Spending last week in Ocala was an interesting experience. On one hand, I instantly wished my horse was there with me, because it’s such a horsey area and all the big names are there, and there are tons of shows and clinics and schoolings happening all the time. It’s a little like Equestrian Disney World, and the FOMO was intense. On the other hand, spending those few days in Ocala sealed the deal on me never taking my horse there.

For the past few years I’ve been thinking of spending a couple weeks in either Ocala or Aiken in the winter, but after experiencing the heat and humidity that is Ocala, there is just no freaking way that would be an option for us. Henry doesn’t handle that type of weather well, and he would be miserable. He’s a 50’s/60’s kind of guy, and if anything he’d rather it be colder than hotter. So, ya know… maybe some winter soon, Aiken. Or I could just find a job and move there permanently, because that’s what I really want. Texas would be in my rearview mirror without so much as a second thought.

But, for this year anyway, we’re past the point of leaving town for the winter. Our season starts here in mid-March, and we’ve got a recognized show every couple weeks through June in Area 5. Of course, I find myself in a bit of the same position I did in 2017… kind of in between levels. I was waiting until after the second off season Pine Hill show to start formulating a plan for the year, and now we’re past it, so it’s time to start thinking. We’ve got two successful Prelim’s under our belt, and one P/T, but the two Prelim XC’s we’ve done have been on a soft course, and we have very few of those in our area. I don’t think we’re quite “there” yet to go tackle some of the other courses. MeadowCreek’s mid-March show was an option, as their course is pretty straightforward and the track suits my horse well, but with all the rain we’ve had (and continue to have in the forecast), I have some footing concerns. Also Trainer isn’t going to that one, and I definitely don’t want to tackle our first recognized Prelim without her.

We decided instead to go school at a facility up near Dallas that weekend, a place that has plenty of the types of questions that we really need to work on. More technical stuff, bigger, skinnier, requiring more accuracy and forward-thinking. At this point I think something like that will be of more benefit to us as far as growth goes. Not as exciting as showing, but that’s the journey sometimes. Of course, that only leaves us with one possible recognized Prelim left on the table for the spring, after you nix all the big/hard ones that I don’t think we’re ready for. That would be Pine Hill in mid-April, over a new course from the one we’ve already done. I’m leaving that one on the table as a maybe, depending on the weather and how everything else goes. I’d like to go because we’re comfortable there now, so it would be a good first recognized, but if we don’t then I wouldn’t mind saving the money.

Mostly because the big thing on our calendar right now is the two back-to-back Coconino shows in July. We did Coconino in 2016, and then Chatt last year, and I definitely preferred Coconino. Chatt was prettier and fancier, for sure, but it was so disgustingly hot and humid. I felt bad for taking Henry there at all, he was absolutely miserable. Showing him in the summer is tricky, I have to be smarter about it if I want to do it. So back to Coco it is, the land of cold nights and no humidity (and, granted, high elevation). He was a much happier animal in that environment. The ground isn’t as good, the facility definitely isn’t anywhere near as fancy, but my horse can actually breathe… that counts for a lot.

Granted, the Prelim at Coconino is no joke. They have a weldon’s wall there that has haunted my nightmares for years, and the terrain, shadows, and woods make the course even more challenging. Also, clearly I wouldn’t be running Prelim on back to back weeks. Way too much for my horse’s legs. I’m thinking maybe just do a CT the first week, or a dressage test and a jumping round, school that stupid weldon’s wall in between weeks (mostly for my sake, let’s be honest), and then run the full Prelim on week 2. So the thought right now is to keep working through the spring, do lots of schoolings, fill in some gaps, do more jumper classes, and then go to Coconino.

That’s the rough plan right now, but of course things could and probably will change to some degree. We are already qualified for AEC’s this year but there’s no way I’m running my horse in humid Kentucky at the end of hot/humid August, so that’s completely off the table. We’ll worry about the fall season after Coco, if all that works out as I’m hoping.

It might be a bit of a slow year for us, horse show wise, but I’m totally okay with that. Right now the goal is growth and improvement… the other stuff can come later.

 

I am one of those weird, ultra-pathetic people who can be gone for 3 days and just really misses their horses the whole time. I’m used to seeing my knuckleheads every day, and they are what my world revolves around, so even just a few days has me missing my two favorite goobers.

