Alright, Day 2! Dressage was done and dusted, time to get on to the good stuff – stadium and XC. Or really, XC. That’s the actual good stuff. For once we found ourselves in very unfamiliar territory at the top of the leaderboard after dressage. Who needs that kind of pressure in their life? Not me. I’ve always been more of the “come from behind” type. Or, more often, the “stay behind” type. Okay, so maybe being at the top is nice sometimes.

Our ride times were 8:27 for stadium, with XC at 8:37. I got up at my regular time (5:30), fed Henry, cleaned his stall, got all my tack ready, went over my courses and minute markers one more time, put his studs in, and got my ring bag ready to take down to warmup. I was kind of bummed that the course hadn’t changed since we were here last September, so we’ve already run this same XC course before. Because of that I only walked it once, to get a feel for the footing and decide on studs.

Stadium and XC being only 10 minutes apart posed a potential challenge for me, seeing as how I had to do a bridle change between phases and had no one with me to assist. Because if I tried to run Henry XC in a hackamore we’d just be galloping off into the wild blue yonder never to be heard from again. But I didn’t want to SJ in his XC bit, because part of the whole point of coming to this show was trying out all of the changes we’ve been making. So I trudged down to warmup with his XC bridle, his XC boots (because I’m pretty sure if we did stadium in those we would have every freaking rail), my XC whip, and a mounting block, then hung out for a bit to watch how the schedule was flowing. It became pretty clear right off the bat that stadium would be lagging behind.

When I got on to warm up I went and asked the steward if we’d still get our 10 minutes in between, and she told me that the gap had narrowed to where now they were sending people out on XC about two minutes after they came out of stadium. Goody. Luckily I spotted a familiar face in Paulina, who runs the local CT’s here in town that we do sometimes. She and a student were total lifesavers and graciously agreed to be my pit crew between phases (they also got all the media snippets that you see here!).

I kept my warmup pretty short and sweet, knowing that he wouldn’t get much of a breather before XC. We trotted a couple laps, cantered a couple laps, jumped the vertical once and jumped the oxer once. He felt pretty good, even giving me a frisky little head toss when we picked up the canter. As soon as they put all the stadium jumps down to Training size I got a feeling of dread. They looked really small. I ride like a monkey when they look really small. I would have much rather jumped them at Prelim height. The course also started on an oxer-to-vertical line, which makes me a little grumpy.

This venue’s stadium is always wheeled super tight, so I went in knowing I’d have to try to cut off as many unnecessary strides as I could. I took that a little too far when I jumped 5 totally on an angle. Whoops. I got away with that one, though. What I didn’t get away with was when I pulled to the base of 9 and Henry had to jump out from underneath it, taking the rail with us. 110% my fault, without a doubt. I knew I needed to keep my leg on and keep coming out of that turn, but I took a pull instead. So we finished with one rail, which is fine. Not unusual for us. What was really weird is that they said we also had 4 time faults. I have no idea how, I literally cut off as much space as I could and don’t feel like I could have gone much faster without running through the distances, but… oh well. I only have video of part of the course, so I don’t have any way of knowing what our time really was.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that dropped us down to 3rd. I had to trot out of stadium, across the warmup, to my waiting pit crew that was stationed near the start box for XC. I jumped off and slapped Henry’s boots on while Paulina and her student swapped Henry’s bridle. I really have to thank them again, because I swung back aboard when the starter said “30 seconds” and hustled my way over the box with just enough time to take a deep breath and try to focus. There is NO WAY I could have made it without their help.

What I didn’t have time to remember, though, was my helmet camera. After jump 2 I was like “Oh crap, I never hit the button”. But let me tell you what I can’t do at a gallop on a very full of himself Henry. I tried to turn it on but quickly gave up. Here’s the helmet camera from last September, if you want to see the course again, or the jump pics. Nothing was different except the speed was 450mpm instead of 470mpm.

