Somebody was living his best bougie lifestyle last week, bankrolled by his mother.

So basically, just a regular day in the life for Presto. Somebody really needs to tell him he’s not from a wealthy family.

Anyway, he made his first little adventure to WEC, doing a 1.15m class with Ellie. We really had no idea how he would be… he’s never been there before and it’s a lot of atmosphere. Hence the whole point of me paying a relatively absurd amount of money to just do one class – he needs to see and experience stuff like this. It’s time. It needs to happen.

His class was in Indoor 6, which luckily isn’t too far from the ship-in day parking. Basically the ship-in parking is in the very front of the parking lot, then you have to walk across the parking lot, around and past Indoor 5 and a little covered, past another parking lot, and then you get to Indoor 6. It’s not close, but in WEC terms (where, depending on where your ring is, you could be in for a 20-30 minute walk) it’s not so bad. Presto did take a little exception to the rubber mats that made up the horse path, and wasn’t a big fan of the barricades with sandbags, but he survived (against all odds, he says).

We had some time to kill (because when does jumperland ever run on time) which worked out great, honestly. He was definitely on his toes when he first went into the indoor, but he had time to sit and watch some horses go, and spend time just walking around. Which is right around the time I realized he really truly has never been in an actual INDOOR before. A couple small/bright covered rings, but a true indoor… I don’t think so. Especially not one like this. About 1/3 of the massive indoor is the warmup ring, then there’s a little alley made up of barricades in between the warmup and the show ring itself. There are bleachers on one side, lots of little exit doors on the sides and the end, plus jump crew sitting just behind the wall. Not to mention all the hoopla of the WEC decor, like the 700 trees and signs and shit that are all over the ring, and the jumbotron and the big scoreboard.

Truth be told, we really didn’t know what to expect. When he started warming up he definitely seemed a bit fresh, but Ellie quickly put him to work doing some more intricate flatwork and he settled really well. He was great for his warmup jumps, good about the traffic in warmup, and didn’t seem particularly bothered by anything. And then he went in the ring and just… marched right around. Like… we were all surprised by how good he was, actually. Ellie let him go slow and used lots of the ring so that he had time to process everything, and while he was alert, he never got worried or spooky. It was a slow but very steady and honestly quite boring (in a good way, for him) round – time faults, but no jump penalties. He really couldn’t have been any better.

So this week he’s gonna go back and do the 1.15m and the 1.20m with Ellie, and see if he can repeat his success, or if (as he does sometimes tends to do) he was on his best behavior the first time because it was new. The 1.20m should be interesting… he’s not jumped a course that big, so maybe he’ll finally look alive and have to try a little bit for once. Maybe?

He had the following day off, then a stretchy hack day followed by a flatwork day. On Sunday I took him over to Sweet Dixie bright and early for his weekly conditioning ride. It’s been mega hot and humid here, but it wasn’t too insufferable (your opinion may vary) yet at 7am, so off to the hill trots we went. I’m in the process of trialing the Horsepal heart rate monitor to review on Eventing Nation, and this was our maiden voyage. It took me about 5 minutes of stubborn “I don’t want to read the directions” fidgeting with all the various parts (it comes with lots of accoutrement) before I pulled up the “how to” video and was set up and ready to go within a few minutes. You’ll have to wait for the actual review but this one is different from the ones I’ve used in the past (Hylofit and Seaver) and the first test run was very promising.

As for the other boys, Rubes hasn’t been doing much of anything because with all this rain we’ve gotten (so much… so much rain… it is pouring again as I type this) his feet just aren’t doing great. He was looking about 80% better yesterday and got to go for a little hack, much to his delight, but they’re still just too soft and sensitive to do much.

He’s got very little wall and very little sole, and his extensive multi-step hoof care routine is probably the only thing keeping him from being entirely crippled at the moment, but it’s still not great. It’s a fun juggle between keeping him inside and dry vs him absolutely climbing the walls, going batshit crazy, and then running like a dingdong when he does go outside. If he pulls a shoe and takes even a millimeter of wall with it, he’ll for sure have to go back in glue-ons, so the balance of his lifestyle is precarious right now at best.

