Ep 32: OTTB Underdog Stories: Brian & Bombino's Midlife Eventing Adventure

Ep 32: OTTB Underdog Stories: Brian & Bombino's Midlife Eventing Adventure

 [00:00:00] Hi everyone. And welcome back to OTTB on tap. I'm Niamh. And I'm Emily. Hey Niamh, what's on tap today? Today we have the first installment of our OTTB Underdog series. We're chatting with Area 2 Eventer Brian Roberts. Brian rides and competes with a really cool OTTB named Bombino, who has a fan club and a reputation that precedes him as well.

Brian, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Can you just give us a little background about yourself and how you got into writing in the first place? Sure. So my background is I'm an officer in the army. And when I moved to Maryland, I took my first desk job, which my background is infantry.

So I've had cool jobs like jumping out of planes and climbing mountains. And there was a little bit of a gap in my life doing data analysis. And lucky for me, I met my now wife, Tiffany, who is a three star eventer. And when we met, she had a picture of her jumping her three star horse over a table, and I said, I want to do that.

And she replied, well, one, you've Niamher been on a horse before. And two, I just saw somebody medevac. This is like, kind of not for beginners. So I responded by sending her a video of me parachuting out of a helicopter and she said, okay, you can try. So that was about three years ago. And then from a writing standpoint I got my horse Bombino in January of 21.

So I've had him two and a half years. And he took me from my first jump lesson with Sally cousins to my first event that March. And then it's been fun ups and downs since, but we are currently going around training together and he's a little laid up right now, but. He's still a good boy. I actually didn't realize that you hadn't written at all, previously in your life.

That's so interesting. And I'm sure Emily probably agrees with this, but I just don't understand how men can just pick this up and just be so good at it. Our bar manager's son is kind of the same way. He played polo when he was younger. And he just started eventing a couple of years ago and he has a really, really difficult horse to ride.

She's so talented. And I think it's the ambivalence of not really knowing that you're not doing something right or wrong, or maybe men just go about it in a less emotional way. I don't know, whatever it is. I'm jealous of it. Thanks. I think there's like a solid dose of Ricky Bobby in there of like, I just want to go fast.

Yeah. And lucky for me and Sally tells me this, sorry for you that your horse of a lifetime was your first horse. We just clicked in that regard and he likes to be ridden forward and I like to go fast and we just kind of like do our thing. Yeah, exactly. So Bombino is a chestnut thoroughbred.

He's 16 years old. Is that correct? Yeah. He's by the daddy out of a clever place mare. He raced 23 times and retired in late 2014. Emily, do you know anything about his breeding? Did you have a look at it? Yeah. I'm taking a look right now, actually. Silence, dead air. So I have heard really good things about his sire, the daddy.

 There are some names in there that I like, like ballot appeal, Caro. It's kind of an older, I guess he's an older horse, but it's a little bit of an older pedigree, which I tend to like. And I feel like those horses tend to be a little bit more. substantial, hopefully a little bit sounder sometimes.

But yeah, I'm not super like up close and personal with this pedigree. I will have to say that. Yeah. I would say he definitely is characterized by being substantial. He's got a very distinct head, which we're going to get to right now. So we're friends with Bumpino's original owner who got him when he retired from the track and she's a good friend of ours and she decided to give us a couple of cool stories about him from the very early days and Brian, feel free to chime in if any of these still remain true, .

She said she unloaded him in a snowstorm and all she knew about him was that he was very polite and he was a really neat horse. She said he immediately turned into a rabid giraffe and was using his head like a wrecking ball trying to knock everybody off of their feet. Oh, geez. A hundred percent spill through.

So I have a memory from going to a clinic with her and I was holding him after the clinic and they'd ridden for like two hours and she goes, he's going to try to use that head to knock you down and get loose. And if he gets loose, we're Niamher catching him. How big is he? He's like 16. He's not a huge, he He's just very effective with his noggin.

That reminds me of, I had a horse that he was huge. He was 17, one, we called him Henry and he had an enormous head. And we'd one day where. We were just having a battle about something. So I think I stuck him on the lunge line and I had a full cheek snaffle on him and I bent over to pick something up.

I don't know, but he used his head and he like gored me in the back of my riding pants with his bit and basically like picked me up by my pants. That was awesome. So I've been there. That checks out. They know what they're doing. They know what they're doing. I think the only difference is that now he looks more like a camel than he does a giraffe.

But, the behavior remains the same. That's so funny. She said she used to have a chain that they called his lollipop, and he would put it in his mouth and he'd rub his tongue underneath of it, and the sound made everybody in the barn crazy. But as long as he had his lollipop, he would just stand there for hours.

Yeah, a hundred percent. You know, talking to Hillary, who I refer to as my baby mama, and that's in a lot of texts. So she seems to think that he was orphaned and so was [00:06:00] not properly weaned and has made him very mouthy. Interesting. So yes, he's always grabbing something. She said one time he backed up and seemingly deliberately pooped inside of her helmet.