What I DID have though, was a pretty cocky horse. He jumped the snot out of 1 and 2, then thought maybe he should drag me to 3. I had to set him on his ass a bit in the turn between 3 and 4 and have a quick discussion about who was actually in charge here, and he was much more polite after that. He is 0% intimidated by anything at this level anymore, which is great, I’m glad that he’s confident, but that doesn’t mean he gets to be rude and try to take over.

I went ahead and let him gallop a bit across the big field from 5, 6ab, and 7, knowing that the second half of the course rode a lot twistier and had a couple of combinations that would eat up some time. He was full of run, ears pricked and looking for the fences. It was almost an auto-pilot type of experience. Rolltops at the mound? Check. Skinny? Check. Water? Check. Down bank to skinny rolltop? Check. Angled combo? Check. Weldon’s wall? Check. There wasn’t much more to it than that. I did learn my lesson from how the water rode last time and landed, closed my leg, and rode out more positively so the distance worked way better. That was an improvement. The Weldon’s jumped better too. I did bury him at the Trakehner though just because I rode sloppy to it. My bad, although I don’t think he noticed.

Two fences from home I looked at my watch (which I had blissfully ignored to this point) and we were a bit ahead of time, so I slowed him down to more like 350mpm and let him just coast home. He still tried to argue with me a bit about that. Not tired at all. We crossed the finish at 4:37, with OT being 4:46, for a double clear. He was puffing a bit in the heat, but was still attempting to drag me around when I got off to go collect my bridle and mounting block. I untacked, hosed him, walked him a bit, let him graze and get some water, hosed him again, and then left him parked in front of his fan in his ice boots while I went to check scores.

Making time was the name of the game on that day. Everyone else accrued quite a few time faults, except for the person who had moved into first after stadium that unfortunately had a parting of ways with her horse at the water (they were both ok), and someone else who had a stop there as well. Our double clear moved us solidly back up into first.

This show was an experiment in a lot of ways. We totally changed our approach to the dressage, it was our horse trial debut of riding stadium in the hackamore, and I wanted to get a gauge of where his fitness is at, as far as running XC in the heat, before we head to Chatt. I think we definitely got some improvement in the dressage, we’re on the right track for stadium (will I ever stop pulling? we’ll never know…), and there’s no doubt his fitness is just fine for Chatt. We will definitely be having a halt-halt reminder session during his next gallop though, since that’s something that apparently slipped Mr. Cockypants’ mind at the beginning of XC, and I will keep chanting “SHOULDERS BACK” to myself on repeat.

It was good to get back out there again, and I think we’re both feeling ready for Chatt!

Hope y’all aren’t into, like… lots of pro quality pictures and ample videos and stuff. I went to this show 100% completely alone, and the only reason I have any media at all is because of a couple of very nice friends who were in the right place at the right time. Lets all be very happy with that.

As usual I was super well prepared, in that on Friday morning I was like “I should probably look at the dressage test again. Well… actually I should probably look online and make sure of which test we’re doing.”. Upon which I realized it said Training Test B, which I have never even so much as looked at before, much less ridden or practiced. Ha. Friday was Henry’s day off though, so instead of trying to do a last minute run through the test I just texted Trainer (who sadly would not be attending) and asked her for tips.

See, our objective as of late has been to make him borderline TOO forward. He’s always had this tendency to go in at A and immediately tense up and get stuck behind my leg, to where it’s just a big yucky tight sewing machine type of test. Obedient, always, but there’s nothing relaxed and forward-flowing about it, and the connection can be a bit fake when he’s like that. So we’re hoping that if I just ride him a bit overly forward for a while, we’ll be able to get him un-stuck. I am all about making new and different mistakes instead of repeating the same ones for years on end, so I was determined to just keep my freaking leg on and keep going forward no matter what happened.

