What's Next? The Requisite 2026 Post

I was entered to show at WEC the first week in January. Then I scratched. And I felt a profound sense of relief. This relief was multifactorial- current state of the competition world, finances, and the constant ebb and flow of how well the pony is going. 

There's a LOT of talk about social license to operate when it comes to equestrian sports. Mostly prompted by the behavior of the upper echelons of our sport we have both seen in video form and been told of by multiple witnesses. Others, Matt and Cecily Brown and Amanda Chance, have summed things up much more eloquently, so I'm not going to go on at length. But the current events have caused me to reflect. Are these organizations that I want to support with a not insignificant part of my income? Do these organizations truly stand for what I believe when it comes to horse and human welfare? Have my own decisions and actions been shaped in a less than horse friendly way due to the pressure of competition? 

Second, HITS ended up costing about double what a USEA event costs. For one warm up day and four classes. Eek. And while this was likely knowable information, the sneaky way of just adding and dropping classes online and then settling up at the end of the show caught me a bit off guard with that dollar amount. Now that we have the property, I'm especially cognizant that every dollar spent on shows is a dollar not put towards the property. And see above about my thoughts about the governing bodies and supporting them. These days what I'm wanting more than anything is to look out my window and see Butterball chilling in a field (property update post also something that is kinda sorta in the works). 

Showing off his freshly clipped ears

The final piece of the feeling of relief: HITS didn't go as well as I had hoped. As Emma wisely shared, "every experience is just more data". But the data I got from HITS doesn't really make me want to toss a lot more money at a rated show again. Especially not since this is the winter season in Ocala and there are jumper schooling shows every Tuesday and Wednesday with legit courses in lovely arenas for $40 per round. And Butterball is (mostly) the same at shows as he is at home, so we can practice the things we need to practice in a lesson setting (lesson recaps need to be written too, especially since I've got lots of media). 

As far as concrete things, my 2026 resolution, the first one I've made in a while, is to be mindful and present in everything I do. Since this is primarily a horse blog, what is my identity with horses? If I want to be mindful in my interactions with my horse and my long term goals and plans, that means focusing on what is best for him** regardless of external and internal pressures. 

**there is a degree of acceptance here that trailering and even riding are inherently unnatural behaviors and likely things that he would not choose himself if asked. He is a piglet pony, answer would probably be getting petted/groomed/scritched and eating treats in a field with his friends with an occasional mosey out into the neighborhood to visit the cows and mini mule. But also he lives a cushy, spoiled life where his 4 F's (friends, forage, freedom, and function) are met, so accepting hauling places and working is a trade off for that. But I'd like to make it as "Butterball friendly" as possible.  

 

I keep rolling around what my BFF equine vet friend told me when I shared about his bit clanking damaging his roots. She said that equine professionals like his dentist don't like to tell people they can't ride their horse for a while, but since he was my forever pony and his welfare is my primary concern, if I couldn't find something that he couldn't clank I shouldn't put a bit in his mouth for several months. That lesson, that idea of patience for his long term health, stuck with me. 

While we seem to have gotten the bit thing sorted (and I need to write about that too), that was a wake up call to the choices I've made that affect Butterball's health. So next up is his feet. To go out and compete and do all the things we did in 2025, he needed shoes. But what if I'm willing to step back, try out hoof boots, and give him time to adapt. Could he be barefoot with the aid of hoof boots? Is that best for his long term health? Ben's hoof trimmer still does two horses at Ms. GY's, so I asked her if she could add on Butterball. She readily agreed. January 12th begins that experiment. I realize that I may be looking back in May or June at a failed experiment. But unless he ends up so body sore other things hurt, then what do we have to lose? 

As long as he isn't too sore in the arena, I plan to continue lessons, both dressage and jumping, and hacking out, with hoof boots, throughout his transition. I know we'll need to back the jumps down in height while doing this, but that's fine. 

He's also getting scoped for ulcers at some point in the next 1-2 months so we can make sure that the plan we've been using for gut health is working. He's never acted particularly ulcery, but we all know how that goes: the ones you suspect will be crazy ulcery scope just fine and those who seem A-okay comfort, weight, and spookiness wise have significant ulcers. I'll also be pulling and submitting another insulin level to make sure he's still at healthy levels with the spike that occurs in January. This is especially pertinent after his acupuncture vet mentioned his overall light muscling with some pockets of fat and suggested testing him again. 

