Henry is SO DELIGHTED to be back in regular work.

Knock on wood, he’s been feeling better and better as he gets back up to a full work load. Last week his feet grew out enough to reveal a horizontal crack behind his clip that we suspect was an abscess track – a really big and weird one – which could explain the on/again off again that he did over the winter. Either way, he looks good now, so we’re taking advantage of it.

I started jumping him a little bit last week, obviously being mindful of his fitness or lack thereof. He was just so freakin happy to be pointed at a jump again, if horses were capable of smiling from ear to ear, that would have been him. He acquiesces to the flatwork, he enjoys his long hacks, but he LOVES to jump. Doesn’t matter who is on him, doesn’t matter the format, doesn’t matter what he’s pointed at, he just wants to jump the dang things. His swagger has returned, and so has his sass. Never change Henny, you’re the king for a reason.

Presto also returned to his regular schedule this week after a little break post-Ocala International while I was in Kentucky. I think the little reboot was good for him (aside from the fact that he was wild for the first like… 4 rides back. He was only off work for 5 days…). He got a couple training rides last week, after which we decided to change up his tack setup a bit. He’s been in a beval bit with a running martingale for the past maybe year and half, which really worked great for him for a long time. It’s got a little bit of leverage but not too much. BUT, now that he’s gotten more rideable and we’re at a level where he needs to be taking me a bit more boldly forward, it was feeling like I had more bit than we really needed. Trainer and I agreed that it would be nice if he wanted to come forward into the hand a bit more when he was jumping.

First we just took off the running and put him in his dressage bit, which didn’t quite do the trick. As soon as he figured out the running was gone (which, btw, is set SO LOOSE it doesn’t actually do much, but he’s nothing if not clever) Presto decided he had some games to play. No one liked the games but him.

So for my next lesson Trainer brought out one of her bits, a loose ring eggbutt single joint. Have to admit, I’ve not tried this one before. She thought that it would be a little more stable than a plain loose ring (and be better for turning), and he might like having less tongue pressure with the single joint.

Upon realizing it was a $30 bit and not a $300 bit I thought surely Presto wouldn’t like it, but lo and behold, he felt GREAT. He was staying more steadily into the contact through the half-halt on the way to the jumps, and not wanting to drop behind the contact. I could really ride him more forward into it and he stayed there.

We also put on the SoftTurn martingale that I picked up at Kentucky (Trainer has one too, so she’s familiar with the design and how they work), still adjusted really loose, and I think that’s been a big contributing factor too.

I think it must feel less binding to the horses, because if Presto does come anywhere near feeling pressure from the martingale, he has no reaction to it. With a regular running martingale if he came anywhere near it, he would almost immediately drop behind my leg. With the SoftTurn he doesn’t seem to feel as offended or restricted… which is exactly what it’s designed to do. Go figure.

Since changing the bit and martingale we had a couple of really good jump schools, so fingers crossed we’re on the right track with some equipment changes!

He’s also been getting lots of bodywork, and I feel like I’m really starting to dial in the best ways to use the Magnawave in conjunction with the rest of his program. He does stretches every day (and I started adding in a couple new ones for his SI that the vet showed me) and Magnawave once a week. Rubes and Henry have been enjoying the Magnawave too.

I also got curious about KT Taping, which I’ve used a lot on myself over the years and really enjoyed. I got a book and did a couple online courses to get the idea of the best ways to use it for horses, and I’ve been playing with that some too on Magnawave days. I mean, why not?

In other really exciting news, Fey had a positive heartbeat scan this week! She’s confirmed a little over a month pregnant now, in foal to Future Guilty Pleasure. This one will be for sale, but I’m super excited to see what she produces.

We’ve been breeding mares left and right, waiting for more pregnancy checks and then still have several more mares left to breed, including the one we’re breeding for me. I also have new faces to introduce you to… maybe check back on Friday. 😉

I was REALLY looking forward to Kentucky this year, y’all. We didn’t get to go last year, and I haven’t been away from the farm for more than 24 hours since like… the last time we went to Kentucky in 2023. A change of scenery (and a few days without horses to take care of) sounded like just the ticket.

