If you read this blog even semi-regularly, you know how particular I am about tack. Someone will have to pry my PS of Sweden, CWD and Devoucoux from my cold dead hands. Therefore what I have to confess to you here today might be pretty surprising… in fact, I surprised even myself.

Bobby (of Course Walks with Bobby fame) is a Wintec guy. I keep telling him that he’s the worst gay I’ve ever met, because he’s basically anti-fabulous. He has one saddle, one bridle, a white saddle pad, and a red saddle pad. That’s ALL he brings with him to events. He likes tack that he can hose off when it’s dirty, right on down to his rubber boots. I tease Bobby endlessly about his plastic and nylon and rubber ensemble, but really Wintec should be sponsoring him because he kicks everyone’s ass in his plastic tack, including mine.

So, on one of our many adventures this spring I was telling Bobby about a shop on English Tack Trader that sells Beta reins with colored rubber grips. I think he NEEDS the red ones for XC, because I will accessorize this man if it’s the last damn thing I do and no matter how much he protests. Then last week when we were out doing trot sets my Mark Todd rubber reins finally gave up the ghost and melted. Into my gloves. Like, I could open my fingers completely and my reins stayed stuck to them, that’s how melted they are. Since those reins are on my cheapie hackamore bridle that I only use for hacking and conditioning work, I really didn’t want to spend much money on reins, yet I’m pretty particular about what kind of grips I like. Enter the idea of “Well… I could just get the beta ones that I’ve been ragging on Bobby to get. They’re cheap, they have the grips I like, and no one will ever see them anyway since they’re on my ‘junker’ bridle!”. Brilliant. “And while I’m at it I should get blue, because I’m an eventer now and those kinds of ridiculous things are expected of our kind.” Double brilliant.

Off I went perusing their site to order the reins, and I stumbled across a halter made from beta. I immediately sent it to Bobby since it was his colors (red and black). He was like “OMG that’s awesome, I could just hose it off to clean it and it’ll last forever!”. Hmm… he has a point there. My nice leather halter, while I do love it, gets nastier by the day. I gave up keeping it clean a long time ago because it’s impossible. It’s perpetually dirty and the brass nameplate is tarnished and sad looking. Henry looks a little bit like a hobo horse. The Beta halters were only $40 and you could order whatever color combo you wanted. Something came over me and next thing I knew I’d ordered one of those too.

Honestly, I don’t even know what happened. I can’t explain myself. I don’t know what to say. But somehow instead of accessorizing Bobby’s plastic and rubbery tack collection, I acquired my own. And to top it all off, I’m really not even sorry.

As I briefly mentioned yesterday, Brandy and I were able to dodge rain storms well enough to fit in a trail ride at Granger Lake on Sunday. I’ve been to Granger Lake before for camping and kayaking, but I’ve never ridden on the equestrian trails. It’s mostly open grassy fields, with just a few short detours through trees. It’s actually kind of perfect for conditioning work.

 

We got there, unloaded, and tacked up quickly. Henry gave me the big eyeball like “What fresh hell is THIS?”. Poor horse, it’s a new adventure every weekend. For such a big brave event horse who never bats an eye on cross country, he sure did start out awfully looky. In Henry’s mind, unknown things are only safe if you’re cantering. Walking is when they eat you. So we snorted past the picnic table, and the gate, and the stick, and the bush, and the trees, and had a small baby cow at the super tiny water crossing (next time I’ll guess I’ll just canter it instead of trying to walk over it, I mean COME ON Henry are you serious).

 

 

 

Then once we started trotting he put his brain back in his head and chilled out, so after a couple trot sets we mostly just meandered around on the buckle. The storms were rolling in all around us the whole time, which made for some neat pictures.

Finally towards the end Henry seemed to actually relax and enjoy himself. He was no longer snorting at everything and walking around poised for a hasty exit at the first sign of trouble. Although he did leave poor tired Auto in the dust with his power walk.

It was a nice fun outing, and only about a 30 minute haul down the road. Hopefully we’ll be able to go back regularly throughout the summer. It’d be an awesome place to do some gallops, with those long grassy stretches. But next time I’m not going first through the wooded areas… taking down all the giant spiderwebs with my face was horrifying.