Yeah, she told me about that.

Best I could do was he deliberately sneezed on my dressage jacket. Like, I know he did that on purpose. With, fleas everywhere and more of it, and it was great. That's amazing. So her first ride on him, she described him as a jungle cat on the prowl. Which I do remember him having a pretty exceptional way of going.

We could call him clever now. Clever. She said his first hack, he was petrified of everything. And then she taught him how to chase the deer in the woods. And then it became his favorite thing to do. Oh my goodness. I have no experience in chasing deer with him, but he's down for it. Like he's like, Rearing to do whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. She said that she Niamher fell off any horse at the walk until she met Boom Boom, as she called him. He would just disappear out from underneath of her and just look at her with a mischievous look. Like, what are you doing?

 We call it his finishing move, like Mortal Kombat, the video game. It's called the final move. And he's really good at it. He's really good at it. That's so funny. She said that he told an animal communicator that his name was Boom Boom because he made Hillary go boom. And when asked why he did that, he said he knew that she was a good rider and could take a joke.

That is hysterical. Oh, and this is from the I think the animal communicator also said that he knows he's good looking and likes when people tell him that. That's so funny. I forgot about this from the Lucinda clinic. But I went to watch her ride and and this is several years ago. She said that, but Lucinda loved him and she was, she kept calling him a right little shit, but she told Hillary at the end that if she could get him to stop saying no for seemingly no reason, all whatsoever, he could be the horse of a lifetime.

I remember that clinic and he was incredible because he'd like. Stand straight up and then go and jump around all of the difficult exercises. No big deal. And then like halfway through you'd be like, Nope, I'm done with this. Right. He's grown up quite a bit since that was a while ago. That was, I mean, years and years ago, I think.

Lucky for me. Yeah, exactly. Which, mind you, all of these stories came out after I loosed him, and I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait. The guy that's Niamher been on a horse got this thing? Like, whose idea was this? Right. She said he's part cat, part shark, and part chestnut mare. So, let's talk a bit about how you came across Bombino and how your relationship started. January of 21. We decided that I was actually going to do this. I went to Dover and got like the full kit. Like I'm like, we're going all in. Oh, \ when we were selling horses together, we would occasionally have people that we were like, did they stop at Dover and get like the, the half chaps, the britches, the hat.

I had the whole thing sparkly new. It's worth mentioning because I'm the first dude on the show that A new rider at age, I guess I was 38 at the time. It's like really hard to find proper riding clothes. So we went to Dover and the lady's like trying to help me and the men's section is super small So she's like bringing me britches to try and I came out with this pair That tiff was laughing so hard.

She's like You can't wear those. I can count the change in your pocket. And I looked inside and they were called slim secret. And I was like, okay, I don't think these are guys. But we finally found a pair. And then I went to get my first boots. And I, I know this isn't a PG show, so we're just going to move forward with the boot fitting portion.

This poor old woman, like she has to know what she said to me, but she's helping me zip up the back of, of my boots. And she goes, I know it's tight. Just turn around. It's only my finger. And I literally started dying. And I looked back at Tiff and I was like, if this is what. My riding career starts with like the sky's the limit, right?

I have all my cool clothes now. And you know, the magic of Facebook Tiff put out, Hey, Brian actually wants to do this. Does anybody have a horse? And our friend and trainer, Molly Kinniman who was working with, Hillary said, Hey, I think Bambino is going to be your guy. at this point, I think Hillary was pretty sick of him and was ready to just let him be his cool self and , go out and just live his best life.

Unfortunately he met me and now has to work a lot. And so. So she sent us a picture and I was like in love, I'm sure Tiffany will listen to this, but it was love at first sight. So don't tell her. And so we went to try him out. And at this point I had done one lesson with Molly.

And the thing that she taught me was you're holding your reins upside down. This is how green I was. So I just like plopped around on him. I was like, I love him. Like, let's take him home. So that was that. And did you lease him at first? Was that the situation? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We did a care lease together and eventually purchased him about a year and a half later.

But at first it was just like, Get this thing out of here. He's probably bitten me too many times. I mean, Hillary did mention when I was chatting with her today that, she always had this feeling that he was maybe more of a man's horse. And she's such a mare person. She said that all of her mares always just gave her 110 percent all of the time.

And she's like, we Niamher had that thing where we mashed or could count on each other. And so. I think there's definitely horses like that that just prefer a very specific kind of ride, whether that's male or female, from [00:12:00] the get go though, boom, like my kind of ride. Cause he's like, this guy doesn't know anything.

Like I get to do whatever I want. In fact, so we got him in January. I did my first event at stable view that March and Tiff during warmup was like, Maybe you could, move the bit around and, , get him to do something. So I'm sure he, went around the dressage ring with his head, completely in the air.