Since we got home from Ocala so late/early, I just worked a half day on Friday. Enough to clean up my inbox, put out some fires, and then slip away quietly before I got drawn into anyone’s problem. From there, of course, I went straight to the barn.

Henry’s new bit had arrived while I was gone, so the first order of business was putting that fancy thing on his dressage bridle. See… here’s the thing with Henry. When you change anything, any piece of his equipment, his initial reaction is hatred and extreme overexaggeration. You have to give everything two rides before you make an assessment, and when it comes to bits, you better not actually be trying to get anything accomplished in those first two rides. He will chomp incessantly for the first ride, and then in the second ride he’ll either be extremely worse or slightly better. By the 3rd ride he either likes it or he’s belligerent. He is high drama. Like honestly, y’all should have seen the meltdown he had over a Happy Mouth once. It took me two weeks back in his regular bit to get him right again.

So for his first day in his Neue Schule, I just planned on a long ponying walk hack. No contact, just let him carry it and get used to the feel. As expected, he chomped and chomped and chomped the entire time. I think even Presto was like “Bro. Stop. Dat is annoying.”.

Aside from the chomping, both of them were spooking snorting idiots for our hack, especially Presto. Which is pretty out of character for him, usually he’s definitely the quieter horse of the two. I could tell he was just WILD, especially when at one point he was passaging beside us and snorting at bushes. So when we got back, I turned him out in the arena while I went to put Henry away, and all I could see out of the barn door was flashes of Presto, running endless laps of the arena at warp speed. Couldn’t do this in your pasture on your own time?

In his defense, it had been a week since I got him out and did anything with him, so I think he’d just gotten bored as hell. I appreciated that he was as polite as he was for our hack, considering how many pent up loonies he had lurking under the surface.

On Saturday and Sunday morning I was watching the Saint-Lô stallion show on ClipMyHorse, live streaming from France. It’s a rare treat to have a whole weekend with no firm plans, so I took full advantage by watching as much from Saint-Lô as I could. We were originally hoping to make it to Saint-Lô this year to attend the stallion show in person, but then the Burghley idea came about and that seemed like a more-bang-for-our-buck trip for the year. Some day, Saint-Lô… someday. A couple new stallions caught my eye, and I liked seeing event sires Upsilon, Jaguar Mail, and Grafenstolz.

The highlight of the show for me, of course, was a familiar face. Mighty Magic is looking good at 16 years old, and I am seeing so much of him in Presto.

The weather this weekend could not have been any better, with highs near 70 and bright blue skies. We made more progress with Henry’s new bit (I think we have a verdict, but I’ll talk about that more when I post about the bit itself), and on Sunday I set up a faux ditch in the arena to send Presto over.

First he snorted at it a lot, then he literally tried to kill it by stomping it with his front feet. After a couple times over he was just stepping across, so I was like “I wonder what he would think of those barrels over there” and sent him at those. It’s so funny how quickly he’s understood the idea of sending over obstacles, just from that one day where I lunged him over those boxes out in the field. Now you just kind of point to it and he goes. They should have horse agility classes, he’d be good at it. Okay that’s a lie, he would be really slow. I’m pretty sure he finds the game to be fun though, and he just trotted right up to the barrels and plopped over, super unimpressed.

This week I’ll be glad to get back in our routine, and start getting myself prepared for the busy spring ahead. It’s almost March, guys… this year is already flying!

Our flight back from Florida last night didn’t get in til like midnight, so I’m moving a little slow this morning, but better late than never?

Yesterday was the Future Event Horse side of the YEH/FEH symposium, with yearlings through 4 year olds, looking at them on the line and (for the older horses) under saddle and in the freejump chute.

We kicked off the day by talking about judging conformation, and what to look for.  Holly Simenson, the North American director of the German Oldenburg Verband, joined Championship judges Robin Walker and Peter Gray for input on this part. She wasn’t such a fan of using the triangle to present the horses, saying that in her experience it’s too easy for the horse to get crooked, which in turn can make it look like they have irregularities or imperfections in their movement. She prefers showing the horse in hand against the rail of the ring, keeping the horse straighter. But… our FEH format uses the triangle, so that’s what we used.

