Sooo I did an oops and forgot that I’d already committed to a Real Life thing on the day of the show, therefore the dressage show didn’t happen after all. My bad. I forget that real life exists sometimes. But we did manage to get a dressage lesson in on Saturday, and omg Henry was AWFUL.

I think it’s 99% because I’ve been riding him in his hackamore for two weeks… he came in from the field with a Bitey Face injury to the corner of his lip and it took forever to get it to scab up sufficiently to where the bit won’t rub it. Now he seems to have forgotten what a bit is. The other part of it was probably that we always go to Trainer’s to JUMP. He was extra grumpy when we walked over to the dressage arena instead. Who needs a mare when you can have a seriously over dramatic gelding?

The whole lesson was pretty miserable really. It was hot and humid as balls, I had rivers of sweat rolling into my eyes the whole time, and SOMEONE was just about as uncooperative as possible. It was like he’d forgotten everything we’ve worked on for the past year. The whole point of the lesson was to practice test B, but we didn’t make it all the way through it. Ugh. He’s been so damn good lately, too.

Trainer sent us home with a few bits to play with to see if maybe that would help (we’d been talking about experimenting with bits with him anyway), first of which is a Myler. We tried it yesterday and he was ok… still a bit turdish (that’s totally a word) but definitely not as bad as Saturday. Granted, I think the turdishness (also a word) has everything to do with the brain and nothing to do with the bit.

We’ll keep playing around this week and see if I can find the horse I had two weeks ago. Or exorcise whatever demon seems to have crawled up his butt. Lord knows I don’t want to take it with us to the show this weekend.

Sadie had her 15 day check yesterday and she is IN FOAL to Diarado!!!

And thank goodness for that. I know this wasn’t the originally planned cross, but I’m pretty excited about it… I think whoever buys it will end up with a really interesting prospect. The Diarados are generally quite ammy friendly and nice athletic attractive horses, and they’re popping up in the higher levels of every jumping discipline. There’s a lot to like about that. Plus he’s another stallion that doesn’t have a red gene, so no chance for chestnut. Win/win.

So, no full sibling to Presto next year, but a Diarado is a pretty damn amazing consolation prize. Fingers crossed of course that the pregnancy sticks and results in a healthy foal, yadda yadda yadda. Maybe she’ll decide to make a filly this time? She’s 2 for 2 in the colt department.

As for the little man himself, Presto has been doing a bit better. There’s not much to report with him really, rhodococcus is a slooooooow recovery that’s more about managing the side effects of the antibiotics. There is a bit of improvement though, so we’ll take that.

For those who were asking for a second chance at shirts, I’ve relaunched the store with a few little tweaks, mainly a minor design change, more shirt options, and lots more color options. I tried to find a place with tech shirts but that just didn’t work for lots of reasons, so I’m sorry but I couldn’t accommodate that request! I did find out that It’s a Haggerty’s can embroider the logo on a custom sunshirt though… I’d be happy to send the file to anyone that’s interested in that. It makes me really happy to see so many people rallying around my little dude and wanting to support him. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again – y’all are the best. ❤

I was really proud of myself on Friday as I started my pre jump session warmup. I’d spent half an hour moving my jumps around and setting up something that gave me a lot of options for coursework but also still left me the option for a fairly difficult (or so I thought) exercise involving a corner and a skinny. Considering I only have 5 fences, that’s an accomplishment.

I got on, went through my favorite “Crazy Eights” exercise to start, strung a simple course together, then went for my “difficult” corner/skinny and angle exercise. Henry hopped right through the damn thing on the first try without batting an eye, and I’m pretty sure he was very smugly laughing at me the whole way. Obviously I bore him. I really thought the vertical right turn to corner left turn to skinny might be at least interesting to him, but no. The most reaction I got out of him was a spook at the corner as we cantered past it for our line of angled fences.

As we were walking around the field to cool out, I started brainstorming other exercises I could do, which then led me to what I thought seemed like a fun blog hop idea! What are your favorite exercises? Flatwork or jumping or both!

On the flat my two most-used exercies are canter squares to get his front end up (the joys of a downhill horse), and canter spiral in to walk, which helps keep him rocked back on his hind end a bit better in the down transition. Let’s be honest, the only way we can accomplish a canter-walk transition right now is on the spiral in. But it definitely helps, as do the squares.

For jumping, as I mentioned above, my favorite one is what I’ve dubbed Crazy Eights. I think I saw someone else refer to it as Count Up. Either way. Basically I just have one tiny fence or a single pole on the ground that I canter on a circle, and each time I go over it I start counting strides from further away. So on the first pass when you’re one stride away you’d count one, on the second pass you’d count down from two, on third pass from 3, etc all the way up to 8 from each direction. The point is to be more aware of your rhythm and where you are in relation to fence, and it helps hone your eye for a distance. The key is that you’re not allowed to change the canter to make your count correct. If I start my count to close or too far away, then I’m just wrong… I don’t get to pull or kick and make it work. As someone who really loves to mess with the canter, this exercise is excellent for my self control.

Very interested to hear what everyone else likes!

As I was handgrazing Henry the other day, I got to thinking about how different he and Sadie are to handle. Not that Sadie is difficult, but she’s definitely smart, and if she thinks you’re a pushover she will both literally and figuratively walk all over you. Henry is more like an old lesson horse (albeit one who’s had too many cookies and is probably a bit spoiled but let’s ignore that). He’s just kinda there, and he might glare at you but he’ll do pretty much whatever you want without argument as long as it doesn’t involve putting anything in his ears.