 

 

First of all – thanks to everyone for all the unicorn themed team name suggestions on Friday. There were a lot of great ones that we’ll have to sit down and look at! Also a huge thank you to Riding Warehouse, Mango Bay Design, Willow Tree Farm, and Gypsy Tails, who have offered to sponsor us and help get our team looking officially unicorny. I already put together a playlist of unicorn songs to be our soundtrack… you would be amazed how many unicorn related songs there are on Spotify. I had “Always be a Unicorn” stuck in my head all weekend, which is awesome for a few hours and then just really strange after that. I also might have picked up this amazing speaker on eBay for cheap. The unicorn tunes will be even better coming from a unicorn with a light-up horn. I thought for a second that maybe I was taking this too far, but then… neeeeeh. Not possible. I mean, feast your eyes.

I actually did manage to ride my horse all weekend. Friday we did a dressage school, with a lot of transitions within each gait and changes of bend. After our comments of lazy and needs more forward on our dressage test from Texas Rose, I figured it was probably time to consider re-approaching. The fun thing about having a green-ish horse is that they’re constantly evolving, and things that used to be an issue (taking forever to get connected, being really tense) aren’t anymore. Thus, the work we do at home and the way I ride him has to evolve too. I’m able to ask for more and more without having to worry so much about blowing his mind. No more tiptoeing through the tests. Saturday I set up a few pole exercises in the ring and we had a “jump” school. I had a bending line that could ride as a bending 3 or a very angled 2, and a line of poles that could be 3, 4, or 5 strides. Goal of the day: adjustability and straightness.

On Sunday Brandy and I had planned to go trail ride at Granger Lake in the morning but I woke up to this. UGGGHHH.

Sigh. The whole forecast this week looks wet and gross. At least we had a couple weeks of normal weather. Luckily there was a break in between lines of storms in the afternoon and we did manage to get the horses out to the lake and fit in a ride before more rain hit. Pictures tomorrow.

Sadie’s lessee texted me on Saturday and told me her milk was coming in quick. If we go by the theory of average gestation time, technically she’s not “due” for a few more weeks. However, 320 days is considered the minimum normal gestation and she’s at 319 today. The pH of her milk still tests a bit too high for her to be super imminent, but the calcium content indicates that it could be within the next few days. You can tell by her very pointy belly that the baby is moving into position, too. AND she’s been acting very sweet and cuddly… something is definitely up. Looks like we could have a baby soon! I think we’d all be a lot happier if she’d wait another week or so, but I’m sure in typical Sadie fashion she will do things however she damn well pleases. If you haven’t gotten in your guesses for the baby contest, today is the last day!

I have to admit, after 5 horse shows in two months, this weekend felt weird. We have no shows on the docket until AEC at the end of September and I might be having a little bit of withdrawal. We have an XC schooling weekend planned at the end of the month but otherwise nothing. I might have to scare up a dressage show or jumper class in the summer to appease my addiction and keep us on track. We’ve been on such a roll lately, it seems a little sad to have several months of nothing. I hope all the other bloggers out there with busy summer show schedules are planning on writing very detailed recaps! I’m gonna need a fix.

The USEA Adult Team Championships are being held this year in conjunction with the American Eventing Championships. Since we’re already going to AEC, it didn’t take long for my brain to leap into “let’s get a team together and do ATC too!”. Because let’s be honest, I’m going to AEC purely to have fun and party horse-style for 5 days straight, and the only thing that makes that idea sound even better is having teammates to participate in the debauchery as well. Luckily 3 folks at my barn are all AEC qualified at BN and Adult Rider members, and we met another person at Corona HT that would be a great addition to our team as well. You need a minimum of 3 for a team, but 4 people allows you a drop score, so it works out pretty perfectly. Bobby and I have had a lot of time together lately (what a lucky guy he is) to formulate plans and ideas and all I can say is – this is going to be the best thing ever.

Bobby and I have this running inside joke about unicorns from the past couple horse trials (I won’t even begin to try to explain) so it makes complete logical sense for our team to have some kind of unicorn-centric name. We have no idea yet what that could be (IDEAS WELCOME!!!) but it has to be awesome. Because we’re awesome. And so are unicorns. We even have a unicorn themed Course Walk with Bobby planned for AEC.

