We’re officially less than 2 months away from Future Event Horse Championships! Well ok it’s still 8 more weeks from today, but who’s counting?

Presto changes so much from day to day, from horse to camel to giraffe and back again, I’ve long given up on worrying about whether or not he’s actually going to be attractive on that day. He still needs a damn topline, but he can’t seem to stop growing upward long enough to even think about finding himself a neck or a loin or a butt. I know he’s likely to end up near the bottom of the placings at Champs, and that’s ok. I really just want to take him somewhere fancy, get him some experience in a big atmosphere, and be like “Remember when they said 5-10% chance of survival? Look where you are now, kid!”. Because I’m a firm believer in taking full advantage of those kinds of opportunities every chance you get. He came awfully damn close to not getting any.

Last week I remembered that the local summer h/j series has a hunter breeding class at their last show, which is next weekend. Presto is kind of the polar opposite of a hunter breeding horse, but any chance to get him off the property and into the ring for relatively cheap is something that I appreciate. I mean, he’s already moonlighted as an in-hand trail horse, why not go play hunter baby for a day? One more little test run before Champs would be nice. Plus the show is literally like a 20 minute haul so it’s the perfect first outing for Betty 2.0.

Of course, while I grew up in the hunter ring and spent much of my 20’s there, it’s been quite a while since I’ve lived in that world. I think 2011 was the last time I stepped foot in the hunter ring? It feels like a lifetime. I’ve forgotten most of their ways, which are certainly VERY different from the world I reside in now. To start, they show all their babies in bridles, whereas for us, halters are an option for yearlings. They stand them up differently, they trot them differently, they present them differently, they wear different clothes, and of course they judge them very differently. I had to go back and watch some videos just to remember how it works, lest I commit some kind of gargantuan faux pas. A small faux pas or two… I can live with that. He ain’t a hunter baby, after all. Just nothing gargantuan.

The bridle thing is a small issue. He hadn’t worn a bridle yet, and I definitely didn’t have any hunter appropriate bridles anymore (they’re so boring it legit makes me sad). A friend offered to find me one to borrow, and a plain brown cob bridle that I’m getting from Lund may or may not get here by then. In the meantime, he tried on his cob size Kavalkade bridle for the first time last weekend. He’s got kind of a weird in-between baby and horse head at the moment. The browband was a bit snug and the throatlatch had to go on the loosest hole, but the cheekpieces were up as tight as they would go. The noseband, even tightened all the way, was still so loose it was floppy. He’s got like a horse size brow and jaw with pony size nose.

I also kind of forgot that loose rings aren’t really a thing that hunter folks do, so I had to dig in my collection for something else. I did find a happy mouth D ring, which is perfect, except it’s a 5″ and his little mouth is SO narrow.  He looked relatively ridiculous when I tried the whole thing on him. The sizing issues alone are a good enough reason to not make yearlings show in bridles, y’all. They’re awkward as hell.

I also couldn’t even remember how you enter these shows, which is extra sad because it’s only been like 2 years since I did some jumper classes at a regular h/j show. In eventing we have to enter so far in advance that I’m now perplexed at this whole last minute thing, and with not having to pay in advance, or provide/sign a bunch of different forms. And the lack of ride times. How did I ever survive that chaos? This is madness.

I’m not braiding him, because it’s not rated (also GET REAL with those hunter braids, I can’t do that, not happening) and also because I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this but he’s not a hunter. A braid job won’t change that. We’ll pull ourselves together well enough to not insult the judge, but otherwise… we’re gonna stand out like sore thumbs no matter what. He’s very bleached out, when he stands just the right way his neck looks like it was put on upside down, AND you can see some ribs. Hunter ring horrors! Just passing through folks, nothing to see here.

Presto was not a fan of the bridle so we’ll work on that some more this weekend. Honestly though he might spend the whole class chomping away in misery, wondering why I keep doing this stuff to him. As long as he behaves himself, I don’t really care.

Last week I ordered him a little scrim sheet for $20 on clearance, just something to keep the dust off of him while he’s in his stall at FEH. The smallest they had was a 70 and I was worried it would end up being gigantic on him. Joke’s on me, I guess, since the damn thing fits. He hates it, but he’s cute in it, so he’ll wear it at FEH because that’s how life goes. Also now I’m getting concerned that the 72 sheet I bought him for this winter might not fit by the time December actually comes around. What happened to my little baby horse??? He’s not such a baby anymore.

The original title for this post was “Singlehandedly Keeping Amazon in Business”, but then I realized that it isn’t JUST Amazon boxes that are taking up half of my dining room and providing Grem with endless If-I-Fits-I-Sits opportunities.

