Guess who finally got a pro ride on XC for the first time ever? That’s right,this guy:

I’ve had this brewing in the back of my mind for a while. Henry is super solid at Novice but I feel like he just needs a bit more confidence to run Training (at least with me), and since a few of the Training fences still make me think I might die, who better to put those miles on him than my coach? I’ve never seen her die, not even once. She’s the confident ride he needs right now.

I was both really excited and a little nervous at the same time. The only other pro ride Henry has had was the one last year from my dressage trainer. No one else besides me has ever ridden him XC. He’s a pretty solid dude (I’ve broken his spirit) so I figured behavior-wise he would be ok, but I kept thinking “What if she hates him? What if she’s like ‘omg this thing is horrific, you’re gonna die!’ or ‘Nope, he needs to start all over.’?”… those are all sane, rational things to lay in bed and worry about… right?

She got on, was warned about the spookiness while walking (which he displayed approximately one minute later when another horse spooked and he split all 4 legs in different directions with his belly two feet off the ground), and off they went. Luckily within just a few minutes she said she loved his canter, and then once they started jumping she said she liked him, and by the end she loved him and was trying to keep him. Because Henny is the best.

He jumped through the water (after spooking while walking past the hose), the ditches (after giving them all the stink eye as we walked up), the banks (superman impression is still solidly in place), the Weldon’s Wall (more stink eye), and then the mound, taking all the Training options with no issues. Coach praised him highly for how adjustable he was and his rideability. I explained that yeah, that’s the problem–he always does what I tell him and I have horrible judgement! Poor Henry, he is long-suffering.

So I’ve decided to have her run him Training the first week of Coconino. My pride really wants me to be the one in the irons, but the horse’s greater good trumps my pride any day of the week, and I really think that having her run him will be great for his confidence. And, after all, the whole point is to build a smart, happy, well-schooled horse, so that’s what we will do. He can have a good run around Training the first week with her, do the Novice 3 Day the second week with me, and hopefully come home having learned a lot. Besides… it might be fun to just play Owner for once.

I haven’t posted much about our dressage rides lately. Partly this is because I really don’t have any media, and blog posts are useless without relevant media. But mostly it’s because the day-to-day dressage stuff is pretty boring and I don’t want to kill anyone via boredom.

So, I will try to sum up the past couple months of dressage work as painlessly as possible. Be forewarned, the only dressage media I have to offer you is from when I set my phone in a jump cup, pointed it at one side of the ring, and proceeded to ride. That led to 45 minutes of footage, the vast majority of which was empty space, and the rest of which was tiny, dark, and boring. I condensed it to 5 minutes of video… if you really hate yourself and want to test your endurance, here it is. Knock yourself out. Otherwise I just popped out a few short GIFs to break the below text.

Anyway, getting to the point… I’ve had a much more rideable horse these past couple months than ever before. Instead of being the king of fake contact, I’ve actually been able to ride Henry into REAL honest to goodness contact. It’s still not automatic, but I’m able to get him there faster and faster. He still has moments of tension where he comes out of my hand and tightens his back, but I don’t really expect those to ever go away completely.

In general though, I can’t complain. Partly I think the change is due to Henry just naturally progressing in the work, but I also think that as I’ve started asking more from him, he’s stepping up and trying to deliver. Our rides aren’t simple and easy anymore, where I’m happy if he keeps his wits about him after some shoulder-in and a couple of canter transitions. Now we’re working HARD, doing things that are more difficult, doing them more often, and expecting better quality in the work we do. But he’s finally letting me do all of this without getting flustered or upset, for the most part. If he does get upset, it’s possible to get him back pretty quickly and move on, which is something that used to never happen. Not so very long ago I would completely lose all of his relaxation after we cantered.

We’ve had a couple dressage lessons where we’ve really tried to emphasize haunches-in, and I’ve carried that over to our regular work. This is incredibly hard for Henry and we still only get it successfully maybe 5-10% of the time. He’s trying though, so that’s what matters. His lengthenings have gotten better and so have our 15 meter circles. We also started playing around with how I ask for trot-to-canter departs, and those have gotten a bit steadier too. Not every time, but again, in general.

