For me, it’s always seemed like making plans either results in fortune or folly. Usually folly, when it comes to horses. Sometimes things work out (like AEC’s, or the Classic 3-Day) but a lot of times they don’t. Horses don’t know anything about the plans, dreams, or agendas of humans. It’s simultaneously one of the best and worst things about them, IMO. As long as they’re fed and safe, they’re happy. There’s a beautiful simplicity in that, even if sometimes it can make them really frustrating creatures to the humans who laid grander plans upon their backs.

Despite having been a multiple-horse owner for the majority of my adult life, Henry has been a one man show for years. My brain is still re-adjusting to having more than one animal to train, consider, take care of, and plan for. And since my budget is pretty tight, it takes a little more thought. I can’t just do All The Things, so stuff has to be prioritized, which requires looking more at the long term big picture. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about what I really WANT to do, and when those things have to be done.

The big unmoveable future thing is really Presto’s 4yo (ie horse show debut) year in 2021. Whether he’s mature enough to start a legit eventing career that year or not, he’ll still be under saddle and he’ll still need to start going to horse shows in some capacity. That’s a really important, must-happen thing. Of course, showing two horses at the same time will be financially pretty damn difficult for me, so it’s likely that either both of them will go to schooling shows, or one of them (ie Henry) won’t get to show. 2021 will be the year of Turning the Baby into a Show Horse.

From there we start working backwards. In his 3yo year (2020) I’d like to send Presto to my cowboy/colt starting guy for 2 months in the spring – the same guy that started his dam. He exposes them to a lot, which I like, and he’s been doing this FOREVER, which I also like, and he’s gotten pretty involved in the english world so he understands what we want from our horses. Of course, he’s expensive, so all of my extra money that spring would go toward that. No recognized shows for Henny.

Once Presto comes back from the breaker he’ll really just trail ride or hack out a few times a week during the summer. Of course, it’s too friggin hot here for me to show Henry in the summer, so either Henry isn’t showing or we’d have to go out of state. Unless my financial situation changes or I got pretty lucky, I don’t really see that happening. In the fall of Presto’s 3yo year I’d like to send him for a month or two of dressage training, then bring him home and give him the winter off before his 4yo “first season” starts. Sending him off for more training is more $$$, so let’s go ahead and write off any recognized shows for Henry for the remainder of that year too. 2020 will be the year of Baby Training.

When you look at it that way, that really leaves us with the remainder of 2018 and 2019 for the primary focus to remain on Henry. Just boarding two already puts a pretty significant dent in my show fund for him, but when Presto is actually in training or needing to go to lots of shows himself, the Henry show budget will be almost non-existent. I don’t really know what will happen once they’re both rideable and showable. Selling Henry is not on the docket ever, but would I lease him to someone? Would I just keep him and not show him? Or would I find a way to show them both, albeit very sparingly? I don’t know that part yet. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

But thinking about all these things did kind of make me feel like, if I have other things that I really want to accomplish with Henry, now is probably the time to lay it out. To be honest, I never had ideas for us beyond getting to Training level. And that was a huge, far-reaching idea that seemed more like a joke than an actual probability. So we got there, and it’s been great, and I’ve just kinda been like “Ok well here we are, achievement unlocked, ta-da!”.

Figuring out Presto’s grand plan and realizing just how little time I have left with Henry as my sole focus kind of prompted me to think… do I want to try to keep going? Do we ever want to make an attempt at Prelim, or do we just live at Training and have fun? Both are appealing to me in their own way. I didn’t start out ever wanting to do Prelim, to be honest. I feel like that’s the level where things start getting stupid, and more dangerous, and the difference between Training and Prelim is huge. My horse does not have endless scope, or easy speed. He’s Prelim-capable, but it really is nearing the the limit of his natural ability. Then again, we’ve schooled Prelim stuff and done a couple CT’s and both of us think it’s pretty damn fun. And I’d love for Presto to eventually be a 1* horse for me, so it’s obviously not like I’m saying I’ll never consider it. If Henry is sound and happy and fit, is there a real reason to NOT at least try to work towards it and see what happens?