So mindfulness. In everything I do. I'm off social media but back on the internet. Long form blog posts actually mesh way better with focus and actual attention as compared to social media. Which these days amounts to scrolling past a few pictures from a few of my IRL friends interspersed with ads, AI written provocative posts, and "suggested posts".  Being off social media should also motivate real connections - reach out to a friend to get together or even text the pictures that would have been posted. I'm far from the only one who feels that way: What you pay attention to -- expands

In addition to mindfulness, I am working on my strength, flexibility, and imbalances to be the best partner I can be for Butterball. I am also working on my own sugar addiction. Seriously, addiction in the appropriate word, the first few days without sugar I felt like a complete addict, staring in the pantry and trying to backwards rationalize the hershey kisses that are there. This interview goes into how to brainwash yourself. The take away is that you must make your goals visual so the lower part of your brain understands and that discipline wanes, so to change your habits, to change yourself, you have to change your identity. 

Checking in on Our 2025 Reservations

So... in an interesting turn of Process Goals trumping Outcome Goals, our 2025 Reservations have changed... but our Weekly Reservations have, for the most part, been kept. 

Let's see... 

• January: New dressage trainer. While we now have a new, deeply loved dressage trainer, the dressage trainer we tried out in January didn't end up being the one for us. But JV geographically close as well and is absolutely amazing. 
• February
• Three Lakes at novice did end up being a thing, and also our first time winning a recognized event.
• But a few weeks later at the Majestic schooling show, the wheels started to fall off the bus in a way that kinda ended up being the catalyst for a lot of changes for us. 
• March: Carolina International AND Terranova were no-gos as we worked through residual hind foot soreness.
• April: We did go to Rocking Horse, but things continued to unravel a bit as we had an unattractive but clear stadium round and a stop on XC. This prompted me to add in Ocala Eventing Festival where we had a stop in stadium but a clear XC round. 
• May: Given the way April's reservations panned out, a training move up was clearly not in the cards for May. I did volunteer at the May Majestic, so I was there in a way. Then we buckled down on lessons with a jumper trainer to try to help us create the canter that was missing and causing us problems. We did go to Ocala Summer HT as Area III Champs and competed at Novice. Our jump rounds made it clear that we had started to put the pieces back together again. 

Versus our weekly reservations: 

• Weekly jump lesson ✅
• 1 hour bareback walk hack with terrain questions 🗸
• We have less terrain questions back at the GY's (and by terrain I mean ditches, it is Florida), so this isn't a thing anymore
• But we still walk hack AT LEAST once a week
• Fitness day 🗸
• We've done fitness days once every three weeks or so...
• Part of my reason for slacking was the discovery, that in spite of not being a thoroughbred, he doesn't actually need weekly canter sets to bop around novice just fine.
• This fall though, I'll be more dedicated to this because of our fall reservations... 
• Weekly or every other week dressage lesson ✅
• Dressage school at home  ✅
• Lunge in Equiband 🗸
• This gets a partial check mark because once a week we walk hack in the equiband
• Lunging just... isn't great for us. Even in the equiband, he wants to trail his hind legs out behind and be lazy and I am not skilled enough to correct it. 

Looking ahead to the fall, those weekly reservations still apply, but let's take a look at my fall reservations... 

• August: Bouckaert International - so far this is still my plan. We'll be headed out at novice, but it still is an adventure I want to have 
• September: Stable View Oktoberfest - ditto 
• October: Seizing the day, I plan to go up to Hagyard for the N3D up there. Hence our renewed dedication to conditioning this late summer/fall. My husband agreed to go up with me and I'm excited for this!! Then pony pants gets a break for a few weeks. It will also be a great time of year for trail riding in Florida, so after a couple of weeks OFF, we'll spend a couple of weeks trail riding some fun new places. 

Honestly as I look back over these plans, I am just overjoyed to be doing the things with the BestPonyintheWorld(TM). He is such a cool partner and as long as I feel like he's happy, and I'm a solid partner for him, we could be doing any number of things. And this feeling is what made not moving up to training this spring 1000% the right thing. I am in a looser program than I was in January, basically not a program at all, really, which has its plusses and minuses. But being out of that program has helped with any competitive feelings I was having to move on up. Don't get me wrong, I would love to jog Butterball at a 1* some day. But when that day is or even if it happens at all is less important now. The snackamore hacks; the bouncy, amazing trot we're finding in our dressage lessons; the all day adventures; those are the things that I treasure the most. 