We also found out that it is encouraged to find team sponsors to help cover the costs of or donate items for team saddle pads, shirts, hats, grooming bags, stall guards, banners, etc. The idea is to really make everyone feel like a team and make it as fun as possible, so they want people to go all out. Any money or items donated are also 501c tax deductable! How cool is that??  The ideas are already churning for what kind of swag we want to get and who might possibly want to sponsor us. I think I might actually be more excited for the Team Championships (and our epic Course Walk with Bobby plans) than for the individual AEC competition itself!

It just so happens that our 4th team member is a bartender, so our team will even have an official drink. Can’t beat that. What else do you think would be cool to have for team swag? Ideas for sponsors? Team names? Help us brainstorm! Has anyone else done an Adult Team Challenge or Championship before?

Here’s an article about one of the teams last year: http://useventing.com/news/adult-riders-lay-claim-%E2%80%9Cfun-award%E2%80%9D-usea-adult-team-championships

Every horse show weekend is a learning experience in and of itself, but that was especially true for Texas Rose…

1. Always watch ALL of the helmet cam footage, don’t just delete the excess. 

I’m not coordinated enough to be able to properly push the button to start the GoPro while I’m mounted, so I always turn it on when I put my helmet on and turn it off when I take my helmet off. This makes for a really long video file, which I just cut down to the ride itself and trash the rest of the footage. This time I accidentally left the raw video rolling in the background on my computer while I did something else and happened to hear my post-ride conversation with Bobby. It was too great to omit, so I made it into it’s own video. If you like cussing, burping, high fives, or Bobby – it’s pretty hilarious.

2. Saddle pad = stall door.

Henry is a bit of a dumb, and every time I closed his stall door he would start spinning and neighing in his stall. Solid walls with no windows… he was pretty sure that by shutting the stall door I was also removing all his friends. I tried tying his lead rope across the doorway and leaving his door open, but he kept putting his head under to escape. Then I hung a saddle pad over the lead rope and he was like “Aw man, now there’s a DOOR there, I can’t get out!”. Yes Henry, you’re totally right – that saddle pad is absolutely a solid door. Bless your heart. Worked like a charm though, I could leave him like that for hours and not only was he perfectly content, he stayed put.

3. Hot pink underwear, while beautiful, are not wise.

I have this one pair of underwear that are so perfect for dressage. No seams, very soft fabric, the perfect size and shape. For real, they’re the holy grail of underwear. None of my others compare. Sadly, they’re also hot pink and I’ve never been able to find the exact same pair in white or beige. I skirted this problem by wearing an underlayer, thinking I was pretty smart. Then I sweated buckets during dressage at Texas Rose, my underwear bled through my underlayer and my perfect white breeches, and it looked like I had my bubble gum period. Luckily I was so hot I couldn’t muster up the energy to give a shit, but you’re welcome fellow Area 5 eventers for the entertainment.

4. Yelling “CHAMPIONS” at people is totally acceptable.

When you have a 4 hour haul to get home and are totally delirious from heat stroke and lack of sleep, it is perfectly ok to entertain yourselves by honking at strangers and yelling “CHAMPIONS!!!”. It works even better if you hold your ribbons up to the window and wave while you do it. People love that. It’s basically a parade.

5. There are idiots everywhere you go

If I saw one more person sitting on their horse immediately after XC, standing in the sun and chatting for a while, and then having the horse carry them all the way back to the barn, I was gonna throat punch someone. It’s HOT, the horses are HOT and TIRED, get your ass off your horse, loosen your girth, and get them walking in the shade. Come on people. It’s an animal, not a golf cart.

6. There are awesome people everywhere you go, too

Eventers are a pretty cool lot. Between the finish line and the barn I had 5 complete strangers ask me how it went and congratulate me, one of whom was an Olympian. You just don’t get that anywhere else. I have never in my life walked back from a jumper class and had a complete stranger ask me, with a smile, how my round went. It’s impossible to go to an event and come back without at least one new friend. Stay cool, eventing… you’re the greatest.