Sadie, on the other hand, can smell dominance from a mile a way. If you’re assertive, she’s very simple. But if you give her an inch, she’ll take a mile. Her general temperament has a definite “Hmmm… how sure are you?” theme. This was illustrated really well when she was at the vet clinic with Presto, because the guys that cleaned the pens were very clearly terrified of her. They would slowly tiptoe into her pen, keeping their eyes on her at all times, and if she moved toward them at all, they would go running. I don’t totally blame them, she is a BIG horse that had a sick foal by her side, but I’m pretty sure Sadie found their terror to be hilarious and it became a game to her. Yet if I went in there she was a total lamb and I could move her backwards just by pointing my finger at her (which I’m fairly certain the workers thought that was some kind of majikal horse whispering voodoo). Mare ain’t stupid, she knows who’s alpha. And if you’re alpha, she’s great. If you’re not, you aren’t going to enjoy her very much.

Yet once you’re in the saddle she’s so easy and simple that it’s borderline ridiculous. At her first trail ride as a 3yo, fresh from the breaker, she was the bravest, quietest, easiest horse in a big group of seasoned trail horses. I can’t leave just anyone holding her unattended, but I’ve always been able to throw literally anyone up on her and say “keep your hands down and you’re golden”. And she was. A blind geriatric monkey could ride that horse. She loves to work and the answer is always yes. The more difficult it is, the more interested she is. She’s the most pleasant, happiest mare I’ve ever ridden. And she is definitely more rideable than Henry. I’d classify both of them as fairly easy horses to ride but he is more sensitive and naturally more tense than she is, thus he requires more tact.

Yet if you spent 5 minutes with each horse on the ground, almost everyone would probably guess that Henry was much easier to ride. I’ve noticed over and over that it seems like a lot of people think that temperament and rideability go hand in hand. You see it a lot with people that buy babies… “oh he’s so smart and quiet, he’ll be a great ammy horse.”. Enh… well… maybe. I personally have not seen a strong enough correlation between temperament and rideability to ever bank on that.

The only really reliable indicator I’ve seen is a genetic one, and it’s why rideability was so important to me in choosing a stallion. Some lines have strong reputations for making horses that are easy to train, ride, and are forgiving of mistakes. Others are known for creating quite the opposite. In that case I don’t care how good the temperament seems, I don’t want one.

But really, you don’t know what you’ve got until you swing a leg over and put them to work. I’ve had one that was super stupid on the ground but super easy to ride, and I’ve had one that was bombproof on the ground but a total moron to ride. That’s the extra fun part about breeding, buying a young horse, or buying sight unseen: it’s a surprise! Whether it’s good surprise or a bad surprise, well… that depends.

It’s that time of year again… 90 degrees with 9000% humidity, and it’s only going to get worse. Anyone who knows Henry is aware of his heat intolerance issues. He sweats like a champ, he just can’t breathe, especially when it’s humid. By this point I’ve had 3 different vets look at him over 3 different summers with no real solid answers. Last summer I also tried putting him on a supplement called Lung EQ, hoping it might help, but really the only thing that made a difference was going to Arizona where there was no humidity.

Of course, it’s not really feasible to just up and go somewhere else every summer. He’s been manageable enough at home, I just have to be careful when I ride him. By this point I’ve gotten it down to a science, really, and have a whole box of special summer stuff for Henry. I haven’t given up trying different things though, so every winter I think about what else I can try, and every summer we give it a go.

This year we’re trying two things: body clipping and an Omega Alpha Equine supplement called Respi-Free. The body clip was an easy decision. Henry is naturally a thick-coated horse, and even his summer coat is more like what you’d expect on a shetland than a thoroughbred. His front end was pretty slick, but his butt was hairy,

I’ve never body clipped one of my horses in the summer, so I wasn’t sure how it would look. Before I started I even had the thought that I might have to go buy a Fine blade, because his neck and chest hair might not be long enough for the Medium. HA!

There was plenty of hair. PLENTY. Once I started I was shocked at how much was peeling off. He accepted his fate without much protest, and an hour and half later I had a much sleeker horse and a huge pile of “summer coat”.

I also started the Respi-Free the same day, which is the supplement that was recommended to me at Rolex by the Omega Alpha rep. Basically it’s a combination of all of their other breathing supplements, intended for horses with general respiratory issues and/or horses with COPD. All 3 vets have ruled out COPD, but the “general respiratory issues” part does apply. In the summer anyway. Respi-Free a liquid supplement that contains natural cough suppressants (which, Henry never coughs, but…) and bronchodilators. I hate supplements in general, liquid supplements specifically, and liquid supplements that have to be given by dosing syringe are like top of the chain kind of hatred. But I’m willing to try anything to make summers easier for him, so I figured we’d try a bottle and see how it goes.

So far, so good. We’re only a few rides in since the clip and starting the Respi-Free but he’s definitely breathing a little easier. He’s still puffing when we’re done riding, but he actually seems able to decrease his respiratory rate on his own as we walk out (before it really wouldn’t go down until I got off and started hosing). I don’t know if that’s the body clip at work or if the Respi-Free is actually helping, but I’m not going to complain. We’ll see how things go over the next month or two!