He was like, I love dressage, this is awesome! Lope around like an idiot. That's amazing. Had Hillary competed him very much or at all before you got him? I think she had done some unrecognized beginner novice work with him and then did like some mountain walks and maybe a paper chase or something.

You know, the mystery of boom, like you said, he has a following and I'll run into random people like that's Bombino. Oh my God. I wrote him. And so let me tell you about it. And I'm like, go on. Yeah. Yeah. I do remember seeing you at a Sally clinic and, and realizing who he was and just getting so excited.

Like I know him. I know him. Yeah. It's so funny. We were we were schooling with Sally at I think he was probably schooling novice at the time and there was two other gals in the group with us and at the end I was like Dude, I love you. Boom. You know, just like cheering him on. And they were like, what's your horse's name?

I was like, well, his AC name is Bombino. That's Bombino. Oh my God. And that was, that was how the whole purchase of him started. By the time I got back to the truck to put him up Hillary had already texted me. I was like, that's your horse, man. If you want to have like, here's the point. Yeah. So since you are learning how to ride essentially, and not only were you learning how to ride, you're like, I'm going to learn how to ride. I'm going to get this thoroughbred and I'm also going to start competing in a sport that requires three disciplines.

What was it like in the early days of trying to put all of that together? It's a really good question. We were having this conversation last night, as I mentioned, boom's laid up right now. So I've been looking for something to ride either temporarily or be myself. And we were like kind of rewinding from this dream horse that I have now to the early days when I was nearly in tears about making this mistake of getting this feral creature that tries to murder me every day.

I think what's really interesting about being, you know, on the near side of 40 and learning a new sport like this is, my biomechanics are not the same as yours. People who have been riding forever, can keep their heel down. I cannot. So I buy like the heel stretchy devices and you know, I would continually be yelled at for, you know, keeping my knees in and in contact with the saddle.

So I bought this, like Jane Fonda butterfly, like the thigh master. So I can do that. So every aspect of my life has now been training to ride. So when I go to work and do my army PT tests, I'm like, check out my thighs. Like, I know this isn't an event now, but man, they're going to be like, put that thing away, man.

Like aside from that, the jumping comes luckily pretty naturally. And boom is such a careful and excellent jumper. He is a terrible horse on the flat. I'm also terrible on the flat through circumstances. So the challenges of dressage are maintain constant pressure, put a leg on, not too much, just a little finesse.

And it's complete contradictions for two solid minutes. And , I just, Don't get it. But what's really cool is that when you have that moment of breakthrough of like equal weight in both of your hands and you're like, Oh, that's the thing everyone's talking about. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. Like I've been riding.

I mean, I took some breaks along the way, but I remember riding little school ponies and horses and things. And the very first time one actually went on the bit. And I, I still remember that feeling of being like, this is what it feels like. Oh my God. Oh my God. You know, I was probably, I don't know, 12 or 13 by that point.

 It took a while. So you got there a lot quicker. I think, I mean, there's a huge supporting cast that's currently not on the podcast, you know, when you're shacking up with a three star rider and you have a couple of FBI horses in the barn and an arena in your yard and you have a five star rider as your trainer, it comes together rather quickly.

So that works out nicely. I'm sure that once Tiffany and Sally realized that , this wasn't just a whim and you were. really determined and you had this cool horse to work with they probably just saw you as this little ball of clay you know no one's ruined him yet let's see if we can make him into this rider you know yeah, that's fair.

I mean, that's why we just kind of like jumped right into lessons was I don't want to make bad habits. And that's actually what Molly asked me. The first lesson she's like, okay, weird old dude that wants to ride. What do you hope to get out of this? It was like, I just don't want any bad habits.

 I want to do this properly. And she's like, okay, let's start by not holding your reins upside down. And I was like, fair enough., Molly's really great . I did a clinic with her a couple of years ago with. The the bands. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I think I rode the, maybe the best I've ever ridden in my entire life in that clinic.

But she also got me to do things that were completely against every fiber of my intuitive rider self. And that's actually what most people need she was like, what do you want to do right now? What's the first thing you want to do? And I said, I want to pick up the reins and create more contact with my horse.

And she was like, I want you to take your leg off your horse and see if he'll just move forward. And my horse like shot out from underneath of me when I took my leg off and I was like, everything I know is wrong. Fix me, please. And there's definitely some training gaps for me as like [00:18:00] we had success rather quickly.

And now you're kind of rewinding and saying , okay, , what did I skip that the horse is covering for me? Like to include Tiffany putting me through some very evil pony club tricks of doing a grid with no hands and my hands on top of my head. I was like, this is fine. We'll be good.

Right. You're like, did you not see the video of me jumping out of airplanes? Yeah. Yeah. Fine. Fine. Fine. I think you mentioned a few minutes ago about Bombino being a feral creature in the early days, maybe wanting to kill you, I think was part of your, your statement. Can you tell us a little bit about his quirks and some of your challenges back then, as you were learning and you had this quirky horse?

