First order of business, our intrepid orange hero has gotten a barn name – Argo. We’ll talk about how I arrived at that here in a minute. First, we gotta start at the beginning. I gave y’all a very short TLDR one-paragraph version of Argo’s life story in his intro post the other day, but like… I’m a wordy bitch, and he has a cool story, so buckle up.

Argo was bred in California by Ray McCanna, who also owned his mother, Devilinabaydress. Ray actually just died a few weeks ago, unfortunately, and that was who owned him through last year. Ray’s brother, Tim, was also Argo’s trainer up until last summer. I looked for Tim on social media but couldn’t find him so (being a creeper researcher) I decided to try looking for a phone number next. Initial searches gave me a contact pretty quickly, but it was a landline. After considerably more digging, a Washington State racing directory pdf from a few years ago had a different number listed, and that one was a cell. Bingo.

I sent a text, hoping it was a good number, and about 10mins later my phone rang – it was Tim! He was a super nice guy and said he was really happy to hear that Shadrack had landed in a good home. Tim said he’d been a great horse for his family and everyone had loved him, he was sweet and easy, a great mover with a big gallop, “a great loper for the guys in the morning”, he always tried hard, and was very sound.

Tim also told me the origin story of the name Shadrack. A good friend of Ray’s was a WW2 veteran and worked for the CIA during that time. Tim didn’t remember the man’s full name, only that his first name was Guy, but his code name in the CIA was Shadrack. Ironically, Guy just died about a month ago at the age of 99, two days after Ray.

I tried Guy as a barn name for him but it just didn’t fit, so instead I fell down a major CIA-themed rabbit hole. After combing through a bunch of documents on the CIA website, I finally hit on a list of the most well-known CIA missions, and Argo was one of them. The original Argo was from Greek Mythology, it was a ship built by the gods. That name definitely clicked with him, and I like the meaning behind it, so there we go! Still gets a bit of a nod to the source of his registered name via the CIA connection.

Ray also owned Argo’s dam, Devilinabaydress, during her racing career. He bought her as a yearling for a measly 6k… not bad for a Tiznow filly, but she wasn’t a good racehorse. Argo also has a full sister, although she wasn’t much of a runner either. His dam produced one other really good racehorse besides him, a mare named Hal’s Buddy that raced a whopping 78 times before she retired at the age of 9. Tim said she’s now a broodmare in Northern California.

Last summer Argo was claimed for a 40k tag in a race at Del Mar by George Sharp, who is the man that I bought him from. While racing for George, Argo finished 3rd in a Stakes race and second in an allowance. His final race was a 50k claimer in July, where unfortunately he bled a bit and finished last. Since then he just hasn’t been running quite the same, and after his last work on October 9th, they felt that the only options were to either retire him or drop him down to cheaper claimers. I appreciate that the owner didn’t want to do go with the latter. Although I haven’t spoken to him myself (the sale was handled by the trainer’s wife) yet, I was told that George is excited to potentially have one of his racehorses at RRP next year!

Overall Argo ran 32 times in a 5 year period and earned over 200k. He raced on all surfaces – dirt, turf, and synthetic – and in four different states: California, Oklahoma, Texas, and Kentucky. He accrued 6 wins, 7 seconds, and 1 third, meaning he hit the board in almost half of his starts. His racing style was very much that of a closer… he was usually one of the last horses going into the first turn, and then made a big rally through the final turn. I’ve watched almost all of his races by now, he has some serious speed when he turns on the afterburners.

What’s been really cool about reaching out to these people and hearing his story is that you can really tell this horse was cared for and loved and appreciated. That’s always really nice to see. He tried hard for his people and he lasted a long time, which I think says good things about both him and them. Plus I know so much of his history now. Tim said next time he was at his brother’s house he would find some old pictures and stuff for me.

Shadrack’s mare family is 1-n, which sporthorse-wise has been pretty successful… it’s the same mare family as 5* event horses Liberty and Glory, Bogue Sound, and Superstition. For racehorses, 1-n is home to Genuine Risk, Smoke Glacken, Forty Niner, Americain, and Alphabet Soup.. His direct mare line (going back 5 generations) has produced a 3* horse and a 1.35m jumper.

I also reached out to the farm that stands his sire, Gig Harbor. Apparently he’s quite studdish, and the vast majority of his colts end up gelded (which apparently “solves the problem”). Gig Harbor definitely has not been a super popular sire and doesn’t have a ton of offspring, so I haven’t come across any others yet. But considering his stud fee was $2k the year Argo was created, you gotta admit he gave them a pretty good return on investment.

