Heels Down, Eyes Up

Sir Prescott, henceforth to be known as Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) is a 16.2, 13 year old, Paint x Thoroughbred gelding.  He was born at a fancy shmancy farm in Tennessee that specialized in hunt/carriage driving/show jumping horses (apparently that’s a thing), but mostly he lazed around in a field until he was seven.  

Next he was sold as a show jumper to girl who wasn’t all that interested.  So he sat in a field. Again.  This time in Arkansas.  When he turned ten, and it was clear that his current owner was not going to take advantage of his talents, he was sent to an eventing barn in Louisiana for several months of training. While he was there, he proved to be a crackerjack show jumping and cross country horse, his dressage however, left much to be desired and he had a fairly significant hang-up about tight warm up arenas (i.e. he bucked and got flustered if other horses got too close, but more on that later). Upon his return to the great state of Arkansas, FSM was leased and ridden at Training level by a lovely fourteen year old girl, but his owners decided that he deserved a “forever”home.

In May of 2011, a red-headed college student was half heartedly horse shopping and happened to see FSM advertised on http://eventingnation.com/sporthorsenation, she was intrigued by his fancy looks and killer record, so she decided to investigate.  

To be continued…

When I went off to college the fall of 2010, I was done with horses.  No really, I was done, I swear! It was a classic situation: I’d spent sixteen years of my life riding, and ten of them in Pony Club.  I’d ridden countless owned, leased, or borrowed horses.  I’d mucked, and washed, and clipped, and scrubbed.  Perhaps the worst part (to my slightly younger self) was that I was entering my senior year of high school, and I had no social life to speak of. I was burned out. So I retired my twenty year old appendix, Truxton Dune, and played varsity soccer instead.  I even managed to go off to college horseless and without a single pair of breeches, but, as I’m sure many of you know, the part of us that loves horses and riding, is hard (impossible?) to ignore.

 So somehow by the end of freshman year (May 2011 to be exact) I had a new event horse, the above-mentioned Flying Spaghetti Monster, and I was back in the game.

 After a wildly successful summer we came to a sudden and terrible halt (see what I did there?) right before I headed back to school in August.  A disastrous attempt to go Roading with the local hunt left us both on “stall rest”, him with a strained tendon and I with a separated AC joint.  We parted then, and I spent half the year at school in Missouri and the other half abroad in Florence while FSM attended “camp” with my coach in Aiken.  Since our return home at the end of April, we’ve gotten reacquainted, but now, the real work begins.