First and foremost – small announcement before we get started with the weekly dose of foal cuteness. We’ve gotten a lot of requests for WTW merch and thanks to our friends at Two Socks Designs we officially have a store for Willow Tree Warmbloods! There are a handful of basic items in there to start, and we can add more if there’s enough demand. You can also special order things if you’d like, the logo is on file, or you can get different colors by request. I also want to note that WTW is not making any kind of profit from any of this, we just wanted to be able to offer some logo stuff to those of you that have requested it, and support a great (woman-owned, Texas-based) small business at the same time. Cutting ourselves out as middle man also keeps the prices lower and orders moving faster. Fun fact – Sydney of Two Socks Designs owns Manny, from the WTW class of 2018. Gotta keep in in the family! Alright, on to the cute babies!

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Some Foal Friday photo days you get a camera roll full of cute or classy little foal pictures. On other Foal Friday photo days you get a camera roll full of, well…

For this week’s photo shoot the babies were just plain WILD, which… hey, at least it’s entertaining? They ran…

They played…

And Obi even made a dreadful mistake in letting a yeehaw loose right in Pippa’s face.

Don’t worry, she chased him down and reminded him exactly who she is and that she’s not to be trifled with.

And, ya know, since girls gotta stick together, Teddy made a quick little lap and buzzed right past their butts afterward for good measure

I’ll give Obi credit though, he is delightfully undeterred by being put in his place. He has all of about 2 seconds of regret before he shrugs it off and is back at it (with maybe just a little bit wider buffer between himself and the fillies, of course).

While Percy isn’t generally front and center into the real hardcore play sessions (he’s not stupid and neither is his mother), don’t think that he isn’t participating. He has plenty of moments of his own.

He gets PLENTY rowdy, especially in a vertical direction.

That’s not to say that the other kiddos don’t interact and play with him though, they definitely do. In their own way of course.

Poor Percy… he’s getting there.

They do eventually calm down. Sort of. As much as possible for baby horses, anyway. I’m not sure that Obi really has an Off switch.

Happy Foal Friday, everyone!

I know y’all loved that cliffhanger yesterday. Trying to fit all 3 phases into one post is a lot and honestly I don’t have a lot of other blog fodder right now, so sorrynotsorry. Plus, ya know, I had to wait a day between stadium and XC too when all this was going down… fair is fair.

The good news is that Presto was the 2nd ride time of the day on Sunday, set to leave the start box at 8:02. THANK THE LAWD. If he went late in the afternoon I’d have had a stroke for sure. The other bonus is that Megan handed her phone off to her mom, who gave me a few live updates. I love Megan’s mom, she’s the best.

Anyway, River Glen is known for having fairly inviting cross country courses, it tends to be on the smaller/easier side. Especially compared to Chatt, which was a monster for both size and technicality. River Glen does have a lot more terrain though, definitely more hills than Presto has ever seen in his entire life (there was a really big hill that he had to go up and down between fences 12 and 14), so that was a good “new” element that he hasn’t really had to contend with much before. Megan’s impressions of the course for Presto were that everything was quite small and straightforward, the only two things that warranted much consideration in her mind were 1) fence 8 – a little wagon jumping out of an arena, with quite a decent drop on the backside of it 2) fence 11 – the ditch that was literally just a rando ditch all by itself in the middle of the field. Those were mostly just possible spook-factor type fences because they were a bit unexpected, otherwise she said it was table after table (you can tab through the whole XC course here).

Right around 7:45 Megan’s mom “signed in” and texted me to let me know they were in warmup, being serenaded by live bagpipers to open up the show day. Add that to the new-experiences-for-Presto column. The bagpipers completed their musical number with Amazing Grace… maybe not the best pump up XC song but it’ll do. Then she was out of the box and away they went.

And, true to form, it was a pretty easy hop around. Presto took a little peek at a house set back in the trees at 5 (not sure what he thought he saw there that gave him a millisecond pause) but otherwise wasn’t too impressed. If anything he was maybe a little YEEHAW about the whole thing, Megan said he threw in a twisty little buck/leap over the ditch (he thought it was boring and chose to make it more exciting, I guess) and on the video you can see a very enthusiastic WHEEEEEE into the water. Megan’s mom reported that he cruised home easily, looked amazing, and barely broke a sweat. And he was quite proud of himself too, as usual. Cross country is his jam.

