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!

We’re back from another trip to Stable View, and we actually got to run three phases this time! Definitely a win over the June edition where we didn’t even make it to the first phase thanks to someone jumping out of a parked trailer.

I opted to body clip Presto before we left because he was right on the cusp of needing to be done and I was like “might as well”. Which is just a sign of early-season optimism that quickly fades within the first 30 minutes of clipping. Whatever, I got it done and he did look really good for Stable View with his nice dark clipped “winter” coat. Except he did rub out a large chunk of the bottom half of his mane a couple weeks ago overnight (love that for me) so I had to get real liberal and creative with the braiding wax (shout out to Spot On!) and bands to try to tame it down. I was semi-successful, and the braids looked fine enough. Honestly he is an actual squirrelly nightmare to braid and every time I have to do it I seriously ponder my dedication to competing.

We also got to debut some new stuff, including his new black crystal trim mesh bonnet from If the Bonnet Fits, his glittery bridle and browband from Dark Jewel Designs, our Correct Connect reins, and upgraded Mattes show pad. Details about all that stuff is a post for another day but I think his new dressage outfit is on point.

Presto warmed up well, although I was not most pleased to realize that the 2* horses were already running cross country, which took them galloping right past my dressage ring. Fun times for highly excitable and suggestable young event horses.

All credit to Presto though, he handled it pretty well. He did stick his head up in the halt at C and take a gander, and the canter work going the first direction was tense. I left some points on the table with a couple early transitions and because he was tense I had a harder time showing a clear difference between the lengthen and working canter, and that’s what ultimately kept us out of the 20’s.

Still though, we managed a 30.3 with some decent scores, including 8’s for both of his leg yields and a 7.5 for his stretchy trot serpentine, free walk, and trot lengthening, all of which we’ve been working really hard on. I was pleased with him for that!

I still do a big double take at this horse sometimes when I see show media… like where did our little gawky dorky giramoose kid go? He looks like a whole-ass attractive real boy now, one that people actually come up to in public and tell me he’s beautiful. HOW WEIRD. Don’t worry though, he’s still the same Pesto Pasta Noodle on the inside.

We had stadium a couple hours later, and the course was fairly straightforward.

This was a new ring for him though, he’s never seen it, and there is definitely a lot of atmosphere at Stable View with a show that big. Bleachers on one end, XC jumps on one side, judge’s booths, woods, tents… it’s a lot to see. They also kept the liverpool in at jump 3, which I was delighted about (genuinely, he jumps them great) but I found myself wishing for a little bit of a twistier course. You started out with a bit of a serpentine then just went line line line. I like having the turns to help me rebalance and half halt this gigantic animal.

It rode pretty well, although I let him get just the tiniest hair too flat down the line from 5 to 6, and he had the vertical down at 6a with a front foot. That’s his first rail at Modified, and after he ticked that one he was jumping much more careful, which I was pleased about. He’s getting just a little bit more nonchalant about the height now, so ticking that rail kind of woke him back up a little bit.

Overall I was really happy with that. Definitely not a mistake-free day, but… when is there ever a mistake-free day at a horse show? I have never personally seent it. Presto tried though, and he kept the lid on his enthusiasm pretty well, all things considered. I thought he’d have a much bigger meltdown about my trainer’s horse leaving the trailer (it was his only travel companion and Presto marries every horse he travels with), but he got over it pretty quickly every time. MUCH better behavior than last time. Which is good, because if he’d acted a complete and utter fool like that again, I might have tied him to a tree and driven away.

I kid, I kid.

Probably.

Anyway, a pretty good day 1 was in the books, so now we just had the hard part: the biggest, hardest XC course he’d ever seen. No biggie.

Dare I say that I think… I think it’s starting to feel like fall? I’ve had to put in a hoodie a few mornings in the past week, and even slept with the windows open one night. I mean, it’s still hot in the afternoons but… feels like progress. Also the horses are starting to grow their coats, which is exponentially less exciting because emotionally I’m not ready for clipping season.

Last week was, like all weeks, busy. Presto jumped on Monday, I just took him over to Majestic and had Hillary set everything between 1.05m and 1.10m and jumped a course. Presto was super so we left it with that. Later in the week he went XC schooling, which he was kind of a turd for, so we took him XC schooling again on Sunday and it was exponentially better. He was WILD but settled after a few jumps. Trainer reminded me that at one point Will Faudree told me that when Mason first learned how to loosen his back and move all his legs they had a bit of a yeehaw period, and I’ll be damned if that’s kinda what’s happening with Presto. He’s like DID YOU KNOW I HAVE ALL THESE PARTS AND THEY MOVE ALL DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS? Great. Superb. Can we use that power for good, please, and not evil. I’m not out here trying to go splat, sir. His ego is a bit large at the moment.