In my mind there are kind of two Prelims… “Legit Prelim” and “Prelim Lite”. There are a couple venues where I feel like the courses are a lot easier for my particular horse, and the P wouldn’t be that much of a stretch for him from where we are now – Prelim Lite. Other venues have monster courses, less suited to my horse, and I just really don’t have much interest in running them on him ever – Legit Prelim. Prelim Lite seems reasonably doable, with a lot of work. And those venues even have some schooling shows. That would take away the pressure added by spending more money and having the results be on the horse’s USEA record, which in turn makes it sound like a more interesting proposition to me.

So after texting with Trainer, the plan is to spend the rest of this year cleaning up our showjumping, stretching the comfort zone, and getting more miles. We’ll see where that leads us. If things stack up to where Prelim Lite looks doable at some point in 2019, we’ll give it a go. If not, we’ll keep having fun rocking around Training and that’ll be that. If I can’t step my game up, or if Henry seems stretched beyond his ability, then we’ll stay where we’re at. That horse owes me absolutely nothing, and the most important thing is for me to feel like we’re doing right by him. As long as he’s happy, I’m happy. So we’ll let the horse dictate our future, and see where it takes us. It’ll be a lot of fun, either way.

You know what’s cuter than watching my two boys interact? Nothing. Literally nothing.

On Saturday I was in a hurry trying to beat the rain, so both boys just got worked separately and briefly. But Sunday was an absolutely beautiful day, so Henry did a conditioning ride first, then we went back up to the barn and grabbed Presto.

I wanted to revisit the ponying lesson that we had started the weekend before. I didn’t have time to work on it at all during the week, and it’s not something I want to feel like I have to rush, so I wanted to wait until we had plenty of time. I wasn’t sure if either of them would retain the lessons from the first session, or if it would be like starting over again. I didn’t have anyone around to hold Presto for me while I got on Henry, so challenge #1 was mounting one horse while holding the other (and not getting tangled or have either of them head in separate directions). Challenge #2 was getting them both through the gate, into the arena, and closing the arena gate behind us. Or at least I thought it would be a challenge. They both complied with no issue, like they’d actually been trained or something. How bout that.

I made a few laps of the arena, stopping and starting and turning, walking over the poles and between some narrowly placed barrels. It was all super easy. Both boys started out even better than we had ended the weekend before. So I figured hey, let’s just leave the arena and make a couple laps around the barn and see what happens. Answer: nothing. I opened the gate from Henry’s back, we walked out, and marched around the barn. Easy peasy. At that point I just kinda shrugged to myself, thought “well, why not”, and headed out to the field. I wasn’t planning on going out there until we had another ponying session or two under our belts, but they were both being great… may as well.

Presto LOVED it. He was looking around at everything, but in an interested “WOW THIS IS AMAZING” kind of way, not in a spooky way. In fact, he never spooked at anything. Not the rustling field of corn that we had to pass on the way, not the trees and bushes blowing in the wind, not the birds that always fly up out of the tall grass. He just calmly took it all in and stayed very well behaved. For a yearling I continue to be really impressed with his brain.

I have to give Henry a ton of credit, he is a great horse to pony off of. If Presto starts pushing into him or getting too far ahead of his shoulder, he pins his ears at him and puts him back in his place. A couple of times we halted and Presto didn’t notice for a few steps, which earned him a “PAY ATTENTION” nip from Henry as a correction. He’s the one teaching the kid to pony, I’m pretty much just holding the lead rope. Henry acts super grumpy about it all, but I think he actually really likes it. Being bossy is his favorite thing in the world.

We made a lap of the jump field, then walked around the edge of the pond through some scrub before heading back. I could have stayed out there forever, but I figured it would be wise to keep the first field adventure to a 20 minute max. On the last stretch before the barn, all the mares in the mare pasture decided to gallop up to the fence to see us as we passed, which was exciting for about 2 seconds before Henry and his grumpy ears put the kibosh on that nonsense from both sides. God I love him. If we hadn’t had Presto with us he would have been prancing and acting like a total idiot, but he absolutely knows the difference in those situations.

I tied Presto in Henry’s stall while I untacked Henry in the aisle, letting him supervise the “stand tied” lesson. If Presto moved, Henry pinned his ears at him. I stood there in the aisle giggling for a lot longer than I really should have. Man its a lot easier to outsource all this baby training.