This year we opted to drive, and luckily my SO let us take his hybrid. 50mpg? Yes please. I literally spent like $100 in gas for the entire 1500 mile round trip. Every time I filled it up I thought surely something was wrong with the gas pump. I’m used to trucks.

Anyway, we left around 5am on Thursday morning, and with a fairly uneventful drive we rolled into the KHP campground at 3:45. We were staying with our friend Kim in her camper, which was fantastic. In years past we’ve rented an RV and either drove it ourself or had it dropped off at the campground. Staying on site is for sure the way to go, it’s just really nice to not have to park or deal with traffic getting in and out of KHP every day. Plus there were multiple times where we came back to the camper to either drop things off, or grab something, or just chill for a bit before heading back into the hustle and bustle.

When we got there we quickly headed over to do a first perusal of the trade fair just to scope it out (and maybe grab a couple things…. ya know…) before heading out to get our what-has-become-tradition kentucky tattoos. Hillary and I got the number 42 (to be explained at a later date) and then we grabbed some dinner and headed back to the camper.

Friday was WET. Like wet wet wet. I was a walking prune all day long. Alex (trainer’s husband and sometimes-fill-in-trainer) had a horse in the 4* at 8:38 so we headed out early hoping to get some breakfast and hit the official merch store before his test. Breakfast was a bust – nothing was open yet at 8 – and as we were standing in the merch tent I started to hear rumblings of thunder. I pulled up the radar and there was a big line of angry red on the radar, close enough to where I was like there’s no way Alex is gonna get through his test before this hits. Sure enough, another horse later they went into a rain delay and sent poor Alex, who was warmed up and ready to go, back to the barn.

We took refuge in the Arion tent for a while, trying to hang out near the stadium, but the delay kept getting longer and longer, so eventually we gave up and retreated to the trade fair. It worked out fine, we were able to watch Alex’s test on the big screen in there, and we made a big thorough lap around all the stores.

By the time we made it through everything it was lunch time, and then we headed back to the rv to try to dry out a little bit before we got in the car and headed over to Spy Coast, a big breeding farm that’s right next door to KHP. Some of you may remember that I bought a dose of Nice de Prissey frozen in Spy Coast’s Valentine’s Day sale, and when I reached out to my contact to see if we might be able to come see stallions while we were in town, she said absolutely. I won’t pass up that opportunity. Seeing them in person is always so beneficial.

They have a lot of stallions on site, all of whom have jumped to a high level. We got an up close and personal view of all of them, and they pulled them out of their stalls so we could get a good look at how they’re put together and see what their general temperament was like. Every time we get to see stallions in this format there end up being some that I thought I’d love from their pics/videos and just don’t, and others that I didn’t love from their pics/videos but like a whole lot more in person. This time was no different.

Luckily Nice de Prissey remained a solid favorite – I really like him a lot – but my other favorite was a stallion they just recently got, Clockwise de Greenhill Z. I wouldn’t mind adding a dose to my tank at some point.

After that we headed to get some BBQ for dinner before blasting ourselves with a very hot shower at the campground (the water pressure is legendary) and were actually in bed pretty early.

On Saturday morning we dipped over to the trade fair again because Ride Equisafe posted on Instagram that they’d marked down their sale stuff even more. I didn’t find anything else to tempt me, but Hillary was cold (it felt a lot colder than I expected) and bought a couple jackets. While she was getting rung up I wandered into the booth next door and realized they had Grand Prix tech fabric show coats on sale for $75. Um, whut. I tried on the navy and gray one and it fit me like an absolute glove, so yup, had to have it.

Then we made our way back up to the Hill for breakfast and FINALLY got our crepe (honestly, how much do I have to pay that guy to open before 9:15, I’m dying of starvation by that point) before heading out on the XC course.