Henry has been pulling his weight, though. When it’s this hot I have to be really careful with him since he doesn’t sweat very well, so he really only gets ridden on the days where I can be on him by 7am. We keep it short and to the point, but (despite his resting grump face) he’s always happy to be doing something. If nothing else it’s giving me something else to ride while Presto is in more of “full training” mode.

I’m hoping to take Henry to a little schooling derby next week for shits and giggles, as long as it’s not too scorching hot. I think he’d be delighted to drag me around the BN.

The biggest mystery is how I’ve managed to miss three weeks of updates. Well, that part isn’t so much a mystery… we still don’t have a farmhand and I’ve been working seasonal shifts at WEC, so I’ve just been spectacularly strapped for time to sit down and write anything substantial. We’ve got a new girl starting here at the farm hopefully next week that will be helping with feeding and mowing, so fingers crossed that’ll lighten my load back up a little bit. It is hot and I am tired.

You know how it is with a 60-acre farm full of almost 30 horses – every day it’s something else on top of the regular chores of feeding/stalls/mowing. Someone’s got a runny nose, someone’s got a cut, someone’s got a fever (on a holiday no less, because obviously), someone broke the fence, the blades fell off the mower, the shredder is literally smoking, we’re one day short of grain, etc etc etc on and on it goes in perpetuity. It wears on you when it’s 7 days a week. I will be delighted for the new girl to take some of it off my plate.

The REAL mystery is who’s causing all this barn chaos. Like who tipped over my drawers? Presto doesn’t know.

Who knocked the fan over, picked up the bag of mints, and flung them all over the place? Presto isn’t sure about that either.

Who pulled my gloves out of my pocket and dropped them in the puddle? We don’t know yet, but Presto is on the case.

Truly a modern day case of Unsolved Mysteries.

One thing we have (finally) officially wrapped up though: breeding season! I mean… we were done breeding no matter what, but we did the last heartbeat check a few days ago, so we’ve confirmed all the pregnancies now. It’s going to be a wild spring, particularly April. Send help.

This will def be the biggest WTW foal crop ever, and we’ve already got a couple of the foals spoken for/reserved. I can’t even make full eye contact with that list yet… none of us will be sleeping.

In horsey news, Rubes has really started to blossom a bit in the past few weeks. At this point my impression is that he’s more of a jumper type, and he really really likes doing exactly the same thing every day. Routine is his jam. He’s been jumping the cavaletti, and I moved a couple jumps into the ring to make an actual line, which he’s cantered down several times now like a bonafide Real Boy.

He’s starting to get it, and he’s quite a good little jumper. He wants to naturally use his body well, it’s mostly just keeping him relaxed in his body and mind. The more he does it though, the better he gets.

Of course, as soon as I was like “we’re on a roll, time to take him on another off-property adventure” his feet decided it was time to do The Florida Summer Thing and just.. fall apart. I’m keeping them as dry as possible, but we barely had much wall to start with and I’m totally losing the war. He was about to lose a shoe so the farrier came and re-did him, but there’s almost nothing to nail into and I think now he might have a hot nail.

So, ya know… jury is still out on that one. I was really really really really really really hoping to avoid having to do glue-ons with any of my creatures this year after the hell that was last summer, but I’m starting to lose my last glimmer of hope that Rubes will be able to avoid them. That wall ain’t looking good.

As for Presto, he’s also a bit of a mystery at the moment, or at least a mixed bag. He had some training rides and was doing great, went to Chatt with Ellie and was “perfect” for the first two phases to lead the Open Prelim…

And then decided to quite literally go for a few spins on XC in a very Interpretive Dance kind of way. Like he started out fantastic, turned into a ballerina in the middle, and finished fantastic. Was superb at every combination, no problem with any of the hard stuff, just… tuned into the Tasmanian Devil in front of some random tables for no particular discernable reason. We’re all scratching our heads a little bit. We’ve got a few hypotheses and some ideas for next steps/things to try, and I had (yet another) chat with my vet, showing her the videos. Back to the drawing board a bit, but hopefully we’re a step closer to figuring it out. We have more data, at least, for whatever that’s worth.

