I’m going to stop leading off my Monday/Tuesday update posts with “last week was busy!” because its starting to annoy even me.

In our quest to continue making sure Presto is feeling confident about drops into water again, we took him back to the original “scene of the crime” (aka where he landed funny and the issue started). This time I didn’t lunge him over anything first, we just did a little warmup, hopped up and down the regular banks from small to large, popped over a couple ditches, then went and did the banks into and out of water from small to large. I opted to put him in his dressage bridle to encourage him to be extra bold and boy did he have some utter delight at taking me for a dolphin spin all around the XC field. Whoa was a suggestion.

He was super good though, he’s back to his normal method of locking on and taking me to everything, no hesitation whatsoever. I did decide to go ahead and have the vet out this week to give him a thorough once-over anyway, just to make sure there’s not something physical that we’re missing. He’s felt great, honestly, but I’d rather be overly cautious and cover all our bases than have any kind of question marks remaining. I mean, ya know, why not give the vet all our money, it’s fine.

I haven’t entered our last two planned events for the year (Rocking Horse M and TerraNova 1*) yet because as of right now I’m still on the fence. If he schools well today and gets an all-clear from the vet tomorrow, then we’ll have the conversation, but as of right now I’m holding off. I do think that 1) assuming we’ve done our due diligence to rebuild his confidence, and 2) if the vet thinks he looks good, it’s in his best interest to go back out and run ASAP. But I also don’t want to spend the entry fees and then have to scratch, so I’ll decide sometime this week.

This past weekend was a fairly quiet one on the horse front. On Saturday there was a big community horsey tack sale at Tack Shack of Ocala and omg y’all I was not prepared for that level of insanity. Hillary and I both have plenty of stuff for sale, so we thought this would be a perfect opportunity to get it out. 10×10 spots were $15 and first come first serve. We got there at 6:30am for setup and the line was so long we had to wait almost an hour just to get in and get our spot. There were hundreds of people there. Tents set up as far as the eye could see. It was NUTS, I’ve never seen so much horse stuff in my entire life.

A lot of it was junk, or old, or just not stuff I’m interested in (a lot of western stuff and home decor) but there were also a lot of hidden gems. Tons of blankets and coolers and fly sheets, horse boots, bits, saddle pads, saddles, show clothes, tack… just… so much. I walked around the whole place twice and still didn’t see everything. It was majorly overwhelming. We sold a bunch of shit though, and I found a few good deals. I got a lightweight wool cooler, some woof boots, a cool stud wrench tool, and a nice plastic stud brush/pick thing for $50. I also found a basically brand new full set of Arma XC boots that Hillary and I went half and half on ($15 each) to have a pair of schooling boots so that we don’t have to use our nice white ones.

The people set up next to us had a George Morris talking action figure (I asked if he said “I’m a pedophile”… warning, only some people will be receptive to this comment, apparently plenty of people still like GM regardless) which I really regret not buying, it would have the absolute best/worse White Elephant gift. It was horrendous in the best way.

It was a long day – we packed up around 3 when the crowd started to dwindle – but a fruitful one. I still can’t get over how crazy that was. You gotta love Ocala.

This is it folks, the last edition of Foal Friday for our 2023 foal crop. We’ve been doing this since Rihanna was born in February, so I feel like we’ve really stretched it out as long as possible this time around.

On Monday sBs (the Belgian Sporthorse studbook) was here to get everyone’s registration stuff done, so we brought all the foals up to the smaller front paddocks to make them easier to access. They’ve never been up there before but everyone handled it like a champ and they were all quite well-behaved for having their hair pulled for DNA testing and standing still to have their markings drawn for their passports. After the sBs folks left we went out to take formal pics of them one last time. Here’s how everybody is looking now!

Rihanna is the oldest at almost 8 months now, and she is a also our chunkiest member despite having so much Thoroughbred blood. She’s a laid-back girl that loves snacks and naps and Rue is her BFF.

As you can see, Rue is already incredibly gray heading into her first winter – she wasted no time with that! She’s a bit more sensitive than Rihanna, but also very clever… you can almost see the wheels turning in her brain sometimes. My favorite feature is her very square bottom lip that looks just like her dam’s.

Rhett is a spicy little meatball, but also really darn cute. He’s sensitive but also very friendly both with humans and horses. He’s the social butterfly of the group for sure, and also a big-time Momma’s boy. He might be the most sad about being weaned.

My not-so-little Andykins! I love this dopey kiddo so much, he’s sweet and smart and just kind of a total dude. He’s down for whatever and doesn’t get upset about much. His mom is quite dominant, which has had the effect of making him quite submissive, but I think that’s his natural personality anyway. He’s a no fuss kind of guy.