The first demo horse of the day was a lovely full TB yearling colt. All of the judges mentioned how difficult it was to judge yearlings, which I think everyone can agree with. Holly noted that in her experience, the prettiest yearlings often end up being the plainest and least athletic adult horses. She also said that for event horses especially, athleticism is the quality that is of the utmost importance. Robin and Holly both agreed that since they can be so darn ugly at that age, and change so quickly, what they really look for in the yearlings is a good type and ground covering gaits. In this case good type means something that looks more like a TB, and ground cover means one that has a lot of reach underneath the body with the hind legs and easily covers a lot of ground in the paces. They want to see that the horse “walks with it’s body” – ie the back is supple enough to allow the horse’s entire topline to move as it walks.

They also want to see that the horse has correct limb conformation. Holly stressed to the breeders that if a foal has a some kind of deviation, it’s important to address it as soon as possible. If you fix these issues before 6 months of age, the bones in the lower leg will align correctly and it won’t be a problem. However, if you wait until after that age, the alignment will not change, and any changes you try to make to get the limbs to look straighter will only put them under more stress.

From there we saw some 2 year olds and some 3 year olds, both colts and fillies, from a wide variety of bloodlines. We discussed each horse’s conformation and gaits as a group, and the judges gave their thoughts on how they would score them. Robin cautioned the judges not to get too nitpicky, and reminded everyone that just like with the YEH judging, what they’re really scoring with the gaits are whatever the best moments are that the horse offers, and to remember that they’re looking for horses that look like eventers.

Which led to more discussion about just how important it is for the horses to be properly prepared, and for the handlers to be educated on how to best present their horses. You could have a superb quality horse, but if it’s such an idiot that the judge can’t see any good moments of movement, or if you don’t know what you’re doing and fail to show the horse to it’s potential, then the judges have no choice but to score what they saw. So, prepare your horse, learn how to present it in hand well, and everyone will have a better and more successful experience. Robin especially was very passionate about that part. A couple of the horses were quite poorly behaved and presented, so I can easily see how frustrating it would be as a judge for that to happen in a class. They looked like nice horses, but we couldn’t get an accurate idea of just how nice they might be.

After that we moved on to a mock 4yo FEH class, so basically a w/t/c flat class. This is judged much the same way, where they’re looking for the horse’s absolute best moments and scoring those. One thing that was common here is that the riders did not generally show their horses well at the walk… the judges want to see one that is really MOVING and marching and swinging through it’s back. They don’t care if you do it in your jump saddle or dressage saddle, or if the horse is all that solid in the connection yet – they just want to see the best possible gaits you can show on that day. Ground covering, supple, and forward, with an active hind end.

From there we went over to the freejump chute. First Robin covered the specs for the chute and the distances, and then talked about the equipment he uses (gloves, helmet, a short rope). Safety was of utmost importance here, as he wants to make sure that the horses are safe, confident, and have a good experience. Again he stressed the importance of working on this enough at home so that the horses know what to expect in the jump chute, have learned how to go through it properly, and are confident about what’s being asked. If the horse isn’t prepared, the judges aren’t going to be able to see the horse’s best efforts, and it’s unfair to the horse to show up somewhere and have to do something it’s never done. A lack of preparation for any of this stuff seemed to be a big sticking point for Robin throughout the day.

Matthias Hollberg, a GP showjumper, helped run the freejumping side of things. He noted right off the bat that not every horse that freejumps well will jump well under saddle, and some that just seem ok in the freejumping will jump better under saddle, but almost all who freejump really poorly will also jump poorly under saddle. It’s a good indicator, but not necessarily a be-all-end-all way to gauge talent.

They were looking for horses with safe forelimb technique, a good use of the body through the air, and an intelligence about how it went through the chute or learned from any mistakes. If the horse hit a jump, they wanted to see it come back through and be more careful. If he ran through and went past the distance, they wanted to see him come in the next time and slow himself down a bit, not just keep making the same mistakes. There were a few good horses, and a few bad ones, some who had never been freejumped, and some who had. Again, it was a good variety of experience and quality. Mattias urged the judges to watch the horse’s withers as they came through the chute – he wanted to see the horse raise its withers and round its topline over the fence, not just move its legs and stay flat/stiff in it’s back in the air.

I also have to mention that I was really impressed throughout both days with how well-prepared, well-handled, and well-presented Matt Bryner’s horses were. Super professional and mindful of the horses, and clearly someone who does the work at home to make sure they are successful at the shows. In a country where we generally have a lack of good young horse producers, he was a standout to me in this crowd.