Sure. Like I said, he's very mouthy, so like his biggest quirks are being very mouthy like lots of bites, lots and lots of bites. He thinks it's hilarious. It is definitely his love language is physical biting. , like I mentioned that we would come back to my first event, so dressage was perfect.

Probably an abomination like I have no idea what my score was probably in the upper 50s if I were to guess but That's just cuz we finished going into show jump. We didn't know, from a management standpoint, he really doesn't like to be alone on the trailer. So he had been alone on the trailer, he was really, really spun up, and we warmed up for show jump nicely, and we made our way into the arena, and I was instantly on my back.

Oh no! I was like, what? And it's really funny too, when you watch the video, cause Tiff's like, come on dude, this is gonna be great, and then just goes, And you know, walked off to catch him. Luckily, we hadn't crossed the start flags yet. So we had to get back on and complete the event. So we did finish our first event.

But I think from the get go, it was just. One, his quirks through management, but two, it was checking my own ego that, , everybody goes through this, and I shouldn't expect this perfect horse, and the more and more I'm around upper level riders and even, watching people go through the five star, They're quirky animals.

And the more talented they are, it seems that the more quirks that they often have. And so, yes, I call him a feral beast. I think we call him a vile creature more often than not, but he's my vile creature and I love him for it. And so most of his isms are now managed through me, totally checking my ego and being like, this is who he is.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's a lot to be said for quirky horses. I know I've heard many upper level riders say that to get to that level they need to have a little bit of feral in them. So tell us some of the highlights of your partnership so far. Some of the big moments that you really felt like we were becoming a team

for sure. Our highlight thus far has been completion of the Wordaka three day last year at Novice. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah, it was really fun because , you know, in the vet box I had my dad and my wife and it was really cool to do steeplechase together and do, you know, the full long format as a new rider.

It was really cool to tip my hat to the old days. But the endurance day, I had no idea like from a partnership standpoint, that was for sure a formative aspect of our relationship. And just being out there on roads and tracks and trotting around and having a nice chat together through the woods.

 It's funny when we left the vet box to head out on cross country, we're a little bit behind time. It's just a high pressure situation, I would say. And so the time had already started. , and one thing you really don't need to worry about on boom is making time and cross country.

 You just like let him do his thing. You're always going to be okay. And the feeling of leaving the start box on cross country at the three days, like literally something I'll Niamher forget. And it was for sure the biggest and most technical cross country course we had done. And it was just it was like a dream.

He was so good and just so warmed up from doing, , two iterations of roads and tracks and steeple chase. And then he was like, wait, we just get to keep jumping. I am here for it, bro. And he shot out of the start box like a cannon and we had so much fun and coming across the finish line and, and then into show jump the following day and ending the three day on our dressage score was the coolest feeling.

That's amazing. Emily, I feel like you've got some, some follow up commentary. Oh, it's just kind of taking me back. Like I used to ride. Back in the long format days of eventing and I mean my horse was such a jerk just to trot like he loved to gallop but trying to trot on roads and tracks I just remember being Constant struggle.

But yeah, that pressure of the vet box. I don't know if yours was 10 minutes or 15 minutes. When I first started it was 10 minutes. I think then they would extend it sometimes to 15 minutes. That time goes very, very fast. It goes very fast. Yeah. But what was funny too is , I knew that we went over on time.

I wasn't worried because we always make up time together and everybody's got to go. You got to go. You got to go. And I was like, we're fine. Watch this. And he came in like 17 seconds under time. So it was good. You didn't get speed fault. Yeah. I think we left 30 seconds late and we're like, oh, cool.

We just get to run now. This is great. We'll have to send you Brian a link to one of Emily's. Steeplechase videos where she's getting completely taken off with, . Yeah. I had no idea. , he was an X ray source and he saw that there was a white rail around the inside of the track and it was a grass track, but.

I almost fell off him backwards going out of the start box. I was like, holy shit. What am I doing? And I thought I was trying to slow him down. I don't know. I'd Niamher gone that fast. And I also had no idea how fast it was [00:24:00] going. Cause we didn't practice that in those days. You just went really fast and you looked at your watch.

You're like, Oh, I think I have to go a little slower now. Well, my horse was not having that at all. So I just kind of fold it up and went along with it. I was like, I guess we're just gonna go really fast and jump these really big jumps and I'm just going to hang on. And right. It wasn't your coach.

 Like, what the hell just happened? And you were like, I was trying to slow down. He watched the video later. , you're not trying to slow down. I was like, yes, I am. Look, I'm trying to slow down. He's like, no, you would be leaning backwards and like. And he's like, I do not see you doing that.

And I was like, you do see in the video where you just kind of crumple up and you go, I tried. And I was like, all right, we're just going. We're just going to take the wheel moment. Yeah. Yeah. But no feeling that. Speed while you're jumping, I mean, it's incredible. So Brian, how did you prepare for the three day?