Miss Lucy is emerging as our definite alpha mare of the baby herd, despite being the youngest. She is SASSY and quite sure of herself, the world, and her place in it. She is also turning gray, like Rue, but as you can see she’s been much slower about it – she’s currently more of a pinkish shade.

Next week we’ll wean the three younger kiddos – they’re all 6 months old now and it’s time! It will be interesting to see how their herd dynamic shakes out without the mares as a factor.

Unfortunately we don’t have any foals coming in 2024 so this is the end of Foal Friday for quite a while. We’re going to try to go hard and heavy at breeding in the spring though, so maybe I’ll do some other kind of series that chronicles all of that process? We’ll see!

Presto has gotten some new additions to his show wardrobe lately, largely due to the fact that his previous show wardrobe was comprised of mostly hand-me-downs, some of which were starting to look rough… like the bridle who’s cheekpiece literally fell apart at the seam when I took it apart to clean it. Heh. Whoops.

I mentioned (and showed y’all) his new bridle, browband, and bonnet when I got them a few weeks ago. Stable View was their maiden voyage and their first time being photographed, or even my first time putting everything together. So… how’d it all do? And perhaps just as importantly, how did it all look?

His browband and bridle are from Dark Jewel… Amelia generally only does browbands, but when we started talking about doing black glitter padding on the browband, I also mentioned that I’d been wanting to have a glittery noseband made as well. She was able to help me make it happen via her browband maker, and it came out great. I got a plain noseband, no flash, with a crank (I keep my nosebands quite loose but I like how the padding of a crank sits against the underside of the jaw bone, it seems more comfortable to me), and it has black glitter padding with gunmetal glitter piping. I was a little concerned that the browband plus his new black glittery If the Bonnet Fits mesh bonnet plus noseband were gonna be too much, but honestly… I think it works for Presto. I like that it ties together with the glitter on my helmet and boots, too.

I also ordered a new Mattes pad from Hufglocken last time they had a 30% off sale. Previously Presto was using Henry’s old Premier show pad, and it’s hanging in there but has seen better days. So Presto got his own new white Mattes with sheepskin on the underside. I decided to coordinate it with my helmet and did a row of black cord, a row of rhinestones, and then another row of black cord. I was VERY on the fence about it because I’m usually meh on rhinestones and on the fence about cord trim, but I really love how it came out. It’s just interesting enough without being too much. and again I think it ties everything together.

The other thing I needed was new reins… I have a pair of old and now cracking Thinline reins on my other dressage bridle, and really didn’t want to bring those forward to the nice new glittery one. Initially I was just gonna order more Thinline reins, because I do like those, but considering how often I have to be told to shorten my reins (so much, y’all… like… so much) I thought I’d branch out and try something with stops. My only complaint about reins with stops like 6″ apart is that it seems like there’s never a stop where you need one. I tried a friend’s Correct Connect Sure Grip reins (I was also interested in the Comfort ones but they’re not FEI legal) and really liked having the stops so close together, they felt super secure. Sold. Sign me up. Add to cart. I almost got the Oil-Tac gloves too because I tried them at Kentucky this year and LOVED THEM but I need one of my current pairs of gloves to die before I bring in yet another pair.

For XC the only new things we’ve added lately is the Ecogold pad. Prior to that he was using Henry’s hand me down Premier pad also, and that one was really starting to look sad and abused. I have always liked the Ecogold pads but just never ponied up (pun intended) the money, and I have to say, this is definitely a super nice pad. It washes up so easily, stays put, and seems comfortable for him. Winner winner. I can see why they’re worth the price, it seems super durable and is definitely easier to keep clean than anything I’ve had before.

I’ve also had a few people message me lately and ask me to update on how I’m feeling about my Arion monoflap saddle now that we’re a ways in. I have my “final” saddle now after they remade my first one (I did a whole post about it, but the short version is that the original FL rep fit the first saddle, it seemed fine, but about 9 months later when our new rep came out she wasn’t 100% in love with it – whether it was just not quite perfect from the beginning or the horse changed, whichever, but they made me a whole new saddle at no charge almost a year after the original one because they wanted it to be perfect) and I love it. It fits Presto and I both, we have no complaints, and the black glitter piping is deeply pleasing to me. I appreciate their customer service very much, especially their commitment to making sure I had something that was exactly right. Not many saddle companies would have gone above and beyond to that level.. I wasn’t even complaining about it.

I did just order Presto a leather stud girth since the jumps are getting bigger and sometimes his feets get a little too close to hims belly for my comfort. We’ll see how that works out! Both of his current girths are ones from Henry, actually, so this’ll be his first one just for him. Hopefully now this child is properly outfitted for a while to come, and no longer in hand-me-downs.

I’m in a bit of a time crunch this morning but trying my best to post an update here for y’all. It’s been busy here over the past week!