It was a really educational day, and as a FEH participant and someone who brings up young horses, I got a lot of good tips for how to better prepare and show my horse. Definitely worth a long day sitting on the bleachers! I would recommend these educational symposiums to anyone from breeders to young horse owners to riders. This is a lot of the basic education that we’re missing in this country, and to be able to go get a crash course, see lots of nice horses, and hear from such a variety of professionals in one place is a really fantastic opportunity.

This is a tough life I’m living here in Ocala this week y’all. I’m sweaty and sunburned and spent all day yesterday looking at/talking about horses. On a Wednesday. In February. This does not suck.

Anyway, Day 1 of the YEH/FEH educational symposium was dedicated mostly to the Young Event Horse side of things. In the morning we were in the classroom, and Marilyn Payne kicked things off with an overview of the YEH judging, what they’re looking for, and what new changes there are for 2019. I’m pretty familiar with all that by now, but I’m always into PowerPoint slides and bullet points.

Maxime Livio was in the room and commented that, in his opinion, he would like to see the pedigree considered in the judging. There was a lot of opposition to that, from basically everyone else, even if I tend to agree with where he’s coming from. It’s definitely important, especially from the “blood” point of view, but on the other hand it’s hard to make something like that a judgeable criteria.

From there we moved on to looking at videos of horses when they were 5. For this they used footage from Bundeschampionate of horses like FischerRocana and So Is Et, but were being sneaky by playing the videos first, getting opinions from Maxime and the judges in the room, and then revealing who the horse/it’s career was at the end. There were a couple videos of not-very-successful horses hidden in there, for contrast. It was kind of interesting. What made it most interesting, IMO, were Maxime’s comments. He has a keen eye for a horse and is very good at explaining what he’s seeing, what things he can look past, and what things are dealbreakers.

Amid all of that conversation, my favorite notes of the day came about. Maxime said that there are 5 basic criteria he’s looking at when he’s evaluating a horse for top level (modern long format) sport, and he puts them in this order:

1) Pedigree. Maxime wants to see lots of blood, a horse that is capable of galloping for 10-12 minutes and still having some stamina left at the end. He said that when horses run out of stamina, that’s when things get dangerous.

2) Soundness. This is where he looks at the conformation, the straightness and correctness of the limbs, the lungs and cardio system, and obviously gets a vet opinion.

3) Personality. Mainly: heart. He wants a horse that really has a strong desire to do the job, is always looking to go forward to the next fence, and will always try to please it’s rider. He used FischerRocana as a prime example here of a very average quality horse that has so much heart, it makes her into a great horse.

4) Jump Quality and 5) Movement. These were kind of lumped together for him.

He went on to explain that the reason he ranks them this way is because more importance is given to the things you cannot change or improve. You can’t change the fact that the horse’s type is too heavy or pedigree is lacking blood. You need soundness obviously, but good management can improve it slightly, so there is a little bit of possibility for improvement. He felt that personality is mostly innate, but that it could also be improved upon a good bit with correct training and riding. Jump quality and movement, he said, have the most capacity to improve, and in his opinion can even be improved as much as 70%. So he starts with the things he can’t change as the most important qualities when he’s looking for a horse. While the ranking order of these characteristics might change depending on what type of horse you’re looking for, I like his approach of placing more importance on the things you can’t change. That’s a smart way to think about any horse purchase.

I loved how Maxime broke this down. It was very well thought out and reasoned, and it’s nice to see a rider so invested in the importance of pedigree and desiring a lot of blood in his horses. This theme carried on into the afternoon sessions as well with the demo horses, which I’ll get to in a minute.

After looking at the videos of the 5yo’s, Christian Schacht did a presentation on conformation. Despite having what most would consider to be boring subject matter, Christian was super entertaining to listen to. He knew how to add humor to keep people engaged. As for the confirmation parts, his big emphasis was on the horse’s balance. He wants a horse that isn’t too downhill as to be on the forehand but also isn’t too uphill as to be inefficient in the gallop and jump. He also likes to see hocks that are a bit lower and closer together, making it easier for a horse to sit and push off the ground at the fences, especially at deeper distances. He called the hooves “the second heart of the horse – no hoof, no horse”, ie also a very critical component.

One passing comment he made that I thought was interesting was his observation that when horses toe out (not a big deal in his opinion) usually it’s more pronounced on the right front than the left. This is true for Henry and Presto, which is probably why it stood out to me. Oh, and he noted that slight roach backs are not uncommon in jumpers, and are often considered to help make the horse more powerful.

