Alright, enough of the mushy preamble, time for the good stuff! Swapping back to my old show recap format for this one, because there was a lot of “other” stuff besides just the riding parts to talk about.

If you’re looking for drama, you know you’ll always find it here. Life with Henry is never boring, and he proved that on Friday afternoon when, during our last ride at home before leaving for Pine Hill, he decided to fling a shoe into the abyss. Do you know how easy it is to find a shoe in a 20 acre field? Spoiler alert: IT ISN’T. Lord knows where that thing is, because hell if I could find it. Cue a semi-frantic text to the farrier.

He needs to be sainted. Like for real he had just put this set of shoes on Henry on MONDAY (taking great care to get everything the way he wanted, I might add) and yet he showed up at the barn at 6:55 on Saturday morning to make a whole new shoe (which isn’t exactly quick and simple with clips and stud holes) and get us fixed up and ready to go. And then after he was done he tried to help me pack my trailer. He is a farrier unicorn.

With that crisis averted and taken care of so quickly, we were actually on the road to Pine Hill half an hour earlier than planned. I unloaded, parked my trailer (being early = prime trailer parking), unpacked, set everything up, and then I had some time to kill so I went to walk cross country to get my first impressions while I could be alone with my thoughts. I was concerned about the footing with all the rain we’ve had lately, but was pleasantly surprised by how good the ground felt. Clearly they had done a lot of work to help dry things out and improve the softer/muddier areas. There’s a course walk up online from the spring show (although it’s missing a pic of the last fence) but I wish I had done my own, because they had everything brushed up and decorated and the course looked just beautiful. It’s amazing how much of a difference brush and plants and flowers can make! Of course, since I was the only entry in Prelim I was like “geez I hope we make it this far, otherwise they decorated all my jumps for nothing.”.

After I walked the course, I got on Henry and met Trainer for a quick dressage school. Henry was uncharacteristically fantastic… like he buckled down and went right to work, feeling great and rideable and about as fancy as Henry ever gets. It was the best dressage ride we’ve had in quite a while. Suspicious. Highly suspicious.

Then we walked showjumping, which, after the enormity that was Texas Rose’s stadium a few weeks ago when I did the P/T there, Pine Hill’s stadium looked almost cute in comparison. The jumps are more simple, less intimidating, and I swear there were a couple at TR that could not possibly have been “only” 1.10m. I was happy that the PH course looked very comfortable to my eye. It was big enough, and hard enough, but not poop-your-pants menacing.

After that we headed out to walk XC one more time, this time with Trainer (when I say we, Hillary and her baby Bea came along for most of it, too. Bea is going to be a pro by the time she’s actually old enough to ride.). My favorite part was watching Hillary’s eyes as we walked past the big chevron in the woods. It looked just like this:

Prelim jumps are big. I don’t recommend making direct eye contact. I tended to just give them a friendly pat on the top as I walk by, without actually looking at it much. I definitely didn’t get within 20′ of the trakehner (don’t need to know how big the ditch is, thanks) and I know I didn’t get up close and personal with the others either.

Well, except for this one.

That’s the last fence, a big ugly gross table that was large enough to house a family of hobbits. There was sand on the top of it, which I used as my own personal little zen garden, dragging my fingers around in the sand while trying not to let myself notice how big that stupid thing really was. If we made it that far, it would be the last thing standing between us and a completed Prelim. I wanted so badly to make it to this fence, in all of it’s hideous glory.

It was one of those courses where nothing really scared me in particular, but everything demanded great respect. We are officially in the territory of No Joke. They’re all big, they’re all wide, they’re all solid AF. There isn’t a “gimme” fence among them, even the smaller ones have some kind of technicality to them. Mistakes are easier to make and they carry greater consequences. But underneath all of that, I also felt a budding sense of confidence. I felt 100% that we were capable of this, if I rode him right and made good decisions. I just had to focus on that and let everything else go.

After we were done at the barn, Hillary and I went and gorged ourselves on Mexican food before rolling into our hotel. Typically I have a bit of a hard time falling asleep at shows because my mind is just too busy going over the dressage test or the courses or visualizing how I’m going to ride things and trying to remember everything Trainer said. This time though? I was completely passed the eff out before 9pm. I think that little zen garden on the last fence did it’s job, because I felt pretty at peace with what we needed to do.

Of course, since I fell asleep so early, I was wide awake at 4:15am. By 4:30 I gave up on the idea of going back to sleep, so I ended up at the barn half an hour earlier than necessary, waking Henry up out of a dead sleep (I swear he was snoring) to give him his breakfast. I had to be on by 7 anyway, so it was going to be an early morning regardless. Sorry bud.

I always have a hard time writing much about dressage. It just kind of… is. We go out, we warm up, we go in the ring, we do the thing, ta-da. Which is definitely selling it short, considering how much time we have spent laboring over our dressage (and omg is LABORIOUS ever the perfect word to describe it). Our ride time was 7:30, first horse of the day in Ring 1, which was nice because it meant warmup was less crowded. While Henry was not quite as brilliant as the day before, he was still pretty relaxed and on my aids. I went over to my ring early and the judge and scribe were ready too, so they went ahead and rang me in. Of course, Henry tried to leap into a canter at the sound of the bell (this isn’t the starting gate, ya dingus) which added a little dollop of tension just before we cruised up centerline.