Last Tuesday was the Ocala fall HT at Florida Horse Park. Yes, a recognized horse trial on a Tuesday. Very British. They only had Modified through Advanced and kept the numbers low, but it was honestly kind of a nice, relaxed day compared to the majority of their shows. Presto obviously wasn’t entered since he just did Stable View, but Hillary’s horse Lex was scheduled to make his Modified debut with Trainer in the irons. He was a super duper Honykid and finished 4th, only adding two time penalties to his dressage score! The best part was that Trainer wore Hillary’s pompom helmet cover for XC. It was hilarious and adorable.

The next day I took Presto over to The Place That Broke His Brain about the down banks into water, and lunged him off of them to try to help rebuild his confidence. He was actually super good and quickly made a game of it. I think because he lunged over a lot of XC stuff early on he 1) knows the drill 2) thinks its fun.

Strax also had his next vaccine appointment, and omg y’all I knew he was getting beefy but he weighed in at 15.2 lbs. My littlest boy is getting big. He’s really good about the vet though, even if perhaps less excited this time (he remembers the trauma of the fecal from last time I think… he was NOT a fan). He’s really settled into barn dog life seamlessly and is a super good boy to have around the farm.

Other than his remedial XC work Presto has been hacking and doing his usual flatwork routine. He finally got to get up close and personal with Hillary’s new mare Freya and decided he loves her. I’m not sure either of us are too excited about that, because to be honest they both have a similar chaotic energy. Hers is more subdued but still… I don’t think these two bad influences should be friends.

I also had a couple of interesting calls last week. On Wednesday I chatted with the folks from Etalon Equine Genetics about Fey’s Ancestry test results, and picked their brains in particular about the blood percentage test. It’s just super fascinating to me. On paper Fey is 76% blood, but by her actual genetic testing she’s 67%. Which honestly tracks, she’s not the most blood-looking phenotype and carries forward a lot of the Hano look from her dam’s side. It’s really fascinating to see some of the numbers and how they correlate. Etalon also offered to do a live Q&A session for our Patreon group so I’m in the process of getting that set up, which should be fun!

On Friday Hillary had scheduled a call with an animal communicator, and offered to let me tack Henry and Presto onto her call. I’m MEGA skeptical about this stuff and have never tried it myself largely because it would take like 5 seconds to google me/my horses and learn everything you need to know about them. But by not having my name or horse’s names in advance it felt more “blind” and gave it a chance to be more genuine in my eyes. I’m still debating how I feel about the whole thing… there were some things she said that I have yet to figure out how she could have possibly known, but other things my cynical brain can explain away. Hillary and I are going to record a podcast episode about that this week… if nothing else it was definitely interesting.

Yesterday sBs was here getting all the paperwork and registration stuff done for our 2023 babies. Next week we’ll wean the 3 younger ones, and then we’re all done with babydom for this season. We got some pics yesterday too while they were up in the front paddocks, so this Friday’s post will be our last Foal Friday of the year. They grow up so fast!

This was both the best and “worst” XC round Presto and I have had together, so I hope y’all are ready for a roller coaster ride. Buckle up!

First: the course. Stable View is big. It just is. Lots of big tables, many of which we could not figure out how on god’s green earth they managed to make measure correctly for the level. Literally half the jumps were big wide tables, several with brush on top, and when you’re on a young horse that doesn’t brush through the brush – yeehaw, mofo. Enjoy your literally 4′ table!

That’s fine though, whatever, we’re used to the big tables by now. I mean, did I make direct eye contact with any of them while we were course walking? Absolutory the fuckin hell not. But ya know. It’s fine.

One of my bigger concerns was how the light and the dew at my ride time – 8:30am – might affect how things look and rode. Especially because there was a downhill trajectory at the beginning and a giant steep uphill climb in the middle… there was far more terrain here than Presto has ever seen and in case you haven’t noticed he’s ginormous, so I wasn’t sure how he’d handle that aspect.

The first jump was a full height skinny hanging log. Inviting? Nope. Especially headed directly away from warmup and directly into the sun. Sit up and kick, bitch. He did actually jump that quite well even though he was a little squirrelly (read: amped as fuck) before we went through the start box.

After that we landed and galloped away down a gentle downhill slope to hop over what was definitely the smallest and most inviting fence on our course, a house we shared with Training. Heading up to it Presto did take a look around down the big hill to his right, looking for other horses, but he kept coming forward.

Continuing downhill we came to the first big table – the iconic Stable View hammock. Mofo is wide, the pic doesn’t do it a bit of justice. It’s also got a bit of a shiny surface, and the early morning sun at my ride time hit the top of it and made it look like just a giant blob of light. I’ve loved things more than I loved jumping that, but Presto read it fine.

Then we had a little slope uphill to 4, a fucking huge (huge. It was huge. No one will convince me otherwise.) brush table that we shared with Prelim. It came up really nicely out of stride and Presto pinged over it like the most delighted little maniac.