The good news is, it’s not just me that’s the problem. The bad news is, it’s not just me that’s the problem. Horses are nothing if not frustrating. Ellie was super happy with 95% of it, and they said he traveled well and actually was quite a good boy in the barn. We’re close. We’re so close, I feel like. I sure do wish horses could talk.

Presto will spend a little time in Jumperland at WEC over the next couple weeks while we try some things, and then we’ll figure out more plans from there!

Oh – I also did a big closet cleanout and have a shitton of stuff for sale (because see all of the above, which is all expensive AF). Let me know if you’re interested in anything!

One perk of Presto having a little summer vacay is that it gives me a little more time to focus on the others. Particularly this dude.

I’m figuring Rubes out more and more as time goes on, and one thing that has become exceedingly clear is that he thrives on routine. That makes sense, he was a racehorse forever, and racehorse life is all about routine. While he’s learned over time to be more flexible about how his day is structured (he used to get IRATE if he wasn’t worked before 8am), having a really predictable routine when I’m in the tack also seems to soothe him quite a bit. So I’ve been structuring his rides pretty much the same every day, and he’s really starting to focus more, which is helping things “click”. He’s a horse who likes to always know what to expect.

As of right now, that looks like this: we do his normal flatwork, wtc with transitions between and within the gaits, leg yield, a little shoulder or baby haunches in, spiraling in and out, etc. Then we trot some cavaletti until he does so quietly – this could be 1 time or this could be 5-6 times, depending on the day. Once he’s straight and quiet and paying attention, we canter some cavaletti as singles. If he wants to get a little yeehaw about it we go back to trot and wash-rinse-repeat. At this point the focus is really just rhythm and straightness. Once we’ve got all that down pat (which again, could be 2-3 times or might be 6-8 times) we might end with cantering the cavaletti on a bending line or making a shorter approach off the rail.

Some days are better than others (this mostly hinges on what else is happening around him… like the day the internet company decided to set up a huge orange umbrella under the telephone pole right in front of the ring and Rubes was holding his brain together with scotch tape and a prayer) but day over day the improvement is there. He’s very smart and always trying to figure out what I want, but he does need a lot of routine and predictability (at least right now) to help him maintain his focus and his calm.

Tell you what though, I’m really happy with how his canter and his jump are coming along. He is indeed the athlete I thought he was. Once I can wrangle the brain, we’ll be in business.

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He did go on another little outing, and was calm enough to where I probably could have gotten on him and ridden him around, but considering that he’s really anticipating ACTION whenever he goes somewhere (obviously we get on the trailer and go to race, ya know?) I felt like it was more important for him to just take a look around, have some grass, take a deep breath, and then get back on the trailer and go home. He still has to figure out that going places doesn’t always mean something exciting is going to happen. Until then, I think it’s more beneficial for him to just hang out. The riding stuff is not and will not be the hard part with this horse, it’s going to be the anxiety. And since I have the benefit of not being in any kind of rush with him, we can just take each day as it comes and do whatever the best thing is for his brain on the day. I think taking that time now, in the beginning, will be better for him in the long run. If I try to get greedy I think I could create a problem where there doesn’t have to be one.

Aside from Rubes I’ve been working with a couple of the 2yo’s a bit. Andy is old news I suppose, I’ve been working with him since he was a weanling, but now that he’s actually 2, things are going to start getting a little more exciting. He ties, he loads, he knows whoa and walk voice commands and the idea of lunging (walk only), he’s ponied, and he’s worn saddle pads and such. This summer he’ll wear a bit for the first time, and a saddle, and start learning about trotting and maybe some ground driving at the walk.