Really though, it was a decent test. Not as relaxed as he can be, but also nowhere near as horrifically tight as he can be (and historically has been). I tried to ride as accurately as possible, although there were a couple of deep spots in really inconvenient places (like on the rail where I made my first 10m trot circle, and both corners where the 10m canter half circles are). He got a little stuck a couple times, but recovered well. Overall it was a very obedient, steady test with nothing overly spectacular, but nothing awful either. I’ve been repeating that opening sequence of 10m circle-turn left-halt-trot-turn right-10m circle-up centerline-leg yield for the past couple weeks ad nauseam. Generally I try to avoid drilling movements or teaching Henry the test, since he is the king of anticipation, but in this case this particular string of movements is challenging enough for him that it seemed to help us both if he knew exactly what was coming. It was much better than our last attempt at Texas Rose, so I think it helped.

The judge thought the test was good enough for a 30.7, which I will happily take with zero complaints and no questions asked, since she typically isn’t inclined to be overly charitable with her scores.

Tomorrow: on to the jompies!

I have a heck of a show recap to write about yesterday’s horse trial, our first Prelim. That will take me a little while though, and before I give you all the details of how it went down, I’m going to spoil it a little and tell you how it ended, and what a monumental moment it was for me.

It was an extremely emotional weekend, bookended by the lowest of lows and highest of highs. A good friend lost her horse on Friday, and as horse people I think we all feel our friends’ losses almost as acutely as we do our own. It’s a terrible feeling, understanding just how heartbroken they are, and also knowing that you’re helpless to fix it. Nothing can fix it. All you can do is stand beside them and feel it with them. We anchor our hopes and dreams to another living thing, a fragile one at that, and we love them in a unique way that other people don’t really understand. When we lose them, the pain is acute and pervasive. It is the worst part of owning and loving these animals, and it absolutely sucks.

Those kinds of things always hit me hard, feeling like a sharp reminder to always keep perspective and to have gratitude for what you have. And when it comes to Henry, I find myself repeatedly rocked back on my heels by the enormity of the gratitude I feel for him. He carried me dutifully around our first Prelim yesterday like a heat seeking missile, never missing a beat. It was one of those cross country rounds that we eventers live for – not perfection, no, that’s not what we’re about, but it was one of those rides where I helped him and he helped me, and together we just absolutely slayed it. It was a team effort, and we were in sync every step of the way.

As soon as I crossed the finish I was overwhelmed with pride for him, and pride for us, and there my emotional state swung 180 degrees the other direction. Who cries the whole way back to the barn after their first Prelim because they’re just so overwhelmed with pride and joy and gratitude and awe? Um yeah that’d be me. And then I alternated crying most of the way home, sometimes out of joy for myself, and sometimes out of anguish for my friend. That’s an odd yo-yo of emotion, but that’s horses. Sometimes they break our hearts, and sometimes they make our dreams come true.

Yesterday Henry absolutely did make my dreams come true, although I’m not sure it’s even fair to describe it that way. This is not at all what I had in mind when I bought him 5 years ago, or when we switched paths from jumpers to eventing 4 years ago. I guess I never dared to dream big enough. This horse, in all of his imperfection and improbability, has expanded my ideas about what is possible. I never went looking for a horse like this, but how I got so lucky to happen upon him, why he fatefully ended up in my path, I’ll never know. And how I lucked into the support group I have – my trainer (who has believed in us from the very beginning, although I have no idea WHY, considering we were a messy BN pair when we fell into her lap), my friends, everyone who showed up or sent messages to wish us well and cheer us on… it’s incredibly humbling, and I’ll never stop feeling immense gratitude for all of it. It truly does take a village, and I hope that my achievement feels like your achievement too.

We don’t get a lot of moments like this in our sport. We put in so much work, day in and day out, month after month, year after year. Progress often feels agonizingly slow, if it’s even recognizable at all. There’s always something that could be better. We question whether we’re good enough, whether we’ll ever measure up, whether our horses are capable. It’s a lot of blood and sweat and tears and money. We agonize over every decision. Sometimes things happen that are beyond our control, derailing our plans and sabotaging all of what we’ve worked so hard to get. But sometimes, on these rare occasions, the stars align just right, everything goes our way, and we’re rewarded for all of that hard work.

Henry and I officially have a Prelim under our belts, with a clear cross country at that. If this is a dream, please don’t wake me up. These are the moments we live for, and if you don’t mind, I’m going to relish it for one more day before we delve into a recap.

The latest “controversy” going around social media the past few weeks has been the mega-scandal of burgundy coats in the hunter ring. I have to admit, reading all the comments on this one made my eyes roll around in my head a lot more than usual. The vitriol and passion that some people have about coat color is kind of astounding, when you consider the myriad of other issues in equestrian sport that are, IMO, massively more important and critical.