Since Henry seems to be such a good influence on Presto, I took them both out to the washrack together. I hosed Henry off while Presto watched, and then hosed Presto. He wasn’t thrilled, but he didn’t protest.

They both seemed happy and chill, so I let them stand there and graze for a bit. Once they were outside of what I assume Henry deems “working conditions”, Henry was less grumpy towards Presto. I swear I think he knows that this is his little bro and it’s his responsibility to make sure Presto doesn’t end up a heathen. Probably because he doesn’t trust me to accomplish that on my own.

Everything went a lot better than I expected. Presto is proving that he’s got a good brain, and Henry is proving (once again) that he’s worth his weight in gold. That horse, he is one of kind.

A friend is going to let me borrow her Western saddle for a while, which should help make our ponying a little bit easier. Juggling that lead rope in an English saddle is certainly doable, but it would be really nice to have a saddle horn just in case. Plus I can’t wait to throw that thing up on Henry and take a bunch of pictures of him REALLY looking like a quarter horse.

Once we get some more ponying experience I’d like to haul them off property and do some trail riding, especially during the summer when it’s too miserably hot to do much else. These two are so much fun.

Between Presto, the cat, and my barnsitting charges, I have an extraordinarily high number of Floofs in my life right now. Not gonna lie, it’s awesome. I am a big fan of floofiness.

This is JB, aka Baby Floof, the new foal out at the barn where I barnsit regularly. It’s possible that the very first thing I did when I got there yesterday was go straight out to play with JB.

He’s going to be a super fancy dressage horse one day. His sire is Tolegro and his genetic dam (he was carried by a recipient mare) is a daughter of the resident black stallion Toni, who’s antics have made it to the blog several times before.

JB thinks he’s sneaky. He’s not. But he is VERY sassy, and 100% colt. It’s pretty cute, in that really naughty baby way. Especially since he’s not my colt and I’m not the one that’s going to have to teach him manners. You gotta watch your back around the Baby Floof, he’s quick and he’s armed at both ends.

Barnsitting also comes with what is really THE ULTIMATE FLOOF. This is Lola the Malamute.

Pictures don’t even accurately capture how floofy this floof is, y’all. SO FLOOFY. She’s got the super derpy personality to match, too. So much leaping and flopping and tongue lolling around sideways out of her mouth. Hence why she gets the title of Ultimate Floof.

And then there’s the floof that many of you have already noticed – Presto’s forelock. That thing is Grade A mustang quality. It’s enough forelock for at least 4 or 5 horses… I thought Henry had a decent forelock but this one is 4x as thick and really frizzy. A few of the longer strands almost reach the noseband of his halter when it’s brushed out. Every day I try to smash it down so that it looks a little less wild, but my smashing isn’t really working. I have no idea what I’m going to do with that thing when I actually have to braid it. It does give him a very Emo Floof look, though.

And then there’s Grem, the Princess Floof. She got a big fancy cat tower this week (because she is the most rotten cat in all the land) and is absolutely obsessed with it. She likes to sleep in the little hammock or perch at the very top and threaten to leap down on the dogs. Her reign of terror, ruling the house with an iron paw, is still very much in place. And we inadvertently enabled it by giving her a castle and a throne.

Hopefully by this time next week there will be yet another Floof in our lives. Sadie’s “due date” is Sunday, and she usually foals pretty close to that. Can’t wait to see Presto’s newest half brother or sister!

One of the most fun things about having Presto home for the past week and half has been getting to know him better. I mean yeah, I knew him before… I was there when he was born, after all. But aside from those couple weeks he spent at the hospital as a foal, I had yet to spend more than a couple days at a time with him. And most of those encounters were me watching him, or just hanging out with him, not really asking him to do a whole lot. You don’t learn that much about a horse until you start asking them to step outside of their comfort zone.

Having also bred and raised Presto’s mother, Sadie, it’s been really interesting to see the similarities and differences in their personalities and temperaments. They’re both very smart and pretty sensible and food motivated. Presto is a bit more willing, or shall we say, more inclined to acquiesce to something I’m asking him to do that he might not actually want to do. But maybe that’s the difference between a filly and a colt.