I think, for us at this stage, having loose competition goals is still a good thing. But having the flexibility to adapt and let go of or rework those goals is also a good thing. Overall this spring and summer are definitely the best I've had re horses in a long time. 

Next on the Agenda

Since we skipped a December Wrap Up in leiu of the 2023 Wrap Up, let's look ahead a bit to the spring season. I'm going to speak in very general terms because I added a whole unnecessary level of stress to my life for a week by deciding Goggles needed to be doing XX level by XX date. I had managed to NOT do that for the whole first year of having him, so I was about due for that, yes? 

Goals for this spring: 

• Get Goggles solid at loading and trailering. Unfortunately the increased frequency of trips from his new farm for farrier, chiro, lessons made for some back sliding, not forward progress as I'd hoped. He is more chill IN the trailer now, but has gotten a bit worse at loading. It makes my life VASTLY less complicated if he is a single person loader, so we're working towards that. My husband is on board and is definitely enjoying the process of thinking like a horse, so it is a pretty fun project. He's also providing the push to hook up the trailer, drive it to the farm, put the horse on it, and then NOT go anywhere. 

Skeptical faces, we got 'em

• Do SOMETHING with each horse each week, MOST weeks. Examples include dressage lesson, jump lesson, XC school, trailering Goggles to the GY's and going for a hack, hacking Goggles off property from our home barn. etc etc. When I had my frenzied week of backwards goal setting, I was trying to cram too many things into each week in order to be ready by a certain date. Doing things with two horses is already hitting my max enjoyment of horsey-ness and that kind of planning was pushing me over the edge into treating this like another full time job with the same level of enjoyment that goes with a job. Now, I do really enjoy my job, but it's still a job, y'know? And I don't want horses to feel that same way. So long as we are doing SOMETHING other than trot or canter circles at home, we're making forward progress, and that is all I'm looking for. He'll be ready when he's ready. (Not that trot and canter circles at home aren't beneficial, but y'know what I mean? Something other than our baseline creeping forward progress towards consistency in the bridle etc etc)
• Take Ben Ben on at least two off property trail rides with a friend. I've given up on him ever being fun to solo trail ride, but Ms. GY and I had such a great time at San Felasco, I am making it a goal to do that at least twice more before the weather and yellow flies become unbearable in late May/early June. 
• Get Ben confident with down banks. I'm already putting half a check mark next to this one. We plan to do two more XC schools before his next show, but we've already made great progress towards restoring his confidence. 

That's it. That's all I'm putting down in writing. It's a short post. I do have a few shows marked on the calendar for Ben, but I feel like verbalizing my goal of AECs with him last year made it all the harder to take when our spring season fell apart. So these are my reasonable goals for both kids - focusing on trailer loading with Goggles, and two off property hacks with Ben, and then a weekly thing for both of them. If anyone decides to go lame, that's fine, we can adapt from there. And a lame Goggles could certainly still work on loading, so that one sticks no matter what! We'll reassess at the end of spring and see how it went. 

Forever sprinkling the xpress foto package pics throughout posts... this isn't my fave because you can't see his face completely, but look at those knees! 

Levels of Dedication

Side note, this entire post is a work through of a very first world problem. At the end of the day, I am SO SO happy to be out doing the thing with a sound and happy horse. The goals other than that are just icing on the cake. 

When I said to JT back in August that my goals for this competition year were to move up to training level, qualify for AECs, and then attend AECs, I was a bit... naive. I was not particularly unaware of the difficulty of qualifying - area 3 is large and competitive, especially in the winter season. As a long time stalker of event entries to watch the live scores for local events, I knew it was going to be tough. 

Rocking Horse Winter 1 - open training, open used for the dramatic effect of "You can be out of the ribbons with a 31??" 

That same event, the winning score in the training rider division was a 28.1 with second place being a 32.3. Ocala Winter I training rider division winners were around 32, with the top three being very closely clustered together. Rocking Horse Winter II first through third were all under 30.5. So basically we need a stellar dressage test and no more than 1 rail (if that, depending on the group) and then the obvious clear cross country trip (or clear jumping with minimal time) to think about being in first or second to get our qualifying score for AECs. But honestly, if we're going to go to AECs, not just to go, but to plan on being competitive, those are fair qualifications. 