Then we hung a rollback to the right, down a pretty steep hill to 5, a rolltop we also shared with Prelim. I thought this might be a little challenging for Presto having to turn and jump down a steeper hill like that, but I also really wanted him to learn a bit about terrain here at Stable View, so I half-halted then let him keep coming down it rather than trying to help him too much or pick our way down. He figured it out quite well, honestly, and pinged over the rolltop, then straight ahead to another table.

Then we had our first combo, which the pic doesn’t quite do justice. We had a MIM rail, 6 bending strides to an angled brush two-stride. What you can’t see in the course pics (which are from the Course Walk app and was posted by Stable View, I didn’t take my own) is the big berm a couple strides in front of the MIM rail. It’s designed to help give you a nice lifting half-halt, but it does mean you have to keep coming at it. Either way, it’s something Presto hasn’t seen yet. No worries, he powered up that thing, hopped over the rail, and we immediately found the line through the angles. Easy peasy. Big pats and an emphatic “GOOD BOY”.

We had a bit of a downhill stretch to our next couple fences, so I let him keep rolling there. He was absolutely in attack mode – anyone who has ever ridden a good XC horse will understand what that feels like. We hopped easily over the next two tables down in the trees and then got to the big hill in the back. I was VERY interested to see what he would do here. A lot of green horses get halfway up their first big hill and go “oh wow this is hard” or need a little encouragement to keep digging. All I did was put my hands forward and Presto absolutely ate that hill with utter delight. I loved that reaction, I think it tells you a lot about a horse.

At the top of the hill there was an upright gate which is always icky looking but it jumps superb. After that we came to the water… and here’s where we need a little back story.

Our last XC school before Stable View was meant to be a “quick and easy” (lol) pop over a few things. And for some reason that just wasn’t Presto’s day. I was having trouble getting into a flow in general, he was being a little weird about the ditch, and the first time he jumped down the bank into water he was hesitant about it, then landed real weird and stung himself (and almost launched me off the front). After that he was hesitant about jumping off the bank again a few times, but he did get over it and jump down fine before we were done. Still, not what you want to have happen right before a big show.

So a couple days later we took him to another venue, and he jumped down their banks into water just fine, absolutely no problem whatsoever. We thought ok, the other day was just a one off.

The water complex at Stable View is tricky. Because you come at it up a hill, the horses can’t see that there’s water there until they’re literally right on top of it. And what was the Modified line there? A cabin, two strides to a down bank into water, then around to a corner. The water is also dark, small, crowded, and not particularly inviting. Normally I wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but it looked a whole lot like the water complex where we had our schooling issue. Trainer and I discussed passing through the water first, as is allowed by the rules, but I figured that if we have a hole in our confidence/training, I’d rather know about it now so we can address it ASAP.

And well, we have a hole. Presto approached the cabin totally fine, jumped it, peeked down into the water, and spun. I turned him around, let him pass calmly through the water, reapproached the bank, and he jumped down fine on the second attempt. I think if we hadn’t had the schooling issue he still would have been surprised by the water coming out of literally nowhere, but he would have gone. I think him stinging himself on that water during schooling was in his head there and he just reacted.

Once he was in the water he was totally back to normal and snapped right back in attack mode. He jumped the brush corner afterward great, then absolutely flew over the next 3 tables. After that we popped over another cabin, down a hill, and swung a tight rollback left to pass through the next water (which he was also slightly wiggly about, but he went) and out over the skinny brush.

From there we just had one more combo, the big brush bending line to another corner. This walked in a normal 6, but I had angled the A a little bit and he jumped in bold, so I just straightened the line some and did the 5 instead, which rode nicely. After that was the most gigantinormous double brush table (I wish I’d taken a better pic of that, the brush was at my ta-tas on both the front and back of the table) which he absolutely pinged over. He was most delighted with himself. Then it was two more tables and a hop over the house at the finish.

While on paper I’m obviously disappointed to add a 20 to his previously spotless record, the reality is that this kind of stuff is part of the process, especially as things start getting harder. Nothing with horses is ever linear. He’s young, and we’re both learning. There was absolutely nothing naughty about his reaction at the water, I think he was genuinely surprised and concerned, and that’s fair. We’ve got some work to do on rebuilding his confidence about drops into dark murky water. He thinks it (literally) bites!

I was still hella proud of him for this XC round. Aside from that blip, he was actually fucking stellar. He tackled all the big tables, all the combos, and all the terrain like an absolute beast. He didn’t hold on to the water incident, he put it behind him immediately and clicked right back in. Those are all really encouraging takeaways for me. The scope and tenacity for the upper levels is definitely in there. We’re not ready yet, but it’s there.

The most important thing is that we came home with a happy healthy horse who’s looking and feeling great… we can work on the rest!