The wind was so cold I ended up putting my show coat on as a middle layer. Kentucky really went for it with the wild weather swings this year. I was wearing shorts on Thursday, was a walking prune on Friday, froze to death on Saturday, and on Sunday I got sunburned. On brand.

Anyway, I had a couple people I was planning to find/meet up with on course, and since Alex wasn’t going until the later group in the 4*, I decided to start trying to find the first person – Jim, the CEO of FLAIR strips. We’ve chatted via Zoom about some products they’re developing and he texted me on Friday asking if I was going to be at Kentucky and if so we should meet up. So I found Jim, we chatted with him for a while and got a look at some prototypes, and then spent a while helping him spot rider numbers and whether or not their horses had FLAIR strips on.

Then Alex was out, and I positioned myself in between the coffin and the Cosequin Cove water so I could see him come through both places. His mare (a homebred!) was on fire and absolutely ate up a tough course. That was fun to watch.

We walked around the course for a bit longer after that, then headed back to the trade fair for lunch and to buy some damn gloves because both of us had frozen hands. We ended up running into Jim again, and he introduced us to his friend JP who owns the brand Zentora. I’d seen several upper level horses/riders wearing the martingale he developed but didn’t know anything about it, so he told us about that and his halter (which had caught my eye on an earlier pass-by but I didn’t stop to look closer). The design and thought process behind both is really cool and innovative so it was super interesting. We ended up talking to JP for longer than I realized and the 5* already started by the time we booked it back out to the course. I missed the entirety of Calvin’s round and didn’t even hear about it until that night when I got on facebook.

We headed over to say hi to Jen at her tailgate first before meandering around the course. Along the way I met up with one of the companies I do social media for, so we could actually get a picture of all of us together for the first time. Then we kept walking, ending up down in the far field where we could see several jumps at once. I was delighted watching Commando come through – absolutely LOVE that horse.

After XC we headed back to the campground for our Patreon happy hour (I think I ate 90% of the cheese by myself) and then back into the stadium for the Grand Prix show jumping. Kent Farrington and Greya were absolutely phenomenal, although I also really loved Eddy Blue.

And then you’ll never guess who we ran into again: Jim. He just kept popping up everywhere. He ended up sitting down by us to watch the GP, and then invited us to go grab a drink at a Mexican restaurant with him and a couple of other people. By the time we got back it was past 10pm, so it was a long day but a very good one. Granted, I think I used up the entirety of my social skills for the next 6 months.

Sunday morning we headed out early so we could make it to the jog (the jog is right up there with XC on my list of cannot-be-missed things… I like to see the horses up close and get a good look at their conformation). Originally we weren’t sure if we’d end up staying for any of the show jumping on Sunday since we had an 11 hour drive home, but we did sit and watch a good chunk of the 4*, mostly to see Alex go. After he was done we made a run for the food so that we wouldn’t end up having to stand in long lines at the lunch rush. We’d made one last round of the trade fair that morning, and thought about staying for the 5* show jumping, but it was such a long break before it started and it seemed like a foregone conclusion that Michi was going to win, so we decided to head home.

All in all it was a great trip to Kentucky, I got some stuff done work-wise, we got to see lots of friends and make some new ones, found some great deals (always a perk), have some fun new stuff to try out, and saw some fabulous horses and riders. Can’t beat that!

Until next time, bluegrass.

So. I guess I owe you guys an update. 😅 I swore I’d done one on here like a week and a half ago but scrolling has proven that to be false. I post stuff on Patreon or our fb group and then my brain checks the box and I forget to ever mention it on the regular blog entirely. This is what one would call a Whoopsy on my part. Anyway, let’s catch up (once again). This is gonna have to be a bit of an abridged version, because it’s been like 3 weeks and ain’t nobody got time for that.