To me Argo has a very “old school” type of TB look to him, he’s the type of TB I remember from when I was a kid in the 80’s and 90’s. The only line breeding in the first 6 generations of his pedigree is two occurrences of Relaunch and two occurrences of Lyphard. He’s 16.3 and of medium build – not heavy, not light – with longer proportions and an ever so slightly convex face profile.

I might be biased, but I think he’s a pretty cool horse! Very grateful to his connections for trusting me with him as he enters his next career.

I accidentally did a thing. To be fair, I was deeply enabled (and it was joyous).

I’ve been saying for years now that someday I’d really like to find a project OTTB to do the RRP Makeover with. I think RRP is such a cool idea, looks super fun, and has been a really positive thing for OTTBs in general. I’ve bought their merch, I’ve sponsored an award with them, and I vote every year. Big fan.

Hillary got her new OTTB mare several weeks ago, not solely with RRP in mind, but that’s part of her plan. A couple other friends of mine have gotten OTTBs in the past couple months too, and are likely going to aim for RRP. It seems like 2024 is going to be the year of the ex-racehorse in my friend group, and I found myself like “dang, I wish I had something too, it would be even more fun to do RRP with friends.”.

But, ya know, I can give you about a thousand reasons why logic says that another horse is a bad idea. And then Presto hurt himself, earning himself a vacation and dashing all of our plans for the rest of the season. Before I knew just how badly (or not) he might have hurt himself, I did a rapid spiral and was like “would an OTTB really be that bad of an idea though?”. I have a very strong You Only Live Once mentality… none of us are guaranteed anything ever, and seizing opportunities as they arise has really been my modus operandi over the past several years. It’s led me on some pretty cool adventures, has it not?

I talked about the idea with some friends, who were super supportive, and scrolled casually through the OTTB facebook groups. I didn’t really see me being able to find anything promising for what I could afford (which was really pretty much the Henry price range)… thanks to things like RRP, Thoroughbreds aren’t as cheap as they used to be. Which I think is a really fantastic thing, but it does put the overwhelming majority of them out of my budget. I have other horses and their care to consider, as well as all the care a new OTTB needs, so I had to be pretty strict with the dollar amount I could throw towards a purchase price.

My sad lil budget was my sad lil budget, and it included shipping, so whatever I found had to be both cheap and close. Or free and less close. What were the odds? Slim to none, right? I was like well it’s very unlikely I’ll find anything I like (because we all know I’m also picky) that’s this cheap, so with all the audacity of a mediocre white man, I posted an ISO in one of the OTTB groups.

Here’s the viewpoint I had on the whole thing: if it was meant to be, the right horse would find me and things would work out. Leaving it up to Fate and all that. Which, I dunno, maybe that’s a cop-out, but I do a whole lot of things like that and it’s worked alright so far. I didn’t think it was likely that I’d find one I liked that I could afford, at all, but I threw it out to the universe anyway because you never know.

Most of the horses that I’d come across on my own that I liked were out of budget and/or far away and/or had major problems that I couldn’t live with. To be expected. But after I posted the ISO, the very first response was this:

Hmmmm. Tell me moooore.

Here’s my thing… what I was looking for with this OTTB wasn’t necessarily what I’d be looking for if I was shopping for a horse to keep and event long term to the upper levels. My priorities were a good brain, and I was really looking for the kind of horse that would be a fulfilling re-train. An older war horse, or a solid steady horse that had just never been much of a runner, something like that. Maybe not the most athletic or beautiful animal, but just a good egg kind of horse, if that makes sense. No offense to Presto but i am all full up on orangutans at my own personal zoo at the moment.

This chestnut, Shadrack, sounded like he fit the bill. He’d raced 32 times, earning over 200k, and had won on different surfaces. He’d even hit the board in a stakes race once, and over his 5 years in racing, he seemed like he was a tryer. For most of his career he’d been owned by his breeder and trained by his breeder’s brother and raced primarily in California. He was claimed for 40k last summer by another guy at a race at Del Mar, and then was brought east to Oklahoma and then Kentucky. The woman who had sent him to me was the wife of his current trainer, and she also rides sporthorses, so we got to chatting a bit and I told her a lot about me. She ended up offering him to me for 30% less than his listed price, which put him extremely near Henry’s cost, and within my budget.

The only problem is that he was still in Kentucky, 750 miles away. Dunno if y’all have looked at the prices for shipping horses lately, but it’s not cheap. Diesel is bananas. Shipping basically doubled his price, and that part put him out of my budget. Big sads. He looked and sounded like a sweet boy though, so I sent him to a couple friends, figuring ya know… maybe he’d be good for someone else?

One of my friends was like… I’d really like to be a part of this, so what if some of us from the Patreon group crowdfunded some money towards his shipping, and then he could be kind of like a Patreon group RRP-journey we can all go on together? A ShadrackShippingSyndicate if you will. I was floored that she would even offer to do that, and even more floored that when she suggested it in our Patreon Facebook group, so many people were eager to pitch in. People thought it would be fun to feel like they were part of the journey, and that’s just really freaking cool. My friends are bomb.