I feel like the quality of his trot has improved a lot, too. We’ve been working A TON on transitions within the gaits (“lots of different trots, constantly changing and adjusting” as Trainer says) and I’ve definitely noticed a difference in his balance. I’ve tried to step away from the idea of riding parts of the test and focus more on the whole point of dressage – gymnasticizing the horse. I want him stronger, more supple, and more rideable, and I figure the rest will fall into place as we go.

I don’t think that there’s enough improvement to really make a difference in our scores yet… there are still moments of tension and resistance that are going to cost us overall points. But I feel like he’s going WAY better lately, definitely more correct, and I like the path that we’re on. Him being more rideable makes it more fun for me too, and it means that maybe we can actually start making some noticeable progress.

I’m still majorly jonesing for a Devoucoux Loreak though… I just can’t get my position right in anything else and I’m permanently frustrated by it right now. I refuse to touch my Coco money though, so I’ll just have to deal with it for a while. Maybe once the fall season is over I can sell the Childeric and try to find a Loreak? One can dream.

Last week while chatting with one of the Riding Warehouse ladies (shoutout to my peeps!), she asked if I’d ever thought of making a wish list on Pinterest for things that I want/need. My answer was no… it had never crossed my mind. To be honest Pinterest scared me a little and all I had ever done with it to that point was collect a bunch of super nerdy Narnia/Harry Potter/Doctor Who quotes. I don’t want to put salad in a mason jar, or put glitter on my keys, or make a myriad of cupcakes that in no way will end up looking like Pinterest promises they will. Crafting is my own personal version of hell.

But then I put my irrational Pinterest fears aside and thought about the wish list, and realized that it was actually a really good idea. Some websites have their own wish list capabilities, but on Pinterest you can pin items from several different sites all in one place. Plus when you pin something, Pinterest adds the direct link, and you can edit a little note field to put whatever size/color you want. This could be super helpful for friends and family when it comes to buying gifts. I know that I’m a super difficult person to buy for, but I always have things that I either perpetually need, or want but can’t justify splurging on (yet). So I pulled up the Riding Warehouse website in one window, Pinterest in the other, and got to work.

The resulting list is kind of amusing… I’ve got everything from horse treats to an equine heart rate monitor and a whole lot of stuff in between.

Weird? Absolutely. Useful? I think it will be. It’s a hell of a lot easier than trying to remember all the little things I want, and it’s easy for people to peruse it at their own leisure and pick from just about any price point. Plus it was super fun to make, so there’s that…

Does anyone else have a wish list type of thing like this?

Last week on my post about the Dover tent sale, someone commented about how they preferred to shop at Dover because of their open-ended return policy. The main example the commenter used was returning a 10 year old pair of $400 boots that had been outgrown and using that money to “upgrade” to Parlantis. This person noted that they hadn’t minded paying full price for the Parlantis because they knew that when the boots inevitably wore out they could be returned for a full refund and new boots could be obtained in their place, on and on down the line. They also mentioned doing the same thing when breeches get stained–return the old ones, buy a new pair. In their mind, since they are a loyal Dover customer for the majority of their purchases (namely non-returnable items such as fly spray and the like) the company is still profiting from them in the long run.

I’ve heard of people using Dover’s generous return policy this way, but I’ve never really known anyone that came out and said it so candidly. For that, props to the commenter for their honesty. It definitely provided a good talking point amongst friends and brought to light some things I hadn’t considered, which is why I’m bringing it up in it’s own post. But I have to admit, I personally had a hard time with it–moreso than I would have expected, especially considering I really don’t like Dover and have zero interest in their overall success. I know that their return policy technically does allow things like this: “At Dover Saddlery, we stand behind the quality of our products. If you find you are not satisfied with your purchase, simply return it at any time and we will refund, replace or exchange it for you. We guarantee your satisfaction.” so it’s within the scope of their policy.