First and foremost, all of my horse-baby making juice has arrived! I ordered a dose of Cashmere frozen a few months ago and then a dose of Nice de Prissey in Spy Coast’s Valentine’s Day sale (bc duh what else would you buy for Valentine’s Day). Cashmere is the Plan A for this year, but if we’re unsuccessful with that I felt like Nice de Prissey is a solid back-up choice. I’ve officially got both doses in our tank here at the farm now, so as soon as the mare is ready to go (probably still a few more weeks), we’ve got the swim team lined up and ready for duty.

We’ve bred a few mares already so far this year (four? I think we’ve bred four?) but only one is far enough along for her black dot check yet. And, drumroll please…

We’re off to a good start, with Fey officially in foal to Future Guilty Pleasure (that one will be for sale!). We’ve got more to check this week and next, and a lot more still left to breed, so keep your fingers crossed and send us some good “black dot” juju.

In also-exciting news, look who has decided he’d like to rejoin the roster.

I’ve been struggling with some on/off foot lameness with him basically all winter but knock on wood he seems to be feeling better now. Just in time for the hot weather that he doesn’t really tolerate. Way to go, Henny. He seems delighted to be back to some kind of work though, probably because it means he gets more cookies. I’d love it if he’d stay sound enough for me to ride him at least a few times a week so I can work on more of the flatwork stuff that I also work on in my lessons with Presto. I need polish and finesse, y’all.

There’s also Rubes, who is coming along nicely on the flat and will start jumping a little bit soon. He went on another off property adventure and was a little bit better than last time, but he really struggles to keep a lid on it when he thinks something fun is happening. I’m not yet convinced that eventing will be for him, but we’ll keep plugging away at the off property adventures and see how that evolves.

At home he’s been really fantastic and his flat work is coming along nicely. He’s nailed down the leg yield, is getting pretty good at the stretchy trot, and can do some shoulder in. He tries super hard but it’ll take time to keep building the strength.

As far as Presto goes, he continues to sail along in his program.

We keep asking for more and making the jumping stuff more technical, as we push the limits of both his and my comfort zones. Most of the time it goes great. Sometimes one or both of us make a mistake. Such is the way of life when you do hard things, and everything about this sport is hard.

I’ve been feeling a bit stuck and frustrated as far as my own progress compared to Presto’s… I can see why well-funded amateurs competing at the mid to upper levels tend to have multiple competition horses. How the actual eff do you get to be super proficient at this when you only have one horse doing that kind of stuff? It’s so difficult to keep the skill level up to where it needs to be to compete at that level when you’re jumping like once a week and cross country schooling once a month. I feel like this is the real limiting factor to most amateurs, much more than talent or desire. Saddle time spent working on particular skills is a hard thing to come by. I need to win the lottery. Or even just find like… 40k sitting on my doorstep, no strings attached. Or a second semi-talented, already-going-at-some-level horse standing in the paddock with a bow on it. All scenarios seem equally likely.

My nihilistic brain really wants to fall into a spiral about it because I’m 42 this year and feel like my window for actually being good at any of this is passing me by. I have to try to redirect those thoughts. I’m so delighted to be doing any of this at any level, much less in a place like this and on a horse this nice. Like, what an absolute fuckin dream. Still tho… who doesn’t want to be better at what they devote 100% of their life to? It’s natural, I think. One can be incredibly grateful for what they’ve made and still dream of more. It’s what keeps us working as hard as we do and sacrificing as much as we do.

Last week we went XC schooling, intending to just pop through a few things ahead of Ocala International. The timing wasn’t ideal, but it was what we could make work. And what was initially going to be an easy day ended up being a bit of a hard one, when first I was struggle-bussing really bad (SIGH) and then he was having a hard time understanding a line of extremely angled shoulder brush skinnies and we had to break the exercise apart and then put it back together. Either way, I ended up being on him for a while.