I ordered a bunch of random crap from Amazon for the new trailer. I mentioned most of it last week, like the hanging mirror and the wall gripper thingies and the rug. I was not totally honest with you guys. The full list is actually something more like:

• rug
• wall gripper thingies (2)
• hanging mirror
• cross tie rings (2)
• hanging organizer
• USB rechargable fans (3, on 2 different orders. Approximately one bajillion people have asked me for the link to these so here ya go.)
• wheel chocks (2)
• expanding hose
• twin air mattress
• carabiner clips
• bungee cord assortment
• trailer ties (2)
• folding step stool
• trailer decals
• heavy duty outdoor velcro (2)

And Tik Maynard’s new book. Not for the trailer, but… just because I wanted it, ok? Tik is an eventer. Tik is cool. Buy Tik’s book.

Anyway… as most of you know, the thing about Amazon is that pretty much everything ships separately. Or at least it seems like pretty much everything I ordered did. A couple days after I placed the order, boxes started showing up in groups (side note, what do you call a group of boxes? A flock? A herd? A murder?). One afternoon I drove up the street, saw the poor mailman parked in my driveway, digging boxes out of his truck and making a pile. It was 105 degrees out, he seemed less than thrilled. I was a wee bit embarrassed. He’s gotta be wondering wtf I’m doing and why I can’t stay off of Amazon. I feel a need to put a big “I’M SO SORRY” sign on my front door.

I also placed a Riding Warehouse order, for a hitch cover (recommended to me by aforementioned FatBuckskin) and another gallon of fly spray. Of course, I didn’t realize until after the fact that the fly spray was backordered, so guess what got split into two separate shipments? At least those are the UPS guy and not the mailman… spread some of the misery around.

And then stupid Dover got me (again) with their stupid summer sale (again) because who passes up a wool dress sheet for their dog for $4.50?? Ok, lots of people probably. But not me. I have an old JRT that gets cold easily and will look fancy AF in this thing. In the winter. Which is like 5 months away. And lasts all of 6 weeks in Texas. Details.

But ya know, in order to make that purchase worthwhile I had to throw a few other things in, right? And it’s possible that I have a minor show shirt addiction problem, especially if said shirt is a kind of unique Horseware design. And $8.99. I will totally wear this.

Plus I’ve been hemming and hawing over the idea of nameplate bracelets for a long time but didn’t really love the padded halter looking ones. This simple braided one is more my style (it looks very similar to a bracelet I bought in downtown Austin that says “Badass Motherf*cker”… without the star part… because if you put the f word on a bracelet I will probably buy it, it’s my favorite word.), especially at $7.50 a pop.

But then I had to order nameplates for them right? But not from Dover, because they were $11-15 each. So I snuck over to Haltertags.com and ordered two nameplates for $12. I pick the weirdest possible ways to pinch pennies, I know. Jewelry is not one of the things I want to spend money on, so spending less than $14 a piece on the bracelets makes me happier.

The saddle racks for the trailer are almost here (again, sorry mailman) and then the packages should start to slow down a bit, barring some Amazon stragglers.

Oh, and the Nathe bit that I snagged on eBay because somehow I used to have 2 Nathes and now I have none. They’re my favorite “baby bit”, so I definitely need another in my arsenal. It’s en route.

Then there’s that Ogilvy order that I placed in May and completely forgot about until my friend asked me a shipping question pertaining to it. That one should be extra fun to open because I legit don’t even remember what I ordered anymore. Pretty sure it was an all-navy dressage half pad and then a new cover for the jump half pad, but I definitely do not remember what colors I got. Surprise!

And there may or may not be some new Lund stuff coming too. And some Majyk Equipe. Ahem.

So… what do y’all get your mailman for Christmas, because I might owe him BIGLY after this little spree…

Newsflash, y’all: this kid can be a real punk when he wants to be. At least for a few minutes at a time, anyway.

I have to give him credit too, his moments of punkiness are 100% calculated and planned. Presto is not a reactionary horse in the least, he is a plotter and a planner, a mischievous little semi-deviant who sees himself as a bonafide rebel with a rad punk rock hairdo and an overactive sideeye. But on the inside, he’s 0% committed to being a Bad Horse. He’s easily swayed by his desire for snacks, and easily intimidated by authority, so usually all it takes to get him back in line is a growl or a swift correction. He is all bark, no bite. All hat, no cattle. All foam, no beer. Or I guess in this case: all mohawk, no… piercings?