Things happened pretty fast after that. Shadrack himself was secured via Venmo on Friday, and pre-dawn on Monday he got on to a trailer and made the trip to Ocala, getting here that night. And well… he’s a stunner. Just a mega classy horse, and way better than I was expecting from the pics and video. How often does that happen?

Anyway – he’s got a really cool story (I’ll tell that in a separate post) and had a fun first day yesterday, and has a scope scheduled for tomorrow to check out his stomach and a farrier visit scheduled on Monday to start getting those feet addressed. Lots happening. Lots to share. Since the Patreon group was so instrumental in making this little adventure happen, all the goodgood behind the scenes stuff, video, and weekly training updates will get posted there. Hillary and I are gonna do kind of a whole “Road to RRP” series thing with both of our horses so hopefully it should be interesting and fun. Obviously I will still share him here too, just not in as much detail or as frequently.

I have no idea if Shadrack will want to event or not – we’ll see. I’ll let him decide what he wants to do, and hopefully we can get on the road to RRP 2024 so we can have an RRParty with all our friends!

Happy Halloween! It’s my favorite holiday of the year, even though I won’t really be celebrating it today, we’ve got too much other stuff going on. We did get to celebrate it a bit last weekend though, at least Henry did.

Our local schooling horse trials at Florida Horse Park offer regular full HT divisions, CT’s, or a la carte – dressage, sj rounds, or XC rounds. Yep, you heard that right – you can enter for just a XC round. It’s not judged or anything, it’s basically just a more formalized schooling. Leave the start box and jump what you want, you just have to give them a general idea of what your plan is so that the chase cart can follow you around to make sure you’re safe. We don’t have individual fence judges at these, instead to decrease the need for volunteers they have a Gator with a volunteer that follows a safe distance behind you as you go around… it’s brilliant actually.

Anyway, I was feeling kind of stressy depressy early last week about Presto’s nasty hoof bruise and subsequent womp-womp to the rest of our season, and was like ya know what I need to do something fun. And what could be more fun than entering Henry for a BN cross country round and getting a costume? (well ok there’s one thing more exciting than that, which I did also do last week LOL OOPS but we’ll talk about that later)

He’s not been in a ton of work lately, mostly he’s just been coming back the last few weeks, so I figured BN was the best choice. That’s easy for him, and only like 3-4 minutes.

I was looking for decidedly HENRY themed costume ideas, and at first was looking at being a dolphin, but that costume seemed like it might be hard to ride in. Then I saw it.. Cookie Monster. Yes. Immediately yes. Done. I found a mega-cheap Cookie Monster onesie, grabbed a variety pack of cookie stickers from Amazon for $5, was gifted an old fanny pack from a friend, and bought packets of Chips Ahoy at the grocery store. Minimal investment, but the joy was great.

My trainer has been doing these Halloween shows for years so she’s well stocked with a variety of glittery hoof polishes and colored hair sprays, and she happened to have some that matched our Cookie Monster blue perfectly. I also had an old bonnet with the same color trim. It was fate really.

The absolute best thing about doing just an XC round is that they just give you a window of time in which you can show up in warmup, and the starter works you in as they can. These shows always just have you go from SJ to XC, so it’s a relaxed “whenever you show up” type situation for XC warmup. As a result, once I was ready and got on, there was literally only one other person in warmup. We trotted a little, cantered a little, chucked some Chips Ahoy at some volunteers, cantered a few jumps, and then went over to the start box.

Henry was so pleased. Like… so pleased. It’s been quite a while since we’ve left a start box for real, but he knew exactly what he was there for.

I had put him in just his side pull, which… a glorified halter is probably a bold choice for an ex-Prelim horse running a BN XC round, but nah, he was good. Of course he was, he’s Henny. I let him out a little bit in the back during one of the longer stretches and he opened up into a great gallop… ok def not BN speed but it was a schooling round and not timed. He came right back when I asked him to and was polite about the jumps, but he really did enjoy getting to gallop on a bit.

Before the water I circled around the photographer and tossed her a packet of cookies, which made her laugh. Spreading joy via cookies, true Cookie Monster energy.

Henry popped over everything with so much joy, it was really cute. Also, really damn fun. Just… really damn fun to be back on this boy doing what he loves most.

I love Presto with every fiber of my being and he’s worth all of his shenanigans, but it was also really nice to just have a day where there was no drama and no stress and no screaming or trying to climb on the trailer or putting a foot in the hay net or or or or whatever busy thing it is he’s doing that day. Henry is easy and an old pro about everything, and that makes it quite enjoyable. Having Presto makes me appreciate Henry’s good qualities more, just like having Henry also makes me appreciate Presto’s sheer athleticism and talent and ability more. There is no compare/contrast, they’re just different, and both fantastic horses in their own way.