Our ride time wasn’t until 7:22pm, and they were running a bit late in my ring. I was kind of okay with that, though, because a) it was still really hot and humid, b) for some reason Henry was REALLY tense and spooky when I got on. Like, he spooked at the flags that marked the perimeter of warmup. He’s seen flags like that a million times. We walked until I felt him release his back a little, then we trotted and cantered both ways, lengthening and shortening, and then in the last few minutes I practiced a couple of the little 10m half circle “teardrops” that are in the test. Henry felt a bit like he was on a hair-trigger, but whatever… I was here to just ride him a lot more forward and see what happened.

As we trotted around the outside of the ring he looked at the letters, the judge’s booth, the announcer, and the chains around the arena, then flinched at the crackling loudspeaker. Awesome. The whistle blew and in we went. As usual, he was pretty obedient. The first teardrop rode a lot better than I thought it would, and was bang-on accurate. I expected it to be harder than that. He took a couple of wanna-be-trantering steps in the second teardrop but it was going away from the judge so I don’t think it looked obvious from behind. I really went for it in the trot lengthening, to the point where we got the comment “running”, but usually we get the comment “show more difference”, so LOL. Middle ground? Maybe someday.

The canters were ok – a bit launchy and crooked into the right lead depart – and again I tried to really go for it in the lengthenings. Those are quite hard for croup-high Henry, being on a circle. I was also a bit worried about both of the canter/trot transitions happening at X. He has a history of getting quite tense about the idea of cantering across the diagonal, anticipating a lead change. They were both decent though, no major problems. The stretchy trot, usually our best movement at home, is always just meh at shows (see entire post about tight and tense), but he took a deep breath and gave me some good effort in the free walk.

The second medium walk (after the free walk) was an absolute chess match, trying to keep him from jigging. Man it was close. REALLY CLOSE. He kept a lid on it, but barely. That is a long ass walk from H to M when your horse really just wants to gallop. I was a couple steps late picking the trot back up at M, mostly because I was trying to make sure I actually got a trot instead of a gallop. The half circle turn back up to center line and his halt were great though, garnering the comment “square, immobile”.

I really wasn’t sure how that test would score at all. He was still tense, just less stuck-feeling than he normally is. I knew it definitely had to look hurried in a few places, but I tried to ride as accurately as I could and not give any points away. I’m not even in the habit of looking at dressage scores anymore, so I had no idea how we’d done or where we were sitting until Trainer texted me while I was getting in bed and said:

Turns out that all of our scores were between 6 and 8, with the majority of them being 7, and a final score of 32.3. That landed me in a brand new place for us – the top of the leaderboard after dressage. I’d seen at least bits and pieces of most of the other tests, so I was guessing we’d be mid-pack, but no… somehow we creeped out ahead. Granted, there was only a 6 point spread between first and last, so that’s not saying much. I think maybe we got a little charity there for whatever reason, or maybe it was the accuracy that helped make up the difference, but either way I’ll take it.

By the time I cooled Henry out and hosed him, put my tack away, cleaned his stall, fed him dinner, took a shower, and set up my tent, it was 9:30. I was even too hot/tired to eat dinner, so I settled for chugging 2 bottles of water instead. And then my air mattress’ battery died when it was only about 70% inflated, but again, too hot and tired to care. I just collapsed into the floppy mess and laid under my little fan, trying not to move. Stadium was at 8:37 the next morning, with XC right after, and we still had a whole lot left to do.

Every year when I leave a summer horse show, coated in 15 layers of sweat and filth, rubbed raw in places that shouldn’t ever be, I think “omg, why did I do that? That was miserable.” and then the next year I do it again anyway.

Horse people, we are gluttons for punishment.

I feel a little bit like a walking piece of beef jerky today. I drank 12 bottles of water in less than 24 hours (and was asleep for 8 of those hours) but I still basically attached my mouth to the hose after XC and chugged. Then stopped on the way home for a Powerade and chugged that too. I have to give the show management many props for how they organized the ride times this year, though. My dressage was late on Saturday evening, and we were done with stadium and XC before 9am on Sunday. The riding parts were the most pleasant.