But I guess to me personally, the difference is in the ethics. It’s not really about Dover, it’s about the principle of the thing. I think if I had a pair of boots for 10 years, obviously they were a satisfactory purchase. I would feel like I got my money’s worth, probably sell them for cheap on ETT or give them to a friend, and buy some new boots. To be honest it would never even occur to me to try to return something like that. Same thing if I bought a pair of boots that I knew were well-known for wearing out within a year or two, or stained a pair of my breeches. I’d have a hard time going back to the shop at that point and asking for my money back so I could buy another pair–at least not without feeling like a huge jerk. Then again, maybe I’m being overly sensitive about it.

On the flip side of the coin, there are definitely other things that would fall within a long-term return policy that I do understand. A blanket that gets totally destroyed in the first season. A show shirt that comes un-stitched after just a few washes. A tall boot zipper that breaks within one show season. Those, I totally agree with, and it could easily be many months before any of them come to light. In those situations a longer term, satisfaction guaranteed return policy like Dover’s is really fantastic.

I have a few friends that work at different Dover stores around the country, so I asked them for their input on this issue. All of them agreed that they definitely see people who take the return policy to an extreme, and that these people end up being well-known (not in a good way) in their stores. One of them also pointed at that Dover counter-acts the money lost through the generous return policy by having higher prices, offering fewer sales, and having more expensive shipping rates. After all, the impact on the bottom line of the company has to be balanced somehow. They end up losing money on the people who use the return policy to it’s extreme, and the rest of the customers are the ones that make up that gap in the end.

What are your thoughts on open-ended return policies like this? Do you see it as a good opportunity to stay loyal to one company and keep trading up your equipment as it wears out? Or do you think such actions are abusing what the return policy is really meant for? Do you think that the return policy iteslf is what gets the company so much loyal business in the first place, therefore it’s ok to use it to it’s fullest extent? Where do you draw the line on what is or is not a returnable item?

When Michelle texted me this weekend to tell me that the mares were getting bred on Monday and asked if I wanted to come watch, that was a no brainer. Repro stuff has always been my thing, and this time I actually have some personal involvement. Plus the vet they were using is a really successful repro specialist and I’m a giant nerd about anything breeding related… this was a kid-on-Christmas-morning situation for me.

I made the 2 hour trip down to the breeding farm and arrived just as Sadie was being inseminated. Sadie was quite displeased with these proceedings and not shy about making her opinion known, but it got done. They do P&E protocol when breeding with frozen so that they can pinpoint exactly when the mare will ovulate, and time the insemination just right. I won’t bore you with details but if you want to know more, click here.

After the vet bred Sadie and Lissa, he also had some other stuff to do, so I hung around with Michelle and watched/learned. He did a 16 day pregnancy check on another mare and she had not one but THREE embryos, so he had to pinch two of them. It was really cool to watch him find them, compare them, and then pinch the two less viable ones.

Then he checked out a foal that had just been born the night before (by Quaterback), telling us what exactly he looks for with a newborn check. He said that cracked or broken ribs on newborn foals are one of the most undiagnosed issues that he sees, which I thought was interesting but makes sense. After he cleared the foal he laid out and examined the placenta. He pointed out some issues with the placenta itself and a couple of tears, which means that the mare could have retained some and therefore needed treatment.

Then we went in and looked at all the cool lab equipment: the frozen semen storage tank, the microscope, etc. They had the scope hooked up to a monitor, so we could easily see the sperm swimming around.

Then we went out and saw more BABIES! The chestnut colt is about a month old, by Fursten Look out of a Donnerhall mare.

The filly is less than a week old, a Holsteiner by Cancara out of a Cacique mare. She was super cute, but more shy than the colt.

Then we wandered out into the big mare pasture to give out cookies (a dangerous thing in a herd full of hormonal mares) and so I could say bye to Sadie. She gobbled up everything I had, then followed me all the way back to the gate. Sweet little Sadiebug, she’s a turd but I love her. I told her to do a few headstands to help those swimmers along but she just looked at me like I was stupid. Granted, both of my horses look at me like that all the time.

In 16 days the vet will check to see if she’s pregnant. She had two good follicles in there, so hopefully we at least get one viable embryo!