But if you waded through all those comments and arguments and opinions, it really all came down to one thing: tradition. The big argument against burgundy is that it wasn’t a traditional color – not one that you would see in the hunt field. Which is true… it would be a faux pas there. Other folks pointed out that we are far from being traditional these days anyway, so why not let people wear a coat that is still a relatively conservative color.

I was thinking about this more last weekend as we were getting ready to fox hunt. Especially as I donned my stock tie, and watched all the full members of the hunt put on their cubbing outfits with canary vests and green and brown tweed coats. Velvet helmets, black dress boots or brown field boots, horses with a traditional hunter clip (no legs clipped) or trace clip, banged tails, and flat bridles. Horses that were, while ultimately well-mannered, spicy and eager to get going, and easily leaping into a flat out gallop that could go for hours. Honestly, foxhunting bears a lot more resemblance to eventing these days than it does to the hunter ring.

But the h/j folks aren’t the only ones that have been talking a lot about the subject of traditional attire lately. Eventing and dressage have had the same types of dialogue, trying to find a balance between modern and traditional. With all the modern fabrics and changing demands and dynamics of the sport, many are ready to abandon tradition completely. Others cling to it as being vital to the soul of equestrianism. Every year it seems there are minor rule changes about what colors are allowed, or what embellishments, or what logos and how big they can be. Sometimes the rules get more lax, other times they get more stringent, like we can’t even decide amongst ourselves which direction we’re really going.

There are also those who believe that updating our apparel to something that looks a bit more in line with other sports will help our image as a whole. That part of why we get such a bad rap with the general public during events like the Olympics is because we look so different – elitist and unapproachable and… archaic. Not like what people generally think of when they picture an athlete.

So I’m curious – where do you stand on this? Do you think it’s vital to our sport to cling to more traditional attire, or are you in favor of giving equestrians a modern facelift and more freedom with their apparel?

Presto has settled nicely into his “getting less attention” routine over the past couple months. I used to get him out every day for grooming and tying, plus doing some kind of groundwork at least 3 times a week. He’s been on a bit of an off season break lately, only coming in a few days a week, and doing any kind of “work” maybe once a week.

Mostly this is because his basics are so solid that they don’t require as much maintenance anymore. He knows whats expected, and aside from being a mouthy (seriously, we’re in that stage where he wants to put everything in his mouth), over-curious, sometimes a bit cheeky yearling colt, he’s about as well behaved as you could possibly want. The fun part, though, is how he picks up right where we left off every time. His mother was almost freakishly smart, albeit in a sometimes evil way (effing mares), and he seems to have inherited the best parts of her brain. Sometimes we have to do a little bit of remedial work when he loses focus, but for the most part he learns really fast and the lessons stick.

Last week while he was in the barn for a quick grooming session, I set my dressage saddle on him. He’s worn saddle pads and a surcingle, so I just tossed it up there on a whim, figuring he wouldn’t care. He didn’t. Although he seemed slightly alarmed when I told him he looked like a proper dressage horse.

Since he hadn’t cared about that, I decided a few days later to take it a step further and have him wear a saddle for real – girthed up and in motion. I ordered him a wittle bitty 20″ girth a few weeks ago from Riding Warehouse in preparation for this, since all of Henry’s are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too big. We went out to the arena, lunged a couple circles each way at walk and trot, and then I set the saddle on him and slowly girthed it up. I sent him back out on his circle, wondering how he would react.

Yeah, no shits given.

Since that was apparently super boring to him, I went ahead and dropped the stirrups down so they could flap against his sides. After the first few steps of that he slowed down and looked at me like “Um… is that normal?” and I told him he was fine, asked him to trot again, and on he went, no further questions asked. I really liked his reaction there, though. The point of all the work we did all spring/summer was teaching him to think his way through things instead of just react to them, and we saw it in action pretty perfectly in that scenario. For him to feel unsure and look to me for guidance (rather than just blow up), then trust me when I say he’s fine… that’s exactly what we’re going for.

We did some transitions on the lunge line with voice commands, then since we were only about 10 minutes into his lesson at this point, I went ahead and tacked some of his Stand Still work onto the end of the session. Namely, standing at the mounting block quietly, and ground tying.

I stood on the mounting block, jumped up and down, leaned over him, snapped the stirrups, smacked the seat of the saddle… basically all the scary noises and movements I could think of. He calmly took a step away the first time I started snapping the stirrups, but I put him back in place and started again, and that time he stood still. Honestly, I’m pretty sure I could swing a leg over at this point and it would be totally uneventful.

Ground tying is a little bit harder for him. His focus quickly wanes as I move away, and the yearling colt brain just can’t keep his feet that still. He understands the concept though, and he’s calm about it.

We finished up with me walking a few slow wide circles around him while he stood still in the middle, which is about as good as his ground tying skills get at the moment.

This week the farrier came again, and I tested Presto by clipping him into the crossties in a regular halter (not rope) and leaving them to their own devices. No more hand-holding or helicopter mom, he’s a big horse now. And he was super.

Next we’ll start shifting our focus back to the bridle, something he is less of a fan of, and then do more long-lining. We’ve still got a loooooonnngggg time.