Alyssa recently told me that my horse stalking skills, especially when it comes to stallions or young horses, are really impressive. She asked me how in the world I remember all the different horses, bloodlines, what they’ve done, etc. The answer is pretty simple: I spend a ridiculous amount of time obsessively watching and looking. Also I have nothing else of particularly important use taking up space in my brain, so it’s totally possible for me to dedicate like 98% of my brain cells to the cause. Everyone’s gotta be good at something, right?

The weekend of stalking really kicked off on Friday morning. Mundial du Lion (which hosts the world championships for 6 and 7yo event horses, with a CCI* and CCI** respectively) was live streaming from France, and there were a few horses in particular that I really wanted to watch in the dressage. One of course being a Mighty Magic in the 2*, who’s ride time just happened to fall in the middle of my morning commute. No big deal… I just pulled over to watch on my phone. Technology is amazing.

On Saturday I was volunteering at a horse trial, running dressage scores in the morning and XC jump judging in the afternoon. While running dressage scores is not my favorite job (why was it 90 degrees? why was my ring so far from the office? why was I so sweaty?) it did give me enough free time for one horse in particular to catch my eye in warmup. I finally got close enough to see his number, looked him up on the sheet, found his name, and looked him up. Ah, he’s a 6yo by Diarado out of a Sandro Hit mare. No wonder I liked him (Sadie is in foal to Diarado for 2018!). I made sure to come up and see his showjumping round and then of course I got to see him come through my fence on cross country. He won the Prelim.

On Sunday morning I was up before to sun to watch the live stream of showjumping from Mondial du Lion. And when I say “watch” I mean with 3 windows open on my computer – the actual live stream, the order of go, and horsetelex – a European pedigree site. The order of go had the sire and the dam listed, but I want to see the whole pedigree and the blood percentage, and horsetelex is great for that. Sit there long enough, look at enough horses, and you start to see commonalities.

These championships have a fantastic record for producing future stars – fischerRocana, Horseware’s Hale Bob, fischerTakinou, Upsilon, Quimbo, Annie Clover, La Biosthetique Sam… I mean really, MANY of the best horses in the world competed at Mondial du Lion while they were up and comers. Oh, and someone we all know named Mighty Magic, who was 2nd his 6yo year and won his 7yo year. It’s fun to watch them all and try to pick out which ones will be the next Sam or Rocana.

Then last night I found myself clicking through the videos of the Goresbridge auction horses. Goresbridge is a big auction for young event horses in Ireland – lots of big ones have come through there, including Copper Beach and both the East and West Coast 2017 YEH 5yo Championship winners. It’s fun to click through for like half an hour, fantasizing about buying one, and then it’s less fun when you’re like “yeah this is never going to happen ever in my life”. I picked out my favorites though, so now it’s kind of a game to see how much they all end up selling for and to who.

I did pry myself away from the computer and volunteering long enough to ride my own naughty creature. On Sunday morning he waited to roll until I was literally parking my truck (I swear to god he made eye contact with me before he went down) and then after about 15 minutes decided he was done with letting me curry all the mud off.

There is so much sass in our relationship.