Joining him on those adventures will be Rue, the filly that Michelle retained from the 2023 foal crop. I’m going to start playing with her a bit more and get a feel for her temperament/personality and what she might be suited for, hoping that she can have a bit of a sport career before she joins the broodmare band. She’s a tall girl, with a temperament more like a gelding, so we’ll see how she takes to things.

As for Presto, he’s been out hacking a few times this week and seems to be feeling good. Tomorrow we’ll start some stretchy w/t/c and start moving him back into work next week. He’s definitely starting to act bored and wild (just what everyone wants – a bored and wild Presto) so I think he’s ready to get back to his normal stuff.

In other news we’ve had another mare with a confirmed pregnancy and one with a confirmed heartbeat check in the past week… all we’ve really got left is one mare waiting on her pregnancy scan, which is this weekend. Then we’re done! Once we wrap all that up I’ll post a list of what all we’re expecting next year. It’s quite a few (biggest crop yet?) and a wide variety of horses, so it should be pretty fun in 2026. We’ve already had some inquiries on next years foals, and we’ve only got one left this year (Ivy – the upper level event prospect).

In less great news, both pairs of my riding boots have suffered catastrophic wounds in the last couple weeks. The heel has completely separated on my black ones, and I’ve worn a quarter size patch through the calf of the brown ones.

I have super glue and a leather patch on the way, so we’re about to be doing some experimenting. Ain’t nobody be affording new boots at the moment.

One other thing: my first podcast episode with OTTB on Tap dropped this week, check it out here if you’re so inclined! And make sure you’re following them on facebook and/or insta for exclusive vlogs, updates, and more podcast episodes (plus just really great OTTB content in general).

I went looking for the right meme to start off this post before I realized I didn’t really need one, because this picture just kind of sums it up.

I dunno what’s up with the month of June, but it’s swept in here with some bad vibes. Real bad. I dunno if I’m supposed to burn some sage or hire an Etsy witch or what, but my god.

Area Championships went like shit.

Well ok, there were good parts. Which is probably a little more frustrating? Ok maybe not. But uuugggggghhh guys. Sometimes I wonder wtf is wrong with me to revolve my entire life around a sport that only gets harder the more you do it and the higher up the levels you go. Why couldn’t I be obsessed with a sport that involved inanimate objects without thoughts and feelings and bad days of their own? Or like… crochet or knitting or making little felt woodland creatures? Questions I ask myself sometimes.

I have very little media from the show. No one was there with me when I did dressage and there’s only one pro pic I like well enough to buy it but cannot bring myself to spend the money. I actually thought Presto was pretty good for the test. There were no real mistakes, nothing that was a particular whoopsie, it was just one of those where we needed more sparkle in general. Usually for him that ends up getting a 29-31 but this judge was not impressed with us and gave us a 35. Ouch. That’s usually the type of score we get when there is a real mistake or two. To be fair, the judge didn’t like any of us that much and I was still in 2nd after dressage.

XC was 95% the best round we’ve ever had.

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Finally, FINALLY it was really forward-thinking and flowing out of stride and I was seeing things coming forward. Presto was absolutely bang-on at the combinations, even angling some of the skinnies and foot perfect through the hardest water combo he’s seen to date.

So what caught us out? The coffin complex that he’s jumped through about eleventy million times. I still have no real clue exactly what happened. We came out of the turn, there was the A element MIM rail, I rode forward to it, and…. he said nope. I’m not sure if it was the fact that there were a ton of people/cars right around there and he was distracted, or what. Genuinely I have no idea. I even have it on video and me and Trainer both are just kinda like I dunno what the excuse is there. I re-presented and he jumped through super, and went on to absolutely ping around the rest of the course like it was a Novice. Genuinely aside from that moment it was by far our best round not just at this level but maybe ever. Sigh. One of those times when you really wish horses could talk.