The ground was hard, it was hot, we jumped more than we wanted… just not ideal prep for a horse show two days later. I packed his feet and magnawaved him and he had a day off before the show, but he just didn’t feel as good and fresh as he normally does. He was a little behind my leg and holding tension behind the saddle in dressage, and it resulted in several mistakes and just not his normal standard of work. In showjumping I spent the first half of the course struggling to get him up and out in front of me at all and then I felt like he wasn’t leaving the ground with his normal power. He jumped clear, but it wasn’t like… a great-feeling clear, if that makes sense?

We had cross country the next day and he was feeling much more his normal self, for sure. He’d perked back up, and we decided to just put my dressage bit on (rather than the beval bit) and see if that encouraged him to keep coming into my hand a bit more. It did, and he was being really fantastic, but I picked my way down to nothing and absolutely BURIED him at a huge table and Presto rightfully was like “mom I don’t think I can safely jump from that” and put on the brakes. He was right, if he’d tried to jump it he would have absolutely had to climb over it in a way that would not have been great. 100% my fault.

After that I got him back out in front of my leg, remembered how to ride forward, and the rest of the course was fantastic. It was a big legit Prelim and all the hard stuff felt easy, so I was really happy with him. There were a lot of problems at the combos and he sailed right through them. Just kicking myself for making such a stupid mistake at what is really a “gimme” fence. The frustration ‘(with myself) is real.

It wasn’t the best show by any means but we definitely learned some things (mostly what not to do) so… onward and upward. This is really the extent of the recap you’re gonna get because I don’t have a lot of media, mostly because I was also Press Officer for the show which left my schedule very busy. I don’t even have course walk pics because I just zoomed around it once on a bike. I did end up buying the full XC video but I don’t have it yet.

The extent of the video I have so far:

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Anyway, yeah… last week was BONKERS. On Wednesday I got a FEI course preview from the course designer (benefits of being the press!) and he talked me through all the combinations and had me walk a few of them. That was really fun.

Then Michelle and I popped over to the OBS sale so that our breeding season intern could experience it. I feel like if there’s a thoroughbred sale happening when you’re in Ocala, it’s a must-see, must-do type of thing.

That night I went with a bunch of the show officials to drag bingo at a restaurant in downtown Ocala, and I’m still trying to unpack all of that. It was a really fun time, but wowza, I dunno that I was prepared.

The next morning was the show for me (the prelim HT ran Thurs-Fri) and Kerri my favorite groom met me out there earlier in the morning to braid Presto for me. I don’t want a single person to ever give me shit for not braiding my own horse, because let me tell you what a luxury this was after decades of always doing it myself. I have a janky finger that never healed right after a baby horse broke it, Presto is a turd to braid, and I just don’t freakin want to, ok? There have been multiple times in my life where I have braided more than a dozen horses in a day, so if I want to pay this nice lady to come braid mine while I get all my dressage shit ready, I feel like I’ve earned the right. I do everything else myself. Give me this one thing.

I had to write press releases at the end of every day (Thurs-Sun) covering the FEI divisions, so those days I didn’t end up wrapping up all my work until like 8pm. I got home, got my horse taken care of, shot off interview texts to the leaders, and then got to writing. Michelle was also out of town for those days so I had extra to do at the farm with the mares and foals, plus needed to get stuff plugged into the EN Kentucky form guide and wrap up some things for Ride iQ’s Kentucky stuff over the weekend. Oh and we inseminated a mare on Saturday night, because why not throw that in there.

It was a lot. Not in a bad way, (I fucking love my life here) but in a drinking from a firehose and now I’m tired way.

Luckily we’re headed to Kentucky tomorrow and I’m super excited to have a few days of fun in the Bluegrass! It’s my first little vacay since we went in 2023!

We’re on a roll now, y’all! Baby number three for the 2025 season is officially here! Say hello to Tadashi WTW, aka Tad but really we call him Taddles or Tadpole or Taddyboi because I mean LOOK AT HOW FRICKIN CUTE HE IS.