I’m pretty convinced that he spends most of his free time brainstorming new schemes. You can usually tell when he thinks he’s struck gold, because he’ll have a particular little gleam in his eyes when I go get him. When I see that I’m always like “oh boy, here we go, what bright idea have you come up with today?”. Except his ideas are never bright. He thinks they are… right up until Reckoning time when I put the kibosh on that shit real quick. He’s just so bad at being bad.

The latest in his string of bright ideas has been experimenting with various turdly ideas during ponying. Clearly he’s gotten a little too comfortable with the routine, if he’s graduated into being a punk about it. When things are genuinely new, scary, or interesting, he’s usually a golden child. But we’ve been ponying a lot more lately, 3-4 days a week for 40ish minutes at a time. These are forward, marching walks out through the fields, up and down our hills. Presto used to have a hard time matching Henry’s pace, but as he’s gotten a bit stronger, his walk has gotten bigger and more forward too. Now that he’s not struggling to keep up, he’s got a little less to keep his brain occupied. We all know what that means.

The first bright idea was the Must Eat Now day. On that particular afternoon he spent the first half of our ponying session trying all myriad of ways to get snacks. The first attempt was just your standard plant-feet-and-yank-head-down approach, for which he got a swift smack on the butt and a series of extremely dirty looks from Henry, who does not take kindly to having his hacks interrupted by shenanigans. That having failed, Presto next tried to randomly exit stage right, throwing himself into the bushes and grabbing desperately at whatever greenery ended up near his mouth before I could reel him back in. One quick jungle extraction later, he spent the next 10 minutes plodding along politely, clearly pouting about his failure. And since his bottom lip is very square and juts out a good inch beyond his top lip, it’s extra amusing when he pouts.

Then out of nowhere he just completely disappeared from beside me and I looked back to see him fling himself down on one knee, grab a huge bite of grass, and pop back up again, all in one swift motion. Honestly, it was kind of impressive from a sheer athleticism and cleverness standpoint. So naughty, but really crafty. You gotta admire that. Of course, it can’t be tolerated either, so we spent a few minutes moving his feet (while I chuckled a lot more than I should have, probably) and reminding him that ponying time is business time, after which he promptly gave up and hasn’t tried it again since. He’s SO not dedicated to his rebellions, it’s actually kind of pathetic.

After another few near-perfect ponying sessions, he’d come up with his next scheme. This time he spent the first five minutes constantly trying to reach over and bite Henry. That in itself isn’t new, he usually manages to summon up the courage for a little nip at least once or twice per session. This time, though, it was constant. The end of my lead rope turned into a whacker, and every time that naughty little nose pointed our way he got a nice wallop. Of course, not being totally new to this game, he would quickly nip at Henry and then leap to the right or duck down to avoid the wallop. That was a new one. Granted, all I had to do was increase the range of my wallop, which really seemed to have him stumped. HOW WAS I STILL ABLE TO NAIL HIM, DESPITE HIS AMAZING ACROBATIC ESCAPES?

Baby horses are really stupid, guys. It’s hilarious.

So again, that game ended after a few minutes, and Presto trudged along looking defeated once more. I have no doubt that sometime in the next couple weeks when I go to get him, the gleam will be back and he’ll roll out his newest brightest idea. I also have no doubt that it won’t really be that bright, and we’ll go through the motions all over again. He is nothing if not entertaining.

Somehow I totally missed this blog hop when it was first posted by Feeding My Heart to the Hawk, but here I am sliding in on the deadline last minute, because what else is new?

Basically, she asked for a list of songs that pertain to us, our horses, and our riding.  I don’t already have a playlist that was built around Henry in particular or is tailored to us, and he’s such a friggin weirdo I’m not sure that I could come up with one that would be accurately cover all aspects of him. But what I definitely DO have, and have mentioned here before, is “hauling music”. Specifically, hauling-to-horse-shows music. The playlist is literally called Horse Shows, and it is tradition. I listen to it on the way to/from every show or XC schooling.

This started back when Bobby and I used to haul together a lot. I made us a playlist of songs, which kind of took on a life of it’s own over the years. Now it’s definitely more to my taste (when Bobby is involved there’s a lot of Lady Gaga… not really my thing, I am not that fabulous), but also with some really random stuff thrown in there. To me these songs are eventing, as I see it through my eyes. It’s adrenaline. Weirdos. Insanity. There’s really nothing civilized or posh about our sport. It’s fun. It’s gritty. Sometimes things go belly up and all you can do is persevere, then come back and try again. C’est la vie. That’s why I love it. This playlist makes me ready to get to the venue, get out of the truck, and Mother Effing Horse Show. But it also makes me feel like, even though nothing ever goes perfectly, it’s still always going to be the thing that feeds my soul. Challenges are part of the game.