We had SJ the next day and he warmed up feeling GREAT. Was jumping fantastic, still seemed fresh and happy and ready to go. Went in the ring, picked up the canter, went to fence 1, and he absolutely just reining-horse slid to a stop at the last second and lawn-darted me in spectacular fashion. Like really spectacular fashion. We checked him out nose to tail and couldn’t find anything wrong, but I had my vet out a few days later to give him a really thorough once over just to make sure there wasn’t something small that we were missing. She spent quite a while poking and prodding and jogging him and checking his eyes and his ulcer points and blah blah blah, I mean shit we even went over his feeding program. Absolutely nothing noteworthy to be found. Which is great because obviously you never want to find an issue, but it just leaves us with more questions really.

He got a training ride and then I did a little jump school on him and he was 100% normal for both. Happy, eager, forward. We took him XC schooling on Saturday and jumped a bunch of ditches and stuff to see if that had anything to do with it and he was literally foot perfect.

So, ya know… anyone’s guess is as good as mine. Myself and my team can’t find anything wrong, nor has he had a bad day since then.

To be honest I was pretty upset about it last week. I do not handle disappointment well (one of the reasons why I don’t ever let myself get that excited about anything… why does disappointment feel so soul-crushing to me?) and it was just incredibly defeating. I’ve been absolutely busting my ass all year, scraping together money to take more lessons and riding whatever I can, whenever I can, and applying so much mental focus and physical effort to be just be better. I feel like me and Presto have both improved massively, so to end up smacked in the dirt at the first jump of SJ was just a huge shock, tbh.

In my head I know that when we choose to do hard things and push ourselves and step outside of our comfort zone, failure is an inevitable part of the process. The best horses and riders in the world still have bad shows or end up in the dirt. I also know, very familiarly, that horses aren’t robots and they have bad days too. Knowing all of that doesn’t make it any less devastating in the moment. My biggest fear is fucking up my horse and it really felt like that’s exactly what I had done. It took me several days to pull myself back from the ledge. But at the end of the day you can either be defeated by failure or you can be motivated by failure, and I dunno about y’all but I’m not a fucking quitter. We’re gonna choose to learn from it, put it behind us (I’m trying to, I swear), and move forward.

That was the very long-winded way of saying that Presto’s summer vacay got delayed a week and actually started this past Sunday. So he’ll get a week off and then very light hacking, then gear back up for some summer stuff. A think a little refresh and reboot will do us both some good (even if he claims he’s terribly dreadfully bored already).

In the meantime, Rubes is starting to buckle down a bit and I’m eyeballing some off-property outings for him. Or I was anyway, until he did this.

By some absolute miracle we managed to get a shoe back on there, but I mean there’s like… almost no wall left. Love that for me considering summer (the season that absolutely murders horse feet in Florida) has barely even begun. I can already tell that me and my farrier are gonna have just a peachy keen time. We’ll see tomorrow if Rubes is sound and then go from there.

In more “the vibes are bad” news (I told you they’re BAD) – there will be no bebe horse for me next year. I was very excited to breed a super nice big TB mare to Cashmere, but it looks like she probably has a bit of an infection that needs to be taken care of. So… I dunno. I already feel like I’m majorly behind the 8-ball as far as “pre-loading” the next horse in my string. Presto is 8, after all, so even a foal born next year wouldn’t be rideable until he’s 13. Now we’d be looking at 14, best case scenario.

Ideally a 10 year age gap between horses would be considerably better (like Henry and Presto, which is perfect), but buying a 2 year old is certainly not in my budget at the moment and probably never will be. I have no solution to this particular conundrum at this time, and for now my Cashmere frozen semen will just sit sadly unused in my storage tank. Also really disappointing and depressing, at least to me, because I was really looking forward to starting the process again with another homebred (the toxic voice in my head went “that’s what you get for getting excited“… ugggghhh).

We did get another mare bred for the WTW program last week though. She gets negative points for ovulating at 1:30am, that’s just the worst timing possible for humans that like to get any modicum of sleep. She better be pregnant. We’ve got another one or two to breed but for the most part breeding season is winding down, and I’m ready for it to be over. It’s getting HOT here and as of right now we don’t have any other barn help besides me, so the farm and it’s 30ish horses are my 24/7 responsibility for the foreseeable future. Having one less thing on my plate would be lovely.