The show recap will have to wait until tomorrow though, mostly because I need to organize myself a bit more before I tackle that. Spoiler alert: we won.

But I have to be honest, it didn’t really feel like a very deserving win. I made some mistakes and had some bleh moments and picked up my ribbon mostly just feeling like I’d ended up on the lucky end of things that day. A friend of mine said that I was the most self-deprecating person she knew, a comment that I kept mulling over as I packed my things and started driving home. I fell into a cycle of glancing at the ribbon on the dash, mulling over my rounds in my head, and then thinking about her observation.

Finally I got tired of myself and starting flipping through radio stations, trying to find literally anything without static until I could get enough signal to turn on Spotify. Quite serendipitously, as I was pushing that Seek button over and over and over, one sentence came through loud and clear out of the static – “There ain’t nothing gonna steal my joy”. Not sure if you’ve ever spent much time driving through Texas, but the stations we unfailingly have the most coverage for are the Christian stations, and that’s what this was. The signal quickly faded away to static again as I went down the hill, but I found myself pausing for a second on that particular lyric.

That was really the perfect way to phrase what I was doing to myself… stealing my own joy. We won our first HT ever (pretty sure? I think our other wins have been in derbies and CT’s.) at a level that at one time seemed like my own personal version of Rolex, and here I was, stuck on a couple of fences that I rode sloppily. My friend’s observation was spot on – I AM super self-deprecating. I couldn’t even give myself one friggin day to just enjoy the fact that we finally came out on top before I started analyzing and tearing apart every single mistake.

I decided, in that moment, to just stop it. I turned my brain off, got just enough signal to open Spotify, and selected my “Horse Show” playlist… something I made a couple years ago to play when Bobby and I were driving to shows together. It’s a ridiculous mixture of really random songs, but they feel celebratory to me. I cranked that shit the whole rest of the way home and set everything else aside.

So, tomorrow we’ll tear this thing apart and talk about what went right and what didn’t and what we need to work on. There are always plenty of those things. But for today I’m just gonna shove a bunch of cookies into my fantastic horse and appreciate the awesome journey that he’s taken me on.

Yesterday I sent the entry in for Presto’s first Future Event Horse class! Despite my pretty gung-go attitude earlier this year about taking him for FEH, I admit that I’ve really been waffling a bit. It took a lot of convincing and second guessing and back-and-forth on my part just to enter this one, and honestly it kind of left me wondering why I was being like that.

I love Presto. I think he’s going to be exactly the type of horse I was aiming for when I bred his dam, and I’m pleased with how he’s developing. His temperament is super, his gaits are good without being too much for an amateur to ride, he doesn’t have any major structural issues, and he’s brave and smart. That said, I have always been able to very easily see the flaws in all of my horses, and Presto is no exception to this. My eye is probably more critical than anyone else’s and I always go the imperfections first, like I have some kind of weird case of reverse barn-blindness. It’s made me hesitant to take him to FEH, although I don’t really know why, because logically it doesn’t make sense.

It’s not like he’s for sale. I don’t even put much weight on FEH scores translating to useful feedback about a horse’s potential – all they can do is evaluate confo and walk and trot on a baby horse, which are definitely not the most important things for an eventer. Not to mention that babies go through some seriously funky stages, and the judge may or not be able or willing to see through that. I tell people these things ALL THE TIME. Some babies score really well at FEH and totally flop as eventers. Some score really meh at FEH and are fabulous eventers. Line classes are really hard when it comes to predicting horses that will do well in a sport like this.