When you think about what we ask these horses to do on cross country – gallop over unfamiliar terrain, jumping things they’ve never seen before and sometimes don’t get their eye on until the last second, sometimes not knowing where they’re gonna land until they’re in the air, jumping out of arenas or up and down hills and into dark bodies of water… it really impresses me that Presto is so young and so new to this yet still so freakin bold and game no matter what we throw at him. He seems to love the challenge of never quite knowing what’s coming but attacking it with gusto anyway. A lot of horses would be intimidated by that, but he seems to thrive off it. You can see his little brain constantly thinking and figuring things out on the fly, and he’s always asking what’s next. Henry is probably the most brave jumper I’ve ever had and even he was not that confident and bold in the beginning.

Presto cantered across the finish well within the time allowed, 30 seconds to spare. His gallop is definitely getting better and more ground-covering with every run, to the point now where he has to be asked to dial it back a bit rather than just cantering around within himself. The hills didn’t seem to throw him off at all either. That’s a good thing for the future!

A friend of mine that was there was able to get some video of him in various spots around the course (thank you Francesca!):

Once he finished I was still hitting refresh on the live scores every 5 minutes, waiting for the results to get entered and then become official. It’s never a done deal until it’s right there in black and white, ya know? But finally they updated the scores, and Presto finished in 2nd place! Another red ribbon for the kiddo. All he had to do at this show was complete the event in order to finish out his AEC completion qualifications, but he did in style, earning another AEC-qualifying placing at the same time. And Megan’s sale horse Rocky won the division, so it was a nice little 1-2 sweep for the Novice horses.

With that, Presto has signed his entry for AEC. I’m not sure that he’d be competitive with some of the extremely fancy heavy hitters in the Novice Horse division, but I don’t care, he’s more than earned his spot. Of course, there’s quite a long wait list for AEC now so… we sent the entry, but we’ll see whether or not we actually get in. Sigh. Not much we can do but wait and see.

I already got my plane ticket because you can bet your ass that if we do get in I WILL be attending his first Championship. Now we just have to 1) keep him bubble-wrapped for the next few weeks and knock on wood that he doesn’t do any kind of dumb horse thing to himself in the meantime. 2) wait and see whether or not we actually get to go. Cross all your crossables! It sure would be fun to be able to cap off his first eventing season with a trip to Kentucky…

There is a special place in heaven for horse show photographers that are both affordable AND fast, I swear. I pre-ordered the All Photos package and had 97 pics in my dropbox by first thing Tuesday morning after the show. It’s a complete novelty for me down here in the land of 4-6 weeks for digitals that cost twice as much. Anyway, now that we have pics we can get to the latest Presto show recap!

Fair warning, I was unable to go to Tennessee for this show, so I don’t have as many of the nitty gritty details as I normally would. This is the first show of Presto’s that I’ve missed and I absolutely hated it. My level of anxiety was sky high. Especially because River Glen was very slow to update scores and Megan had another horse in the Novice that she was riding after Presto, plus the reception there is really bad, so she couldn’t always give me immediate or detailed updates. And he didn’t do dressage til almost noon on Saturday so like aagggghhhh the waaaaaiting. I HATE waiting. It was the very definition of torture. Do not recommend. I am a terrible absentee owner.

Anyway, Megan said he warmed up beautifully for dressage. The warmup was a long way from his show ring down by the river, and she said by the time they got down there with all the spooky stuff and no other horses, he went a bit tense and ADD on her. Nothing naughty, she just couldn’t really ride him super forward and flowy the way she had at Chatt, and he wanted to pop his head up above the contact and look around a few times. She said she felt to her like it was more of a 30ish test, but he scored a 33.

I had to kind of chuckle, because for a tense gawking 4yo to go in the ring and still manage to get a 33… I’m not upset about that. A tense gawking Henry is closer to a 40 and toes the line of belligerent. Presto was just kind of behind the leg and occasionally distracted. I won’t complain about his expression of tension, or the fact that a “disappointing” score is a 33. Either way, he still ended up 4th after dressage, about mid-pack… apparently a lot of horses aren’t really fans of that far ring.