Did you do any kind of special interval training or did, did TIFF ever ride during the long format days? She Niamher had so this was like an interesting point in our relationship So to back up we have two roles one outside the army I'm a certified life coach and so we have a rule that I don't coach Tiff and she doesn't give me dressage Lessons and we live happily ever after But to prepare she had Niamher done, a classic three day and so she was like I'm going into this, Similarly to you, luckily we had some friends that had done it.

And of course with Sally as our trainer, there's an amazing amount of experience there. So lots of trot sets, lots of gallop sets, and he's just a really fit horse, so. We came across the finish line on endurance day and he was back to resting heart rate and,, a couple of minutes and core temp down in a couple of minutes.

And we're like, okay, you want to go again? No big deal. It's funny when Emily was talking about his breeding earlier and was saying that it was a lot of older kind of breeding. And I think that those types , they're hard knocking, but they also have that endurance factor that I think really lends themselves to the three day format.

Yeah, and I mean, just from a normal everyday riding thing, we're just like everybody six days a week riding and lessons once a week. So he has a really solid base and so it wasn't a huge move up once we decided to do the three day to get there. But I mean, he does all the work, so it's very easy, right?

 That's what everyone says when they see pictures of you riding and they don't ride. They're like, well, the horse just does all the work, right? It's similar to, so before Maryland, I was stationed in Hawaii and did a lot of surfing. And so we would take like the big fit, muscle bound guys out surfing.

They're like, all you do is standing on the wave. And they would just like be totally smoked. Yeah. Yeah. That's so funny. I love that. So what are your longterm goals together? Are you just kind of like, whatever happens happens? I mean, unsurprisingly, he doesn't have much to say but I would very much like to take him pre lim. Training has been , a kind of a sweet spot for the moment. So like I said, he jumped really nicely. So getting through beginner novice and novice, I was like, come on, we need something bigger.

 This is what he wants to do. But training feels like a nice sweet spot for the moment to really refine our skills on the flat and really understand more of the complexities of the courses and Build my horsemanship. I would love to move him up the modify next year, but, I have All of my ladies steering me in the right direction and we'll see if that happens or not and how he comes back from this injury.

But hopefully in the next two years, we're going around prelim together. That looks like a really nice time. And then we'll see from there. And like this coming from the guy that Niamher rode a horse until three years ago. So I don't really know what's a possibility, but he's seems like he's into it.

I'm into it. We'll just like see what happens. So why not? You know? Can you tell us a little bit about what happened at Lakhmoi and his status and recovery plan? Yeah, I think we're still kind of trying to figure it out. We, unfortunately, we're having like the best day of our life together. We had our best dressage score and then we went double clear show jump.

And our best dressage score for your listeners is probably not as good as yours. But for us, it was a big deal to get a 34. I'm just saying. And you know, still in contact with Hillary literally once a week, she's like, Oh my god, you got a 34 on that thing. That's amazing. Oh, that's so cute. And it was just a great day.

I mean, it was so hot and miserable. And it was very cool at the start box. Bruce Davidson was heckling me that I should give this horse to my wife cause he's too nice for me. You know, just having a nice time. That's about the nicest compliment you're going to get out of Bruce. Oh, I told him right back that she would just muck him up.

So I'm keeping him. I love it. So we left the Stark box and we're just cruising and he was just having a nice day and on fence eight Which was the jump into the upper water complex. He he jumped in nicely It was nice and balanced and we were galloping through the water complex and he caught his foot on something whether the footing had shifted or there was a hole or something and we went from like hero to zero in Literally a millisecond.

So when you look at the still photos, we are literally One photo galloping in the water and the next photo, we're both underwater. And so we did like a very interesting dive, flippy rolly thing. And we both walked away. He having more holes in him than I did, but he went to New Bolton for about a week with some infection in his knee arthroscopy to clear out all the stone dust.

And he has a nice hole in his chest and [00:30:00] then a cut above his eye and just. He has other bumps and bruises throughout, but he's home now. I will Niamher again complain about a vet bill for the dog after you get the receipt from New Bolton, but he is chilling happily in the bar and he currently has three fans on him and a big ball of pure alfalfa that he's munching on.

So he's been a good patient. Yeah. And so a couple weeks of stall rest, probably a couple weeks of hospital paddocks, and then we'll bring him back in slowly and hopefully be able to finish out the year together whether that's at novice or training, but he seems happy. He's biting people again, which is a good sign.

Yeah. Yeah. We knew we were not out of the woods when he was lethargically hanging his head on me. I was like, you didn't even bite me. You're like, don't be cute. This isn't giving us a good feeling. No, no, no, call the vet. He didn't bite me today. He's broken. Oh, well, we really, obviously hope the best for you guys and hope he continues on the stall rest and recovery journey really politely for you.