First though, getting out there and completing a training level event. That's where my naivete shows. Welcome to the blog of an amateur eventer LOL. I alluded to it in this post regarding how difficult training level cross country is, but that's just the beginning. Ben is a thoroughbred, so the challenges of fitness are less than in a lot of WB types, but they are still present. The competence aspect is more pressing though. I suspect that by the time we are competent at each phase, the thoroughbred is going to be fit enough. We do roughly one day a week with 20 min trot followed by 3 x 3 min canter sets with 2 minutes in between each canter set. Some forward and back in the canter, not just galumphing along. And another flat day has 20 minutes of long/low trot (if we're sane enough to long and low) added to the end of it. 

He is so delighted by his stall guard

That competence though... moving up to a new level... requires 6 rides most weeks. It has become clear to me this fall that I have been sitting at a 4-5 rides a week level for... well... forever. Adding in that extra 1-2 rides a week does put a bit of pressure on my schedule. I have an amazing amount of time off with my job, but the days I do work I have 8-12 hour shifts. Riding before an 8 hour shift is totally doable. Riding before a 12 hour shift? Mehhhhhh gets a little wearing by the third day because that means sleep is minimized in order to work and fit in riding. The obvious solution here is keeping Ben at JT's and having her do a training ride each week. A training ride would be good for him and mean just 5 days of riding instead of 6. But when he is at her barn, it is a 3-4 hour production to go ride rather than a 2-3 hour production at the GY's because of the extra driving time to JT's. The other benefit of him being at JT's though is that I don't have to haul to a lesson each week, which makes one of the rides while boarding with the GY's a 5-6 hour day instead of 2-3. Tough world I'm living in deciding between two places where I love the people and my horse gets incredible care. 

So there's the logistics of riding 6 days a week. No perfect solution unfortunately unless I suddenly become independently wealthy. I have considered going to only relief work and making my own schedule, but... benefits and all... not quite a jump that I am ready to make at this time. This fall has been a split of time at JT's and the GY's, we'll see how the rest of the winter pans out. 

Our ideal schedule for theoretical competence and fitness: 

• Trot/canter sets
• Dressage day
• 1 hr+ walk hack
• Jump lesson 
• Light dressage + 20 minutes trot 
• Possible cross country schooling? Or second light jump day? Or another dressage day
• Off 

Most recent walk hack, always a little dicey taking out my phone to take a picture on a cold windy day, but we survived

Now that I have put a goal out there, I am committed to the going for it for 2023. But beyond that? I'm not sure that I am a person who wants to be regularly competing at training level (and certainly not above). I do suspect that once we are established at training level, it will get a little easier. A little bit less stress around going in and jumping a meter course. A bit less need to get the jump lesson weekly, once every 1.5 weeks might suffice. We might be able to slip by with XC schooling once a month instead of once every 2-3 weeks. But we might not... and I think I could be content bopping around novice for forever. 

WW: Enjoying the Process + Dec Goal

 

<3 

Goals... modified

I initially thought I had nothing to write about in this kind of post given Yoshi's uncertain soundness currently. The effusion in his front left fetlock is better some days and worse others. I'm getting more and more suspicious he had steroids put into that joint around the time he retired from racing. But neither the fetlock nor the feet mean that he can't continue his in hand education. So without further ado... 

April - June 2021 Goals: 

• Work through all doable exercises in the Equine Fitness book. Do 2 each time I see him. 
• Improve ToH so that we can do a correct 1/2 circle of it in both directions
• Work on standing still over grass for up to 2 minutes without needing corrections
• Continue to handle ears until it is no big deal all the time. Generally he's fine with it, but I think he was ear twitched in the past because sometimes if I move too quickly he will get kind of panicky and then I can't touch it at all for the next few minutes until he forgets about it.
• Continue to behave ourselves for the farrier. 
• Improve handling of hind feet 
• If allowed with this next set of shoes, start hand walking 30+ minutes 3 times a week. Trailer to new places to do this and continue to practice ground manners while at new places. 
• Clip bridle path again. Assess whether it seems like I'd be able to body clip and if not, start working on desensitizing to clippers. 

It would be more exciting to write riding goals, but dammit, we still need something to work towards. 

A good friend came to visit- we kayaked "the Chazz" and saw manatees and otters

There's only so many different pictures I can post of Yoshi from the ground, so I figured this was more interesting anyways