There are a few other definite differences though. Sadie had a severe aversion to black mats for THE LONGEST TIME as a young horse. We’re talking like she spent a solid year and half thinking they were a hole to hell, even seeing them daily. When Michele lived in Texas, Sadie actually boarded at her house for 6 months or so, and Michele’s barn had a black mat across the entrance. Sadie jumped over it every. single. time. Presto definitely notices a mat the first time he sees it, but he marches right up to it, gives it a snort, and then stomps it. He recovers from “scary” situations a lot faster too. I think he is a bit bolder than her, which is saying a lot because otherwise Sadie really has always been a pretty bold horse (um, black mats aside).

Despite a few irrational phobias, Sadie was always pretty sensible when it actually counted. When we moved from Michele’s barn to another barn up the road (by up the road I mean about a mile down the winding farm roads), my friend and I were trailer-less so we just led our baby horses down there. Sadie thought that was a pretty fun adventure, and was actually surprisingly good about the whole thing. I could see Presto reacting the same way in that situation. They seem to be naturally inclined to be inquisitive rather than fearful.

They can both scream though. Really loud. And Presto is more of a talker than she was. His first year or so of eventing might be a screamfest.

Of course, Sadie also threw some epic freaking tantrums about some of the most mundane things. She was STUBBORN, and if she didn’t want to do something your way, she was absolutely prepared to have a knock-down-drag-out fight about it. And once she was mad, she stayed mad. I was constantly trying to outsmart her, because you sure weren’t going to win a contest of strength or staying power. Presto might protest once or twice, but then he just kinda gives me the hairy eyeball, decides it’s easier to do it my way, heavy sighs, and it’s over. This definitely shows up in things like trailer loading (Sadie was not a good loader or traveler… partially because of her stupid black mat phobia and partly because I didn’t have access to a trailer to work with her on it).

When Sadie got older and became a riding horse, she turned into one of the easiest horses on the planet. I think she really thrived on having a job, and I always felt, looking back, that my biggest mistake with her was that I tried to go by the “teach them the basics but otherwise leave them alone” method of horse-raising. That method works well for a lot of horses, but for a horse like her, this wasn’t the right approach. She was too smart and too brazen and too inventive.

By the time she was 2 1/2 this had manifested in some undesirable behavior. I had been around a lot of foals and young horses, but I had never raised one myself before, so she was my guinea pig, for sure. A couple months at the cowboy helped turn her attitude around, and once she was under saddle and getting ridden regularly, she was a much happier and easier horse. She especially LOVED trail rides… exploring was fun to her. I’m interested to see what Presto thinks about hacking out in the fields. Judging by what I’ve seen so far, I think he’ll like it too.

To this day Sadie is not the most reliable about tying. I was always worried about her hurting herself, so I didn’t do enough of that in the first couple years. Once she learned she could break a halter or escape from a blocker tie ring, that was the end of her ever tying reliably. She does not forget things like that. Presto has been getting tying lessons since he was 3 months old. Not repeating that mistake!

These are the main reasons why I ultimately opted to bring Presto to my barn, where I could see him and do something with him pretty much every day. I want his brain to be occupied, and I want him to have expectations that he has to fulfill every single day. I want him to tie, crosstie, pony, see lots of commotion, load on trailers, go on adventures, get baths, get groomed and handled. He still gets 23 1/2 hours a day to himself in his pasture to go be a baby horse, but he also is expected to be civilized when I ask him to be. No “choose your own adventure”, semi-feral style of living happening over here. Some people might think it’s too much, or unnecessary, but I think it’s the best thing for him.

So far though, he’s been a bit easier than Sadie. Honestly, I think he really thrives on having something to do. He’s eager for the lessons and always seems happy to come in and figure out what’s on the docket for the day. That’s Sadie’s brain at work, which seems like such a thoroughbred trait. They both have a fantastic work ethic… Presto just has a stronger desire to please. Or maybe it’s just a stronger desire to avoid conflict. Either way, I’ll take it.

I’m really interested to see what other commonalities or differences start showing up in Presto as time goes on and we delve into more tasks. Discovering his personality has been really fun, but even more so since I know his dam so well. Raising horses is hard, but this is definitely one of the fun parts.