 I was looking at your USEA record yesterday and I was like, not only is , I'm a total stalker. It's like, I become part of the FBI wheNiamher there's any kind of like a research project. So I was just thinking that not only did you start riding a couple of years ago, but you compete recognized.

So you're not just , Oh, bopping around. I mean, we're so lucky in area two where , you can compete on the same courses as the recognized and all that kind of stuff and do it for, less money. And not having any kind of sketchy records out there in the world for people like me to look up.

And my records are pretty sketchy. But no, , I was like, Wow. He's doing the damn thing. He's doing all these recognized events and you know, some of these venues are like you said stable view for your first event. I mean, stable view is a big venue. It's got a lot of atmosphere.

It's a proper, proper place to do an event. You're actually going for it. So part of it is like trying to qualify for different things. So last year it was Wordaka three day this year.

We were hoping to qualify for AECs and maybe we'll try again some other time. But a lot of it too, is just like building out your calendar for the year. And so, with TIFFs competition schedule with. She has an intermediate horse, and now a modified horse that are both going. And then the baby beginner novice horse, it's fitting in my riding schedule with hers.

And then we also have a side business doing woodworking. So other weekends are consumed with art shows and whatnot. So it's like this jigsaw puzzle of all of our competing requirements with kids riding woodwork, day jobs, farm. I feel like both Emily and I are looking at you like. You're a crazy person, slash we both relate a lot to both you and Tiffany You know, it's so funny because now it's like, ah, this whole sport is crazy people.

I finally found my pack. A bunch of people that get up at the ass crack of dawn, spend all their money to like literally prove nothing to the world. I was like, I love you guys, basically. It's just a pack of weirdos and it's amazing. One of the things I love about Sally, , it's a very cute part of her personality, but wheNiamher she meets a new person, she always asks them what they do for a living.

And I've had a couple of friends that I've brought like to lessons with her and I'm like, she's going to ask you what you do for a living. She loves it. She just loves knowing what people do. And she, every time she's like, you know, there's just all kinds of jobs. You know, it's interesting you say that.

I actually celebrate my anniversary with her of our first jump lesson. I think it's January 9th. It's on my calendar. But the first time I met her, she said that to me and you know, we do our lessons on a Thursday. And so I don't recall what time of day it was, but I took off some time from work to go watch Tiffany jump.

And I hadn't started writing it. And she's like, do you work? And she was asking what my job was. But I took it as like, Who else takes time off on a Thursday to go, , watch people jump horses. I was like, I'm employed, man. I didn't know you were but I said, a little bit of crap about that. She's like, no, I'm genuinely interested in what people do for a living.

It's like her favorite question to ask. And then she'll like, she'll just have like all of these follow up questions about it. It's really pretty cute. , I was going to say switching gears a little bit. With Bombino laid up, I've heard that you might be looking for a new partner, either short term or maybe long term, and was curious, now that you have a little more horse experience, and it's not just, hey, here's this horse, you guys click, cool, take him.

What are you looking for in your next partner? That's tough. I have not completely graduated out of the , same style of shopping for wine where you're like, this one has a cute label, we should get this. Luckily, you know, Tiffany and Sally You end up with a lot of horses by doing that. I know, this one's name is hilarious, we should get it.

Now having Let me back up. What, what has been really awesome is, when Tiff put out the call of who can help out Brian, , with something short term, the absolute generosity from the community is very humbling that people are like, Hey, we want to support, come try out this one.

I mean, all over the place from Virginia to New York, people have said, , come out, I got something for you. In riding some of those horses, it's also been a very humbling experience where you're like Okay, I forgot about the days of my vile creature trying to murder me And I think so what we have come to the conclusion is that I Best respond to a horse that's a little bit more woe than go because I bring a lot of energy to the ride.

You'd be surprised how many rage against the machine songs, have the word bomb or boom kind of spinoffs in them. So those are like pump up jams. And so [00:36:00] in writing some of these horses, I was like, Ooh, wow. I don't like that. That is not what I know. Not to say that those horses couldn't teach me a time.

I've found with Boom, he's very compact. He's very dirt bikey. In fact, riding with Molly, she's like, just ride him like a dirt bike, almost like kick your leg out, drift him through the corners. I was like, Oh, okay. That was it. We're good now. And so , Right now as of last night, Tiff gave me the ride on her modified horse, Salsa, who is almost built like a warm blood.

He is gigantic super long. So there is a lot to learn there in terms of containing all that energy. What I would definitely want for my next horse is something more boom similar, that's a little bit shorter and dirt bike y, and something that I can really push at the jumps, for something that's going to like drag me around.

Yeah. No, it's good for riders too. And I think your lack of experience in riding is the only thing that wouldn't have allowed that to already be in your subconscious. But I think that most riders can self identify with , I have like, I think a dead seat so I can make a very hot horse quiet. Or, you know, people that I've known that has a really hot seat and they get on the quietest horse and the horse is just like, you know, and that's something that is an important part of your writing to be able to identify and, and, and figure out Is this horse going to get lit up if I sit on it?