One fun thing at the end of this massive post of shit news: to lift my spirits I took Henry for just a XC round at the POP schooling show this weekend, and it was legit the most fun. He might be 18 but he’s still got it (for about 4 minutes, anyway).

Hopefully everyone else is having a better start to the summer than I am. And uh… if you know of any good ways to fix the vibes, I’m all ears.

Me, as I sat down to draft this post: “oh good, I can get something up on here towards the beginning of the week and then later this week I can try to get another Foal Friday posted”.

Then I realized it’s Thursday. Somebody needs to start keeping better track of time, and surely it can’t be me.

This week Presto and I have been gearing up for our last show of the season and thinking ahead to what his summer is going to look like. Right now it looks like his vacation month is going to be June, since my trainer will be gone to Luhmuhlen and then on family vacation after that. There are no more shows here until August, so giving them June off makes the most sense really. Weather-wise July is worse, but we talked about maybe trying to go do some of the jumper shows at WEC. I think that would GREATLY benefit both me and Presto, so now I’m just trying to figure out how to budget to afford it. Even just hauling in and doing a few of the Open classes a week is like… almost double what a recognized event costs me. It’s been somewhere around 12 years since I did a rated h/j show, I’d almost forgotten how pricey they are.

If I can find a way, though, that would be the ideal plan. I definitely need the jumping practice (understatement of the century), and it would be good for Presto to go to a new-to-him venue, especially one like WEC that has a lot of atmosphere. And – bonus – the summer series at WEC is doing all of the classes inside, so it’s air conditioned. I mean… the haul-in parking is outside so you’re still roasting on asphalt until you get to the ring, but at least you’re less likely to pass out while you’re actually riding?

I’ve also been considering the idea of half-leasing Henry. I went as far as posting something on my personal Facebook and Insta about it, but at this point I’m not willing to actually try to advertise a half-lease in earnest. Mostly because I’m pretty protective of this horse and particular about who I’d be willing to let lease him, so I definitely don’t want just a bunch of randos messaging me or showing up to try him. I can’t cope. He absolutely cannot leave my care, so it would have to be someone local that wanted a fun and experienced horse to ride 3 days a week, but if by chance the right person were to come along I think he’d be delighted to have the job. If you know someone that could fit the bill, spread the word.

He’s been doing really well back in work, and yesterday I put the jumps up to 1meter just to see how he felt. He was like “finally, someone on this farm figured out how to raise a damn jump cup.”. Honestly, he’s the best.

Rubes has been doing really well too, but I don’t have any current media of him. I’ve been letting my friend Lija ride him since her horse is out for a little while, but I’ll probably take the ride back in June while Presto is on vacation. I really need to start focusing on Rubes more if we have any remote chance of making it to RRP.

I had my fitter out last week to look at Rubes again now that he’s been in consistent work for a few months. I knew that Presto’s saddles def weren’t going to work for him, but it was a matter of whether we could shim them to fit, or if Rubes needed something of his own. The answer is solidly the latter. Rubes has more curve to his back, a higher wither, and isn’t as wide as Presto. So Arion is making me a loaner to use on him for the year, and then after that we can re-evaluate. It’ll be great for Rubes to have something specifically for him rather than having to wear all of his brothers’ various hand-me-downs. He also got a new Arion figure 8 in cob size, which fits him waaaay better. Bougie boy.

With summer almost here we are also at the very end of breeding season. We’ve got several pregnant mares, some still waiting on their pregnancy scan, and a few left to breed in the next week or two. After that we’ll be done. I feel like it’s been breeding season for 35 years so I think we’re all very ready to wrap it up. Fingers crossed for good news on the remaining pregnancy scans!

I’ll try my best to get something up tomorrow for Foal Friday. Toby sold this week, so now the only remaining 2025 foal left available is Ivy (who is developing SO nicely – she’s got such a great temperament). We’ve gotta find the perfect person for her so we can officially close out the class of 2025!