United States Eventing Association

With Amber Heintzberger

Part eight in a series on preparing for your first three-day event.

In this series Ashley Adams, assistant trainer to Bonnie Mosser at Point Above Farm, offers advice to riders preparing for their first three-day event. Ashley is currently preparing her Thoroughbred gelding Vaunted for their second time competing at the Rolex Kentucky three-day event.

When you’re getting ready for a three-day it seems as though all you do is work and plan, work and plan. While that is true and it does at times seem rather daunting, there are certain parts of the process that are fun and a little more “instantly gratifying”. One of these is getting your horse ready for the jog.

Another fun addition to your horse’s attire is the brow band: in this day and time there are a ton of fun brow bands, with everything from traditional brass clinchers to flashy diamante to unique, custom beaded styles. Earlier I talked about how in the rider’s jog outfit, a little personal flair is a nice touch. For example, Bettina Hoy has the German flag on her brow band.

I have used a typical brass clincher brow band. In my opinion the trick to the brass or silver clincher brow band is to have the bit match it, meaning if your bit has the “brass like” color on the mouth piece and silver rings you could use either brow band. However if the bit is just silver, I would recommend just using the silver clinchers.

Then you polish, polish, polish! I actually polish the ends of the bit and the rings of the bit as well for the jog. I feel as though it just puts that final gloss on the overall picture of the horse’s head. When you look at your horse at the trot-ups your eyes should just flow over him or her. You don’t want one glaring issue to catch your eye.

If your horse has white socks, make ’em glow! The best way to do this is to clip the entire white sock up to where it meets the other hair and then wash it with some bluing shampoo. Before the jog or your dressage test, make sure the sock is dry, and then dump baby powder on the sock. That’s right, dump baby powder on it! Simply dust off the excess and walk the horse forward to tap anything that’s left, wipe off the places where the baby powder should not be with a damp cloth, and then very carefully paint the hooves with some hoof dressing.

Bonnie really likes you to wipe the excess hoof dressing off but I personally love the contrast of the white sock and dark hoof oil. The other little tip that I have for showing off your horse at jogs is to make sure you have a tail wrap on if your horse’s tail is either clipped or pulled, to smooth the hair down. If your horse’s tail is not clipped or pulled, make sure you braid it. You spend so much time putting everything else in place you do not want to have a messy tail distracting from your presentation.

When I am doing my final preparation at the jog warm ups, usually when there are four horses before me, I will take the tail wrap off and spray an oil sheen spray in Vaughn’s tail. From top to bottom it will glisten in the sun and looks just lovely. I also like to add a few quarter marks if I have not just recently clipped Vaughn. I personally like the shark’s teeth, however there are several other types of quarter marks that you can use. I often ask someone to do my quarter markers, just to have another set of eyes to look him or her over and make sure I didn’t miss anything.

Braids are essential at the jog. I often times a make my jog braids a little different than my dressage braids: typically I will put in a few more braids for the jog and make them a little smaller and as tight as I can make them. I do the round button braids, but hunter braids look very nice when done properly. Make sure that when you’re braiding for the jog you continue your braids all the way to the last hair on the withers. This is important because you will not have a saddle to hide that little extra hair!

When you go up to the jog make sure you have your “jog bucket”. I usually carry my own but if you have someone that is helping you hand the bucket off because let me tell you when you are trying to stay clean and lead your horse and carry that darn bucket it gets a little cumbersome and I must admit I have fallen before…classy, I know!

In this bucket I usually have the following: towel, hoof pick, whip, baby powder, baby oil, razor, scissors, hoof oil, oil spray, tail brush, body brush, and one clean towel. *For all those girls, I put a hair brush and whatever else I need for the jog.*

I always walk Vaunted up to the jog in his boots because you do not want them to whack their ankles and it may help keep those nice white socks clean.

The final suggestion I have for the jog is don’t forget to roll your pants up when you are walking around to keep them clean! That being said, don’t forget to UN-roll your pants when you walk up to the jog lane! At Foxhall one year I almost forgot to unroll my pants and just as I was about to walk up to the ground jury, Kim came running up and unrolled my pants…what a coach!

So now that you’re all ready for the jogs, you need to start thinking about your extra equipment and do an inventory of the equipment that you have changed this year. In the next blog, let’s get organized!!

Emily Daily & Josh Walker photos