A little bird told us you should watch ‘Colbert’ tonight

HN has it on “good authority” (Twitter! Gossipy message boards! Word of mouth!) that Steven Colbert will be showing off his skills acquired during a recent dressage lesson.

Reportedly, Colbert got some training in with Michael Barisone over the weekend.

The show airs on Comedy Central at 11:30 p.m. ET. Full episodes are re-shown the day after broadcast on the Colbert Nation website as well as on Hulu. Of course, as soon as we get our hands on the clip we’ll be posting it here as well.

So fire up your kegerators and get your foam fingers ready, because tonight, Horse Nation, it’s going down.

Here’s a timeline of the events that have led up to tonight’s broadcast:

Colbert reports that Rafalca is competing in the U.S. Olympic Selection Trials, chants “Rafalca No. 1! Rafalca No. !” while waving a red foam finger, and declares dressage “the official sport of the summer”:

The dressage community, God bless them, responds with the release of a strange video showing red foam fingers and bottles of Budweiser being distributed at Gladstone, starring a completely freaked out Rafalca herself:

Colbert reappears on national television wearing a helmet, taking full credit for Rafalca’s placement on the U.S. Olympic team and challenging Ann Romney to teach him how to ride dressage:

As a sidenote, our friends at SmartPak have been egging this thing on the whole time (reason #4,589 why we love them), mass-producing “Dressage is #1” foam fingers, pushing Olympic trucker hats, and mailing Colbert a full dressage outfit, which we can only hope he put to good use during his dressage lesson.

And that pretty much brings us up to speed.

Go Riding, and then later tonight go watch your television.