There Is a Toad In My Shower and Other Adventures

Week one has been quite the experience! At Joe Meyer Eventing I have been working many long days in the Florida heat but it’s all worth it when I get to ride (usually) five horses every day. Now some of those rides are simple hacks out around the property, or trot sets of ten minutes, while other rides are jump lessons under Joes tutelage.

Fred, purple with shampoo during his bath.

Now Joe is a stickler for getting the horse balanced and in front of your leg (not literally, simply in feel and collection, for less horsey jargon) and then sitting back, keeping your chest up, and riding quietly to the fence, as long as you have enough pace moving forward to successfully make it over.

This is my view for five horses a day.

Getting to ride exceptionally well trained horses that are still young and green has been pushing me to not over ride them. To really sit back and balance them but to also stay out of their way so they can simply learn where their legs are and how to jump. To simply ride without overcomplicating things.

This training facility houses both top level eventing horses and young horses in training and for sale. Most of these horses are either Irish bred or New Zealand thoroughbreds.

I have been learning so much about their pedigrees and breeding. Such as that an Irish Sport Horse (currently a large number of the most successful event horses in the world are ISH horses) can be a wide variety of things. It must be bred in Ireland with roots of thoroughbred and Irish Draft but can also have any other foreign (usually other European) warmblood bred into it. Where as a traditional Irish horse is simply thoroughbred and Irish Draft with nothing else. Often these come from traditional Irish mares and stallions. Although if you want to get very traditional it is an Thoroughbred mare with a Irish Draft stallion. ISH horses are often talked about in terms of what percent “blood” they are. This refers to how much thoroughbred they are. Currently in eventing horses that are mostly blood are what is popular because they are what is winning.

Louis, an ISH and one of my favorites.

And yes, I have found a toad in my shower as well as plenty of large spiders. And there are kittens!

The toad after being removed from the shower.

The little striped one in the middle is the runt of the litter with tiny legs and a giant head. I’ve named him Tiny Gremlin. The rest are named after Bruins hockey players which I can not for the life of me remember.