Showjumping was a few more hours later, and I spent most of the day hitting refresh on all the scores like a psycho. Rails were falling left and right all day, in mass quantities. Like… a lot of them. There were very few clear rounds and 5 compulsory retirements in the Intermediate, Prelim, and Training divisions. I dunno what was going on there, but it wasn’t good. Presto is pretty careful but he’s still kind of a monkey with his legs sometimes (little brain and a very long way from said brain to his feet), so it was hard to guess how this might go. Honestly though, he only needed a completion at this event to finish out his qualifications for AEC (you need a first or second place and 3 USEA event completions – he had a 2nd from Chatt but had only done 2 USEA events, so needed one more). Mostly I was just like “please, just jump all the jumps in the right order and no one fall down or fall off”. There’s something about very low expectations that make it even more nerve-wracking as you imagine the 1001 different ways it could still all go to shit.

His ride time came and went, with me madly hitting that refresh button (it’s VERY DISSATISFYING when nothing new shows up no matter how many times you hit it) and then I got a text from Megan: “He jumped so good! Barely ticked the last jump and had it down but probably the best round we’ve had, he was so rideable!”.

Thank the lawd, huge sigh of relief. Two phases complete! And I really could not care less about a cheap rail if he had a more rideable round. Stadium is his hardest phase at this point, so how he goes around the course matters way more than whether he jumps clear or not. She sent me the video of his round later and indeed it was a definite improvement from Chatt. Especially as the course went on he got better and better, and since she could actually soften before the jumps he was jumping better too. He still has some, uh, interpretive dance moves in the air sometimes when he spies some surprising filler, but I don’t think it ever even crosses his mind to not jump. I swear he cleared the first one by a couple feet LOL.

There were so many rails that even with having one down Presto moved up from 4th to 2nd. I dunno what kind of monsters were living under those jumps all day, or what kind of ejection seat jump cups they’re using, but that was nuts. Worked out okay for us though, with Megan’s two greenies sitting first and second in the Novice at the end of the day.

I couldn’t breathe too easily yet though, because cross country was the next morning…

Ok, let’s talk about this whole modern pentathlon thing shall we?

This Olympics was not my first introduction to it. I remember watching parts of it during the London coverage and cringing then, but admittedly I’ve never sat down and really watched any of it from start to finish. After all the headlines starting popping up about how a “stubborn” and “uncooperative” horse cost a German rider a gold medal, curiosity got the best of me. I wanted to be fair though before I rushed to judgment so I sat down, loaded up the replay, and watched the entire riding portion of the and women’s and men’s pentathlon before I came to any particular conclusions. And oh man, I cannot stress this enough… what the actual f.

There’s a lot wrong here. First and foremost, the format is insane. None of these riders bring their own horse, they’re all volunteered for use by private owners or riding schools. They have selectors that test ride and choose which horses they will use and then they all go into a pool. The riders draw a horse, have 20 minutes to ride it, are only allowed 5 warmup jumps, and then have to go in the ring and jump a 1.20m course. Which… I wouldn’t have much problem with the whole unknown horse random draw bits if the jumps weren’t so big – .90m to 1m… ok fine. But 1.20m is a big ask for even a lot of decently skilled riders (not to mention horses), and these people, well, they are NOT decently skilled. Most could barely stay in the tack, much less find a distance or actually RIDE the horse. They’ve got to be proficient at 5 sports and I think it’s safe to say that riding isn’t a strength for most of them. Fair enough, riding is my only sport and I’m barely very good at it either. Granted, I’m also not at the Olympics.

Anyway.

The German woman in question was the last rider to go. Most of these horses went around at least twice, which could either be a benefit or a detriment to the later riders, depending on how it went. On one hand, they’ve seen the course once already. On the other hand, some of these riders were so bad that they didn’t make it around the course the first time. And by the end, some of these horses were just plain over the bullshit – the German woman’s mount, Saint Boy, being one of them. The German came into the ring already bawling (my guess is warmup didn’t go well) and the horse was extremely nappy about leaving the gate. I’m not sure how much more clearly a horse could have screamed “I AM NOT OKAY WITH THIS”. His first rider didn’t ride him very well and had crashed him, enough to where he’d flipped her the bird by the end and just stopped jumping entirely. Now he was coming in again with another rider he clearly had no confidence in and was flipping this girl the bird in advance. Honestly, I can’t blame him. Who knows what happened in warmup but I’m guessing nothing good.