And if so, , I'm not going to love that. Yeah, that's a really good point. I hadn't thought of it that way. A horse that we had a few years ago named Abby, she was a two star mare and it was like learning to drive a Ferrari. And so basically you could just think the word trot or canter and you were gone.

Yeah. And so Needless to say, we weren't a great fit. You're like, I need a little nuance in there. Yeah. Yeah. I tried to jump her once. I'm sure she's still trying to recover from that. But it's very interesting then getting the opportunity to ride other horses. And I did a little bit of riding with jazz, the prob neck Fox hunting over the winter.

Oh yeah. We were just about to ask you about that. Well Fox hunting is not the time to learn how to bridge your reigns, but lo and behold, there we were. And so just getting exposure to different animals has been really, really cool to , just understand kind of the nuances of. Yeah. And I think when you get to know a horse so well that they feel like an old pair of slippers, you get on something else and you're like, I feel like I don't know how to ride.

You apply your aids and you're like, nothing is happening. When I got my new horse two years ago it was actually two years ago this week. I remember for the first six months I was afraid to ask him for anything. , Deliberately, I was just kind of like, I'll just sit here and see what happens.

And finally, in a lesson, one of my trainers was like, , you can ride him, you can ask him to do like you. And once I kind of got over that, I was like, Oh, okay. Well, yeah. So you touched on the fox hunting thing. So I just want to say that every time I see you ride, I go, can Brian give me a life lesson on what it's like to ride a horse actually forward?

Because when I think I'm going forward, it's like a hunter horse going around in a hat class. Emily. There's video proof of this of her trying to get me to gallop down alongside in an arena where she's like, all right, this time I want you to really open them up, really let them gallop. And I think he went slower and she's like, I'm doing it.

I'm like, no, no, that's not galloping.

Every time I see you ride, I'm just like, man, I would, I think at one point I even said something along the lines of like, if I could get 5 percent of Brian's forward. motion over fences. I feel like my whole life would be improved. And then not long after that, you got taken on a fox hunting trip. And I was like, Oh, I bet you loved it.

How was it? It was really awesome. But you were also like afraid for your life. There was periods of time that I was very fearful. Because everyone knows you're so brave and that you can kind of ride whatever. It wasn't jazz, just like, here's the super young. The first time we went, I got to ride her homebred, which was like such an honor.

And it was really fun. And she taught me so much as an army guy, I'm like the consummate rule follower. So like the biggest point of stress was going past the field master. And I'm like, I'm so sorry. I don't know what I'm doing. Yeah, yeah, the, the fireball shots helped but yeah, the second time out, , she let me ride one of her sales horses, which was just totally fun.

It's very funny, too, , when I, learned these holes in my training. It was only after the fact that I did a galloping clinic with Jazz that she's like, Oh, yeah, when you bring your thoroughbred to the side and he sees light, , he knows it's time to go. I was like, well, that would have been helpful to know when we were fox hunting, and I'm, , using every ounce of my body to, , bring this thing back.

And I could have just, , ducked into the pack and I would have just stopped. That'd be cool. Yeah, I think you said something along the lines of like, I like going fast, but maybe not that fast. Yeah. That was the first time. , and part of it was my stirrups are way too long. And now I've learned that too, but I was like, Oh yeah, that was really scary.

And I've done some really scary stuff. And that was really scary. But I can't wait to go. As expected. You're like, but I can't wait to go again. Yeah, we should do that again. So along the way, have you written any other off the track thoroughbreds that you wanted to mention?

Or is Bombino the be all end all? , he really is. , wheNiamher we're down in Aiken, I try to catch a ride on something. Cause you know, I have my one and Tiff has two or three that are going at the time. So I'm kind of creeping around the barn, like, [00:42:00] Hey, you're going to ride that horse. And so , there's been some like really fun ones in that regard, . I think. I'm probably still new enough that like I I don't even know who they were I just was like, can I try to ride this thing and some of them went well, some of them went poorly but it's all good.

The more the merrier. Yeah, emily. Do you have any last questions you want to ask brian? Well I was going to ask earlier If you ever get afraid or have fear while you're riding since it sounds like you've done some pretty intense When we were kind of talking about maybe the difference between women and men and when they start riding, especially later in life, I think a lot of women tend to have more of a fear of the speed, maybe the unknown of being on a creature that you don't really know how to control.

And I was just curious, other than maybe other than the fox hunting, which, I mean, I've been on some fox hunts that I think would terrify most people. So I get that, but is that something that you have had to work through with riding and learning to jump and that sort of thing? I would say for sure the fear of like personal injury is less for me.