Since the heat has relented a bit, Henry’s been getting ridden more, too. I’ve been on him a few times, and our friend Sarah is back for the fall so she’s been riding him some too. And yesterday he ponied Freya (Hillary’s new mare) around, which he was… so delighted about. He’s really the best dude. He’s all business and doesn’t tolerate bullshit, but he’s also not aggressive or belligerent if they want to act silly. He does always look peak annoyed tho. Hard life for a Henny.

In between shooting content and doing some writing projects (and riding my beast) I went on a search for some new dressage reins. My current Thinline ones are dying, and I like them but I’m not convinced there isn’t something I’d like more. I really wanted to look at/feel all the Correct Connect reins, and figured that surely somewhere in the 9000 tack shops in Ocala I could find some to look at in person. And while I did find some CC reins, they weren’t the ones I was after. Womp womp. Strax did get his first Pup Cup while we were at WEC though, so it wasn’t a totally wasted trip.

Turns out a friend had some of the Sure Grip ones, which are FEI legal, and she let me try them. I did quite like the grips being so close together, they feel really stable in your hands, and it helped me keep a better hold of them. The grip strength in my left hand is greatly diminished since I broke my ring finger (and it’s now a bit… disfigured) and those seemed to help. I ordered a pair in black hoping they’d be here this week in time for Stable View but I don’t think they’ve even shipped yet, so. Prolly not.

I did get Presto’s sparkly new hat that I ordered though.

I think, if nothing else, I’m winning the sparkle. Have I gone a bit too far? Probably. Am I ok with that? Sure why not. I do love the bonnet a lot, the black crystal trim is most pleasing. It goes with either the blue beaded browband or his gunmetal spiked browband. Tres glam.

This week I’ve got sale horse pics and videos and more social media client content stuff to do, plus I already submitted a piece to EN for an upcoming series and am trying to wrap up a pedigree report. Doing my best to get my plate cleared before the end of the week, because we leave for Stable View on Friday!

Hope everyone is having a good week! If I can get all my stuff done in advance I’ll try to have a Foal Friday prepped for y’all this week, but I guarantee nothing, because I have the attention span of a gnat sometimes. It be what it be.

As I mentioned last week, we’ve officially got our first two weanlings of 2023 with Rihanna and Rue! The first official weanling pics are boring because, well… weaning was boring.

Rihanna was a bit past-due for weaning, being 7 months, but we were waiting for Rue to hit 6 months so we could wean them together. Their dams (the surrogate mares) are best friends, and the two fillies are best friends, so it made sense to do them together.

When a lot of people think of weaning they sometimes picture something really traumatic and sad. Truth is though, if you do it at the right age and the right way, it’s really not. Rue and Ri were definitely ready, they were quite independent and didn’t rely on their dams for anything anymore except occasional nursing. By this point though they’re grazing pretty much constantly and eating a little bit of feed, so the nutrition coming from the mare is minimal.

On this farm we’re lucky to have a nice layout that gives us the option to make weaning less of an ordeal. There are a lot of turnouts and all have double fencelines, so there aren’t any shared fences. We pulled the surrogate mares, Goldie and Blue, out of the mare and foal field and put them in the smaller turnout across the driveway. Close enough to still see each other, but not close enough to touch.

Rihanna and Goldie parted ways with barely a peep and never really looked back. Rue is a bit more sensitive and so is Blue, so those two spent a couple days periodically neighing across the fence at each other. Rue hung out by the fenceline closest to them a lot at first, but then gradually assimilated herself back into her herd and continued on with her life. No extended periods of screaming, no upset galloping. Once everyone had been totally quiet and unconcerned for a few days, we moved Goldie and Blue across the farm to the mare fields. There was zero drama with that… the fillies didn’t even notice.

Weaning can be pretty stressful time for a foal so making it as chill and safe and uneventful as possible is in everyone’s best interest.

So now the mare and foal pasture is down to Rihanna, Rue, Chanel and Rhett, Peyton and Lucy, and Vee and Andy. We’ll wean the next three all in one batch as well, for two reasons – 1) they’re close enough in age, all born within a couple weeks of each other 2) those three mares are good friends too. That way the mares get to stay in their friend groups to keep their stress lower as well.

Those three babies were born a good bit later than Ri and Rue – late April – so we’re going to give them another month before weaning. It doesn’t seem like a big difference between 5 months and 6 months, but it really can be. Month 5 is kind of the last month they really look like babies, and once they hit month 6 they start getting awkward fast, heading towards looking like teenagers instead.

Those foals are still a little clingier to their dams, too, so I’m hoping that lessens some with a bit more time. They good news is they’re very well-established in their friend group with each other, which helps a lot, and they’ll have a calming influence from Ri and Rue.

Hard to believe we’re already at this point! Not much longer until we’ve got a field full of weaners.