But she kicked and smacked him (and the coach whacked him on the butt over the fence in between her oh so helpful screaming advice to the rider to “hit him harder!”) and eventually the rider did convince the poor horse to get moving. She proceeded to miss a couple distances, but he kindly went anyway, before she completely crashed him through a vertical. At that point the horse said “You know what, I think I was right in the beginning” and from that point on he refused to move any direction but backwards as the girl had a screaming crying meltdown while the clock ran out.

I feel for everyone in that situation, to tell you the truth. First and foremost the horse, for sure. He was put in an extremely unfair situation and when he said very clearly THIS IS TOO MUCH FOR ME the humans just kept pushing and pushing and pushing. I thought he was pretty kind about it, all things considered – there are many worse things he could have done besides back up or stand still. And while I don’t think the girl rode well or handled the situation well at all, I do have empathy for the fact that one of the worst moments of her life played out on a worldwide live stream at the Olympics. I can only imagine how I’d feel about that if it were me. But honestly I think the biggest loser in all of this is horse sports in general. All of us.

The general public doesn’t really have this divide between disciplines. To them riding horses is riding horses, and now there are a hell of a lot of comments on social media about how using horses for sport is cruel. Looking back on the Olympics, I actually sat there for a few minutes and thought about whether or not they’re right. I mean, to be fair, there was a dressage horse excused for blood in the mouth, an eventer with a catastrophic ligament injury, a showjumper with blood gushing from it’s nose, and now a German girl and her coach hitting a clearly distressed horse. It’s not a good look from a horse welfare perspective, I have to say. I think I saw more showjumping horses hit the ground this Olympics than I ever have in my life and some of the riding on cross country was just plain dangerous. Even as an insider in equestrian sport, I had to sit there and think carefully about all of this.

Nothing pushed me over the edge quite the way that the modern pentathlon did though. It’s how it was handled (or, really, not handled at all) that set my blood boiling. Watching horse after horse be crashed through fences with ZERO regard for their welfare (they don’t even check them to make sure they’re ok before continuing. Even if the horse hits the ground.) was really freakin hard to watch. They don’t run under FEI rules so I honestly have no idea what kind of care these horses get. I would never in a million damn years allow one of my horses to be used for this. A lot of what I saw classifies as straight up abuse of horse, IMO.

UIPM posted a very lame “look, the horse is just fine” update on their social media featuring pictures that look like they were taken in the winter. Is it even Saint Boy? Who knows. It’s not helping their case, either way.

Neither is the Irish pentathlete that sent one of the Olympic vets (who criticized the treatment of the horses in MP) a message calling him a clown.

What a clusterfuck.

In reality I’d love to see some changes to the riding portion of modern pentathlon. Clearly they are asking too much – it’s not fair to ask a horse to pack an unskilled rider around a 1.20m course, and it’s not fair to ask an athlete who also has 4 other sports to focus on to pilot an unknown horse around a course of that height either. It’s a miracle no one was seriously hurt in Tokyo, really. Whether they lower the jump height considerably or turn it into more of a dressage/equitation type of event, I don’t really care, but it definitely can’t stay as-is.

They also need to take a good hard look at whatever rules they may or may not have regarding horse welfare. I’m sorry but if a horse hits the ground that should be an automatic elimination, and the horse should be examined immediately. People shouldn’t be allowed to fall off and get right back on without examination. Horses exhibiting mental or physical stress should not be allowed or asked to continue. Stewards and vets and medics should be all over this, because as it was it looked completely barbaric. Over and over again we saw horses used as objects, riders taking out their emotions on their mounts, and absolutely no one advocating for the welfare of the horses.