The re-introduction of the hackamore into Henry’s show wardrobe created a bit a predicament (ha, pun. stop groaning.) with my bridle lineup. All of my good bridles these days are monocrowns, which don’t actually work with a hackamore… there would be one extra strap with nothing on it, flap flap flapping around in the breeze.

Luckily I did have something it could go on: my old Royal Sports bridle that I had made for a hackamore several years ago. I hated that thing since the day I got it, and I still hate it, and it’s even uglier now than it used to be. I’ve just kept it around so I can ride in my sidepull sometimes without changing bridles around. I mean, the bridle technically does the job, but it’s hideous and I do not like using it in public, not to mention the fact that the crownpiece does not fit correctly around Henry’s ears. There’s no freaking way I can show up at a recognized event with that gross, flaking, orange-padded, ill-fitting nightmare. I’m pretty sure that counts as horse abuse or something. Granted, the hackamore that I picked up for cheap to use for this little non-bitting experiment is pretty ugly too.The only thing wrong with it is the color though (which ironically matches the hideous orange padding on the bridle perfectly), so my eyeballs were mildy less offended about that part than they are about the bridle itself.

If you like having cheekpieces in your horses eyes and a bridle that is more orange than brown, that setup is totally up your alley. (Fun fact from the above pics: it was so windy that day for the CT that none of the panels or gates could be put up in the cups lest they become airborne projectiles. Texas is great.)

If we’re going to use a hackamore for real, ie in public, I really wanted a true hackamore bridle with a jaw strap – like the Dy’on and PS of Sweden hackamore bridles have – to keep the cheekpieces out of his eyes and help stabilize the thing on his head a little bit. The problem is that those were the only two bridles I could find with that feature, and I didn’t want to spend that kind of money.

Ok that’s a lie, there’s this FRA bitless bridle thing that technically has the strap I want, but what the hell is up with that hideous “hook out” cheekpiece? It looks backwards. It’s making me twitchy. I cannot.

And there’s also the Barefoot Physio bridle, which would have worked, but the brown one has hideous orange padding just like my current bridle. That’s a NO. Bridle makers: STOP WITH THE ORANGE PADDING.

Hideousness is the theme here.

So the Dy’on and the PS were the only two pretty bridles I could find with that feature.

The Dy’on bridle would have worked, and it’s only $150 (sans hackamore and reins) if you buy it from Europe, which isn’t too awful. Of course, then I’d have wanted to put a nicer hack on it, like a Jin, which I could also get from the same shop in Europe for another $100 (then add $25ish for shipping to all that), or a Stubben or a Herm Sprenger. The only thing I didn’t like about the Dy’on is that Henry really needs the full size crown for the ear cutouts to fit, but the full size cheekpieces would put the jaw strap up high, above his eye. I much prefer that the strap sit lower, so that it’s level with or below the eye. The strap is fixed, though, so I wouldn’t have been able to move it to where I wanted unless I took it to a leather person and had them do it for me. That’s annoying for something that isn’t cheap to start with.

The one that I liked the design of the most, of course, was the PS of Sweden hackamore. It has the strap where I want it, and I love the wide padded crown. It comes with the matching (praise jesus) hackamore already on it, which is nice too. One purchase and you’re done. And it’s pretty (which matters a lot). But – there’s always a but – these went out of production a couple years ago, so there aren’t a lot left on the market in the size and color I want. The cheapest new one that I found from my preliminary search was around $315 including shipping.

I briefly considered trying to Frankenhack something together that would work, but that sure sounds like a royal pain in the ass to try to get everything to match.

 

So I tossed an ISO ad up on English Tack Trader on facebook, figuring it was worth a try but also thinking there was just no way I’d get that lucky. Next thing you know, low and behold, not only does someone have a brown full size PS hackamore, but it’s someone I actually know! She used to live near here and reads the blog and rode with my trainer a little bit. She offered it to me for a much more reasonable price than new, and I was sold. Done. Bam.

Everyone thank Teana for saving Henry from that hideous orange monstrosity that he’s been wearing. She’s done us all a big favor here.

And no one ask how many bridles I have now. Just don’t. A bridle for every bit, am I right???