It was great to spend a day out with my original BFF though, just having a great time together. He enjoyed it so much, too. I think maybe this is his calling – doing XC rounds at the schooling shows. His favorite phase without any of the other bullshit. It’s just sheer fun for the sake of fun, and isn’t that what this is all supposed to be about anyway? Sometimes it’s nice to step back from the workworkwork aspect of the sport and just have a 100% goofy fun time with your BFF. Thanks Henny. (and yes, of course he got a lot of horse cookies)

PS. Patreon people, you have the full XC video on your dashboard.

Well, I originally had a whole post drafted about Presto’s vet visit last week.

My vet did a thorough lameness exam, flexed a bunch of stuff, palpated him from top to bottom, and even uploaded some jog video into an app that analyzes the evenness of the gait. The findings? Nada. Joints felt good, flexions were good, and the app said he looked about as perfectly even as they get. Superb news. Fantastic. Wonderful. He got a chiro adjustment just because it had been a while, we got the seal of approval to continue, and away we went to make a plan.

And then.

And then the horse fucking horsed, man.

On Friday he was galloping around his turnout like an idiot (He does that sometimes. Ok he does it a lot.) and when I went to get him he had pulled a shoe. He was already looking footsore walking up to the barn so I magic cushioned it, wrapped it, and kept him inside for the rest of the day and overnight.

The next morning he was quite lame. Like lame enough for me to call one of the local clinics that has weekend ambulatory vets. I felt like it was most likely a hoof bruise but the fact that he had been running around so much made me nervous about the soft tissue and bone… I wanted to make sure he hadn’t really DAMAGE damaged it. Three-legged is not something anyone likes.

The vet that came out didn’t have an xray machine in her truck, but given where he reacted to the hooftesters (medial, front quarter) she was less worried about structural damage. Still, she said if he didn’t look improved in 4-5 days, have someone come back and xray it.

If possible, the next day he looked even worse. He was 110% convinced his footie was majorly broken, and he felt really sorry for himself. Monday was basically the same. I didn’t love it. I didn’t love it at all. I texted our regular vet to see if she had time to come look at him and xray it, and she came yesterday (so now we’re at Wednesday) morning.

He did seem improved yesterday morning, in that he was weight bearing again and only had a moderately horrifying limp on a flat surface in a straight line. He was definitely better with a hoof boot on now. The thing I noticed most is that turning left (so when he would weight the inside of that toe) was when he went really gimpy, which did point to that same area of concern the ambulatory vet had found on Saturday.

My vet immediately noticed that he did seem more subdued in his personality than normal, which is never a great sign with him (if he’s not being A Scene, it’s cause for concern). He had a really strong pulse down to that foot, and hooftesters were positive to the same area – medial toward the toe. We opted to take xrays just to make very sure he hadn’t Fucked It, and luckily everything was clean.

It is indeed a nasty bruise, which may or may not turn into an abscess. We just have to wait and see. The vet said it could be 2 weeks until he’s improved enough to start riding a little bit again, or it could be 2 months. It just depends on what the foot does and how quickly it heals. I personally cannot deal with Presto on stall rest for much longer, so yesterday afternoon we fashioned him a mini-pen inside of a smaller paddock up top, and put him in the pen and Henry in the paddock. As long as he stays quiet he can go out there for at least a few hours a day in his boot.

So with that, our fall season is over. A bummer for sure, but I’m glad the damage doesn’t appear to be any worse. The vet thinks it will prob be January at best before he’s back competing. Honestly, that’s fine. He was gonna get a vacation in December anyway, so I guess he just… pushed it up a bit. We’ll regroup when he’s ready. Plus I just spent a whole season’s worth of entry fees on vet bills instead, so… yay.

Fucking horses.

I don’t often share the stories I write for Eventing Nation here on my personal blog, but since it’s Le Lion weekend (or Maryland 5* weekend too I guess… but LE LION!) I feel like this one is worth the share.

It’s pretty rare to see a junior rider entered at a young horse world championship, especially one from Texas. I’ve known Quidley since she was a kiddo on a pony, running BN, so it’s been fun to follow her journey with this horse. How freakin cool is it to have a horse running at Le Lion at her age, especially one she’s brought up the levels herself?!?

I hope you enjoy Quidley’s story. Le Lion is live streaming for free all weekend if you feel like following along!

https://www.mondialdulion.com/en/#

Howdy from Le Lion: Seventeen-Year-Old Quidley Kellerman Takes on a World Championship