I think what’s bothered me most though are the actual horse people who saw this go down and think that the horse is to blame. Luckily they are in the small minority, but still. How can ANYONE who knows horses think that what happened here was remotely the horse’s fault. Horses aren’t machines, and it’s not their job to make up for a rider’s complete and utter incompetence. If you think differently, you shouldn’t be on or near a horse. Period.

I think this also should be a bit of a wake-up call to all horse sports in general though, outside of the modern pentathlon event. We have to be our own worst critics about anything remotely looking like a welfare issue, because it’s guaranteed that the rest of the world will be too, and they don’t have even a basic understanding of what’s going on the way we do. We have to take a hard look at every incident in Tokyo that happened and why, and figure out how to continue to improve things. There was a lot of really good stuff happening horse welfare wise in Tokyo, but plenty of not-so-good stuff either.

Whew, I think I’m glad the Olympics are over. That was a lot. I have some thoughts on the whole modern pentathlon debacle (of course I do) but we’ll save that for another day because it encompasses some larger thoughts and concerns that I also have about the equestrian events as a whole. On the bright side though, how fantastic was Sweden in the showjumping final? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a team that deserved a gold medal so much, and I was delighted that they pulled it off. Especially with a little unassuming looking horse like All In. No one would ever pick that one out of a field but man when he jumps it’s just something else entirely. I really don’t like the new format for showjumping though, I gotta say, from a horse perspective. Still, it did produce a great nail-biting finish to round out the equestrian events, so I guess mission accomplished on that front.

Aside from watching the Olympics, I’ve still been managing to keep Henry on a very regular riding schedule. The mild summer and his general lightened workload have made his usual summer vacation pretty unnecessary, he feels fit and fresh and isn’t standing there suffering all day in extreme heat. We’ll take low-mid 90’s over three months straight of 110 weather any freakin time, that’s for sure. Naturally though a couple weeks ago he decided to do a weird thing where his front legs stocked up like tree trunks as did a spot on the right side of his face. This isn’t the first time that’s happened, it used to be a once a year thing every May/June but it’s been a couple years since the last time. We never have been able to figure out if it’s something environmental or something he’s eating, or what. No idea. None of the other horses ever seem to have an issue, he never acts any different, never has a fever, never goes off his feed or anything (as if he would)… just gets swelly and itchy. And you can wrap/poultice/sweat/bute to your hearts content but nothing makes a difference. He has so many allergies and sensitivities that I’m betting it’s something related to that. Delicate flower.

In the past we’ve given him a little dex if it got too bad (like the time the swelling was in his sheath) but I try to avoid dex if at all possible, so I opted to just wait it out as long as it didn’t get worse. And indeed after a few days it did start to get better, and now his legs are totally normal again, he’s just got a little bump left on his nose. Mostly because I think he won’t stop rubbing it no matter how much anti-itch stuff I put on it. It’s not really causing an issue though aside from annoying the both of us, and it means that I have to use a real bridle with the noseband removed rather than his usual sidepull, which he thinks is rude. Otherwise though, it’s fine, and it’s gone down a little bit, so hopefully we’re past all the random elephantitis.

While Henry and I were at home doing some jompies, his brother spent the weekend in Tennessee showing at River Glen. Obviously I couldn’t go but I got a lot of updates and videos and I pre-ordered the All Photos package from the show photographer so I can still give you guys a full update on how the show went. I’m determined to actually wait for the pro photos this time though before I do the recap, so… stay tuned. We’ll circle back to that at some point this week (hopefully…). They already have the proofs up so maybe they’ll be quick to send the download link? One can hope.

I admittedly spent most of the weekend hitting refresh on Startbox and obsessively checking my phone for updates, and somewhere in all my stalking (River Glen did post their courses online, which was great) I saw this in the Novice course at Millbrook and thought it was interesting.

That’s a new one for me, never seen a bank question presented that way before. Looks like it rode just fine though. Millbrook in general looks beautiful, too bad it’s 1800 miles away. Why is all the best stuff so far from Texas (looking at you, Rebecca Farm, almost 2000 miles away).

Speaking of courses, I also saw this on Instagram:

Y’all. Omg. I could get a jump with Henry and Presto’s XC faces on it. Or their derp faces. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much “too much” would that be? I need it.