For all of those reasons, his scores don’t actually matter. At the end of the day, it’s just one person’s opinion of a horse on that day, given what they can see. I know all of this. I know it really well. But that hasn’t stopped me from being hesitant about entering him. I already know his scores will just be average (y’all, the llama phase, it is real) and I already know that it won’t matter anyway. But I was still hesitant. I just… I dunno. I’m not sure if it’s that I don’t want to take him out in public when he doesn’t look his best, or if I just don’t want someone handing me a scoresheet telling me that they think he’s gross. It’s not as though I’m not already very used to the concept of subjective judging and one person’s opinion.

After thinking about it for a while, I still don’t really know the root of my hesitation. I don’t totally understand my own psychology here, so I’m probably just being dumb as hell. But after talking it through with some people, and realizing that this next show is my last chance at getting him to a FEH class at all as a yearling, I decided to just buck up. Yeah so he’s gawky and he still hasn’t sprouted his chest and the orientation of his neck can change 100% from day to day (today: upside down). Who knows what he’ll look like the day of the show. But we’re gonna go and support the program and trot around that triangle like a real horse with no actual expectations (aside from good behavior), because why not? And if the judge doesn’t like Presto then oh well.

So Henry has a schooling show this weekend where we’re gonna play with a few new ideas and get an XC run in (we haven’t been out on XC at all since our March show, I think?), then Presto’s FEH is next weekend, and then Henry and I leave for Chatt! The next month is going to be busy.

If you follow me on Instagram at all, you’re probably thinking that Presto spends his entire life tied up in some place or another. While it’s not quite THAT much time, he’s definitely logged his fair share of “patience hours” lately.

Since his weekend adventure with The Tree of Knowledge a few weeks ago, he’s become quite reliable about tying. It wasn’t a one-and-done for teaching him how to stand quietly, but it definitely taught him that resistance is futile. I’ve been tying him in the barn for grooming every day, either straight-tied in the aisle or crosstied in the grooming area, and he’s been rock solid. Not totally STILL, per se, he still wiggles and tries to chew on things and sometimes tries a few half-hearted stomps that are the saddest attempt at a temper tantrum that I’ve ever seen. But the thought to pull back or resist or try to escape does not exist in him at all.

So, as I mentioned a couple weeks ago, I moved on to tying Presto at the rail in the arena while I rode Henry. He was a little mad the first time, but honestly handled it better than I thought he would. I could ride Henry right behind him and he didn’t care (I mean, he looked more mad, but he wasn’t upset). I don’t ride in the arena very often though… generally only when the fields are too wet or too hard.

The next time I rode Henry out in what I call my “dressage field” – a smaller, flatter field in front of my jump field – I noticed something that hasn’t really registered with me before. Tall, very solid poles that I assume used to be part of an old fence. Now it’s a lower wire mesh fence, with my dressage field on one side and a corn field on the other, but a few of the taller poles are still in place.

So after one more session hanging out on the rail in the arena to make sure he understood the game, I ponied him out with me for a dressage ride one morning, tied him to the tallest pole (which – it is not that easy to tie one horse on a fence line while riding another, btw. Put THAT in field hunter classes!), and rode away.

Not like… far away. I slowly spiraled Henry away from him, watching to see what Presto’s reaction would be. After all, he was tied next to a loud corn field (it’s kinda scary when it’s windy!), out in the middle of nowhere, and the only horse he could see was leaving him. This was definitely a lot different from just tying him to the arena rail, right by the barn. I could see the wheels turning as he decided what to do. It only took him about 30 seconds to choose the “good boy” option and start nibbling at all the grass that was tall enough to reach.

I heard nary a peep out of him that day, and he’s been out on that post three other times since. I ride Henry past him and towards him at every gait, but Presto never seems to care. Sometimes he gets bored and tries to paw or pace, because yearling, but he never seems worried or upset. He’s become a bonafide Railbird.

I’m hoping that, in addition to continue developing his patience skills, this also helps make him a little more independent and not worried about what other horses are doing around him, especially under saddle. I guess we get to find out in like… 2 1/2 years.