If you fall pick yourself up off the floor 
And when your bones can’t take no more
Just remember what you’re here for

You live you learn, you love you learn
You cry you learn, you lose you learn
You bleed you learn, you scream you learn

So raise your glass if you are wrong,
In all the right ways. All my underdogs,
We will never be, never be, anything but loud
And nitty gritty, dirty little freaks

Tell me that’s not eventing and eventers.

It’s a weird collection, I’ll be the first to admit. From rap to country to pop to punk… there’s a little bit of everything. While I didn’t make the playlist with Henry specifically in mind, his influence is pretty clear. He’s definitely responsible for at least half the songs on the list. I mean…

Keep your eyes on my bum-bum-bum-bum-bum
You think you can handle this badonkadonk-donk

We’d definitely see eye to eye on our favorite rappers, too (the ONLY correct answers are DMX and Missy Elliot, btw. But also if you don’t know every word to Lose Yourself, what are you even doing with your life?). “Because I’m Awesome” by the Dollyrots would for sure be his XC song, and it does remind me of him 100%. “Boom” by POD is probably a little too accurate of how stadium goes though…

As for the song Could Have Been Me, by The Struts… that one is my own personal life anthem in all regards. Most of the songs on that playlist I feel like I don’t really have to explain… if you listen to them you’ll probably understand where my head is at. Maybe.

I do have another playlist that I made back when I was doing really long boring trot sets with Henry, getting ready for the 3Day. I still play it sometimes when we go for long walk hacks, if I’m in the mood for music, but now it’s mostly a running playlist. Still… also sums us up pretty well. That one is mostly rock, and generally more modern (with some Beetles and Wilson Phillips thrown in for good measure).

Those are mostly just songs that I like that are a little more upbeat and you can kind of get lost in for a while. Or songs about not being a quitter. Because trotting forever sucks.

To give further evidence of my weirdness, I also have entire playlists of late 90’s/early 00’s metal, or Texas/Red Dirt Country. Sometimes it just depends on the mood, ya know? That Horse Shows playlist though… that one is sacred.

I’m a big proponent of the “pics or it didn’t happen” philosophy. Even before the age of digital media I LOVED getting those little proofs in the mail and deciding which ones to get, filling out the order form, and then waiting a few months for the photos to arrive. Now that everything is digital (and so much easier – praise) and social media is so huge, pictures are even more important. I love having the memories and I love looking at other people’s pictures on social media. Not to mention that it’s pretty hard to be a blogger if you don’t have pictures. Boring.

These days, it seems like just about everyone has a fancy digital camera. Except for me, of course, because I’m not a very good photographer and don’t have the patience for it. Maybe that’s why I value good pictures so much? But I like that so many people are into it now, because the more people there are taking pictures of my horses, the happier I am.

To be clear, I will support the official photographer of a show every single time, 110%. If there’s someone on site taking pictures, standing out there all day, organizing and editing all that crap, you can bet I’ll buy at least one or two, guaranteed. Or literally all of them, like I did for both weeks of Chatt. #noregrets

But I always see other people, non-professionals usually, out there taking pictures too. Whether they’re just having fun with their camera, or practicing, or waiting for their wife/daughter/whatever to go by, there are cameras everywhere at shows. Sometimes the people shooting pics are teenagers that I know, and can seek out on Instagram. Sometimes it’s a show dad with nice equipment and a great eye (shoutout to Dusty!). Other times I have no idea who they are, and may or may not ever find out.

I’ve gotten several pictures from such photographers just because they happened to post a picture of me and someone who knew me happened to tag me in it (for real, how do y’all find these people? Tell me your secrets!). If it’s a good picture, I’ll buy that one too. No joke, I will buy every single picture that anyone takes of me, if it’s a good picture. I do not discriminate.

Granted, I know that this isn’t true of everyone, and this is why official photographers are generally none too pleased to have other people snapping pictures nearby. It’s a sticky situation, and I see both sides of things. Anything that threatens their livelihood is ultimately bad for anyone who doesn’t have their own personal paparazzi following them around. But the more pictures I have, the happier I am. Especially if the official photographers didn’t make the best choices about which jumps to stand by, or didn’t have the staff to cover very much of the course.

I’m always kind of torn on this, because on one hand I feel a duty to support and protect the official photographers, a dying breed. On the other hand, I want more pictures. Always more pictures. Sometimes they’re actually better pictures, too. I can’t help but feel kinda guilty about it though, despite the fact that I’m still giving money to the official photographers.

How do you guys feel about this? Will you buy All The Pictures, or do you limit yourself to just one or two? What are your feelings on unofficial photographers at events?