’s well past time to talk about Presto’s most special internet relationship: his friend Mimi, who lives in France. Mimi hasn’t always lived in France… she’s from Texas and used to ride at the same barn as me way back in the day. Like way back. Like damn Mimi we are getting old. But now Mimi is married to a Frenchman and lives waaaay over there across the pond. Thanks to Facebook and this blog we have kept up with each others exploits well enough, over the years. I have bugged her on far too many occasions when I was looking at saddles in France (as one does when one is cheap/poor and they’re so much freakin cheaper overseas) but she has been endlessly patient.

When Presto came along there was definitely a connection between the two of them… a little special something reaching out from behind the computer screen. In fact, Mimi says it was really this picture that started it all:

The hair, the swagger, the derpy lip, the nonchalant “whut you want” look on his face… it all spoke to her. Was this her spirit animal? The seed had been planted.

Not long after, I posted this picture.

This time Mimi couldn’t resist the urge, and she posted her own version.

And so began a trend. Over the past year Mimi has recreated Presto pictures of her own, becoming increasingly good at it.

It’s kind of my favorite thing on the internet. Every time I post a goofy picture of Presto (we all know there is no shortage of those) I eagerly await Mimi’s response. I am the middleman in their relationship, since obviously Presto doesn’t have thumbs or WiFi, but they clearly have a lot in common. Even from 5,000 miles away, Mimi really knows how to channel her inner Presto. They’ve bonded over their mutual love of crazy hair and even crazier expressions. It’s gotten to the point where when Mimi’s husband sees her taking selfies he says “You’re making fun of that weird horse again aren’t you?”.

I swear that someday this needs to be made into a coffee table book or something. I keep collecting the pictures, trying to figure out the best way to share this with the world. Because it really MUST be shared. It’s too good. Their relationship is too special. Let’s face it, Mimi is the hero we need right now.

It’s a little ironic that Presto’s internet BFF is in France, since that’s also where his sire lives. She assures me that his expressions and general demeanor are very typically French. Can’t deny your heritage I guess.

Anyone else’s horse have an International pen pal? No? That’s not normal? Weird.