This handsome dude was born last Friday night at a very reasonable hour (pre 10pm!) and my goodness I think we’re all a little obsessed with him. He’s by the stallion Quality Touch Z, who is from very classic and proven old school jumper lines – by the Selle Francais stallion Quick Star out of a Holsteiner mare by Landgraf. Quality Touch has produced showjumpers up to the 1.60m level and event horses through 4*L level, and he himself jumped through 1.50m. A more quintessential jumping pedigree does not exist. Add that on top of a TB mare and you’ve got a proven recipe for a big time horse, which was the thinking behind the creation of this guy. His dam is Vee, a very correct and big-boned Thoroughbred mare by the Australian sire Lonhro out of a Broken Vow mare. She raced until she was 8 and retired sound.

This dude is absolutely bred to the nines to run and jump, and so far he’s done exactly that. His gallop is huge and incredibly well-balanced, and his favorite thing to do in turnout is jump over the little sandy runoff area in the middle of his paddock.

His two little diagonal white feet are freakin adorable, as are his giant ears (y’all know I love some big ears, all the best jumpers have them!).

I gotta say though, I think Taddles’ best feature is his temperament. They truly don’t come out of the womb any better than this. He’s friendly but not pushy, he’s smart, he’s brave, and he’s always just a happy little guy.

So far all 3 foals for this season have wildly different temperaments. I love Leo’s fire and cheekiness (I find him quite hilarious) but this kiddo is more of the “born broke” and easy-going type that I suspect will make him very easy to have in the barn and train when he gets older. He’s 100% an athlete through and through, but also has a fantastic brain. Best of both worlds.

I’m excited to see how he keeps developing as his super long legs unfold more and he gets more filled out over the next few weeks. I think Vee knocked this one out of the park though, I gotta say. It makes me sad that we sell all the colts, but this is supposed to be a business after all. Whoever snags him will be really lucky!

It’s been a busy last few weeks around here but we’ll probably have a little pause in the action for another week or two until our next foal makes it’s appearance. Until then, at least we have plenty of Foal Friday fodder.

Who’s your favorite 2025 foal so far?

Chanel didn’t make us wait long for the next addition to the WTW Class of 2025! Last Friday just before 10pm she laid down and very quickly popped out a very leggy bay/gray filly by Malito de Reve. Say hello to Tigerlily WTW.

Michelle is thrilled, because this is the first filly she’s gotten from Chanel. The first two foals she had in Europe before she went to a sport career and was imported? Both fillies. But since Michelle has had her, she’s had 3 colts. Chanel is a super nice mare and an excellent producer, but she’s getting older, so having a filly from her to add to the WTW broodmare band is definitely exciting!

She’s very leggy and those hocks say that she’s going to end up with some pretty good bone. No surprise, considering her parents! Those legs were a little bit hard for her to untangle on those first few attempts at standing, but fillies always tend to have a little more initial vigor than the colts, so it didn’t take her long to sort them out.

Temperament-wise she’s VERY different from Leo. Like maybe the polar opposite. She’s very much like her mom: careful and self-sufficient. She’s still figuring out that humans have fun things to offer, like butt scritchies.

Some of them tend to start out a bit more shy like this, but once they get more secure the curiosity always wins out. She’s already getting there, and spent yesterday afternoon trying her best to chew on my ponytail. She’ll be a pocket pony soon, I have no doubt.

In the meantime, she sure is stinkin cute with those gray goggles and gray nose. There’s already a lot of gray throughout her coat too; looks like she’s gonna be one that goes gray pretty fast.

She also makes us 2 for 2 so far on the gray babies, since Leo will also turn gray from his original chestnut. There’s no chance for gray with the next few babies (not until our last mare, Gossip, who’s due in mid-May) but man, those gray genes are really insistent around here.

It’s poooosssible that Baby number 3 (Vee’s) made their entrance a few hours ago, too, but y’all are gonna have to wait for that one…