I've been falling down my whole life. I'm really good at falling down. and so , if I take a spill, it's usually , okay. And that's actually something that, Tiffany has said to me is , you've not had any real scary horse moments that would hold you up. Arguably , our last little mishap was relatively scary, but Nobody did anything wrong.

 I felt like I wrote it in right. He didn't do anything wrong. It just happened. It's bad luck. Yeah. Did you feel like in that instance that you were more scared because he was hurt? Oh, for sure. Yeah. And he trotted off and then I was like, okay, everybody's cool.

And then when I started to see injuries, I was like, oh my god, it was like crying. Yeah and he was nuzzling me like dude, i'm so sorry my bad. I was like you didn't do anything wrong It was this real bromance moment but emily to answer your question in regards to fear for sure there is a fear of failure fear of embarrassing You know, my wife, my trainer, all of these things those start to quell the more I'm involved in the sport.

And I see, , five star riders that get. Eliminated because they missed a jump and you're like, Oh, I did that. I was like mortified when I was eliminated at Seneca. When I missed a jump I didn't know it was out there. I walked the course three times. Math is not my strong suit, but I can count that shouldn't happen.

And then when you see everybody's done this, everyone's fallen, everyone has had a really bad day. Everyone's horses have been, , perfect or been feral. Okay, this is all cool. And from the physical injury part of the risk of the sport, as I'm sure you both know, when you have that connection and people at work are like, what are you doing this weekend?

 That's weird. You're riding horses. I'm like, if you only knew the feeling of being on the back of a thousand pound Thunder beast, galloping through fields and just doing it and knowing nothing can go wrong. It's absolutely the most amazing thing. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I think there's an old quote, something about horses being the greatest of equalizers, you made me think about that, you know, even the Olympic riders, the world champions, they've all done the same stuff, they've all had a bad ride.

They've all missed a jump. They all forgot their diagonal at some point in their lives. Like there's all sorts of, , but I do appreciate the fact that , You know, we all kind of go out there and think about shows as this is our time to show off how hard we've worked behind the scenes.

And so it does feel like a lot of pressure and we've all put a lot of pressure on ourselves , to do well and not embarrass ourselves. Yeah. And I mean, it's not an insignificant amount of money. I think it was at least once a week where I tell Tiffany I should have dated a tennis player, but here we are.

Sure. . I did want to give you a little shout out as being the person who helped me secure my interview with William Fox Pitt, because we were at the clinic together and just having a great time. And then we went to the cocktail party and a couple of glasses in and everyone's getting pretty loose.

And Brian's just like, , I'm going to put a bug in his ear. I'm going to go talk to him for you. So the next day , when I see William at the end of the clinic and I went to talk to him, all I had to say was , Hey William I think my friend Brian asked. And he goes, Oh, the girl with the podcast.

Yeah. Yeah. He was such a great guy to be around too. It was super fun as everybody was talking to him about horses. I was like, I'm going to ask you about your kids and , what's your favorite American food? And he was so taken aback. He's like, wait, I don't even know how to answer that. And then it went into this like deep discussion on what constitutes American food for a melting pot of everybody else.

And we worked on this rabbit hole that was nothing horses. Oh yeah. He probably enjoys that. , he is just such a genuine human being and. I might've mentioned this in another episode, but a bunch of people wanted to get photos with him after the second day of the clinic. And, and somebody said do you ever get tired of this?

And he goes, well, someday nobody's going to want a photo with me. And I was like, No, they're not. Wow. So, so wait, what is his favorite American food? I'm, yeah. You really couldn't, we were eating barbecue and I was like, can we just say it's wings? And he's like, yeah, let's go. Oh, right. Cause you were joking around.

 I didn't really have eating wings with William Fox pit on my bingo card. But here we are. I know. And a couple of years ago, I'd be like, who's that? And now I'm just , drinking wine and eating wings with the most winning writer in the world. Yeah.

Who couldn't just be a more down to [00:48:00] earth, genuine human being. Trying to like sneak a hug goodbye kind of thing, you know, whatever. That's amazing. Well, Brian, thank you so, so much for sharing your story about Bombino with us and all of our listeners. Emily, do you have any follow up comments? I was just going to ask where people can follow you on your journey. I guess Facebook, or if you want to be a super stalker like me, if you can just like watch my USEA record. There you go. And if anybody has a horse that wants to hang out with me, I could use a ride. So there we go. , This goes out into the interwebs before booms back in action.

This is going to be next week's episode. So, so fun. Well, thank you both. This was really cool. And we've been talking about this for a little while, so I really appreciate. The opportunity to tell my tale and And our first male voice on the podcast. It was going to be Joe Meyer, but I mean you'll do I guess

All right, well, thank you brian and if you liked what you heard today, please leave us a five star review on apple podcasts You can find ottb on tap on facebook Please give us a like and a follow. We also just launched a new website, www. ottbontap. com. You can find all of our episodes there complete with all the descriptions, pictures, reviews, and a whole lot more.

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