After lunch we headed outside to watch some 4yo horses do dressage. There were 3 very different types of horses, which made for good contrast. Maxime’s favorite was the chestnut OTTB. Yes, you’re noticing a trend with him and blood horses. 😉

Then we walked down to the XC field and got to see two groups of 5yo’s do a mock YEH class. There were 5 showjumps and then 7 or 8 XC fences. Maxime would comment on the horses after each of them went, and then the judges discussed how they would score them. The horses ran the gamut from unshown to a Bundeschampion, so it was really interesting to compare and contrast, and then hear all the opinions on what level the horse might have potential for. Maxime was generally more forgiving of little mistakes and green moments than the judges were, and wasn’t afraid to chime in to a discussion and offer his perspective or respectfully disagree. It made for really good conversation.

Maxime’s favorite horse of the day was the last one to go, a full TB that came off the track last year. Maxime liked it a lot, and then when it was revealed that it was a full TB, the like turned to love, and he declared that that’s the one he would buy. It’s funny to me that everywhere we’ve gone, the European riders really love and seek out the mostly or full blood horses intentionally, and place a lot of value on them. Here they’re often seen as “less than”. Many of the judges seemed surprised that a horse that nice was full TB, as if it was special IN SPITE of that. To Maxime, the horse was special BECAUSE of that. It’s an interesting dichotomy.

Overall it was a very educational day (although at times I wanted to hang myself with my lanyard at the talk of what “breed” of Warmblood each horse was. They’re registries, not breeds, and the registry tells you nothing about the horse’s bloodlines. Alas, I digress..) and I greatly valued having Maxime’s input. I found him to be very educated and confident in his views, yet also humble and open to discussion. He had a lot of great little quotable tidbits that were already captured perfectly by Leslie Mintz in this article. Go read it!

I was also impressed that pretty much every rider knew the pedigree of their horse and was able to recite it when asked. This is very encouraging to me, and a trend in the right direction.

Today we move on to the FEH side of things, with the younger horses in hand, and freejumping. I’m in horse nerd heaven.

Michelle and I arrived in Ocala yesterday, and today we’re headed to the YEH/FEH symposium at Grand Oaks. We had a dinner last night at the Holekamp’s, but since our flight was so early, we had all afternoon to kill. What do you do in Ocala when you’ve got a spare 6 or so hours? TACK SHOPS. Because there are like a dozen of them.

We were so well-behaved, we started at the consignment store.

Michelle found a few shirts there, but nothing caught my eye. I was so good.

You see where this is going, don’t you?

Then we went down the street to Tack Shack of Ocala. Again, we were trying to be reasonable, so we started in the building with the big clearance section. Again, Michelle found a few things (a halter and a couple shirts), but nothing spoke to me.

And then we went over to the main building. I was doing pretty well until I wandered into the bell boot section. Then I thought, “Ooo, I actually do need some new bell boots for Henry, the ones I bought him at Bundes are dying.”.

And I found some pretty navy fake leather ones.

Apparently bell boots are a gateway drug, because then I spiraled. Half an hour later I staggered up to the counter in a stupor, plopping down a sunshirt, some gloves, a new whip, and the bell boots. Michelle was loaded down with halters in a variety of baby sizes, so I didn’t feel quite so bad.

After that we headed to lunch, where we watched horse racing on the TV’s at the bar while we ate. There’s a lot to be said for being in a horse-centric town.

And hey, what do you know, there was another tack shop in the same shopping center! What a hardship. Michelle came out of that one unscathed, but they had cheap stud plugs so I bought literally all of them.

We passed by a huge farm supply store, so we stopped in there because why not, and as soon as we stepped in the entry Michelle saw these:

She gasped and literally SHOVED ME OUT OF THE WAY to get to them and snatch up two bags. Now SHE was spiraling.

We headed back up toward where we were having dinner and passed by a big used trailer dealership that had a ton of head to heads (what Michelle has been shopping for) but they had just closed. But… there was a little gap in the fence… so… we let ourselves in to look around in all the trailers. They had left them all open, so it seemed like an invitation to me. Just forget about that whole fencehopping part.

Once we got back to the hotel after dinner we both laid out our acquisitions for the day.

I’m not sure how to determine a winner in this case. Is it the person who got less, or the person who got more?

Either way, it was a day full of horses, and we made some new friends, got some pretty new things, and had a good time. Today we get down to business!