I made him do a photo shoot yesterday. He rolled in mud right after this.
I’ve been late to the competition game this season, as I didn’t go south at all, but stayed in Virginia to keep working and doing long slow fitness and flatwork hours with my horses. I have my two actively competing this season, a bunch of greenies, and a group of great students. Outside of the horrible snow of February, it really hasn’t been bad at all. In fact, I want to say that it’s almost been a nice relief to not have to go south and go crazy competing all over the place and return home to a depleted bank account and a trailer full of sand. However, my horses are looking fit and “slick as onions” (as my farrier said the other day) and I’m excited to get going competing next weekend at Carolina International!
U.S. Weekend Preview:
Pine Top Spring H.T. [Website] [Omnibus] [Entry Status] [Live Scores]
MeadowCreek Park H.T. [Website] [Omnibus] [Ride Times] [Live Scores]
Full Gallop Farm March I H.T. [Final Scores]
Copper Meadows H.T. [Website] [Omnibus] [Entry Status/Ride Times] [Live Scores]
News From Around The Globe:
As we all consider the fate of Eventing after yet another tragedy, it’s worth reading this article from Jimmy Wofford. Yes, it was written in 2008, but it holds just as true now. The internet is full of outrage and complaint, but Jimmy does an excellent job of condensing the concerns into logical and digestible information, forming his argument. He believes that the true problem with Eventing is that the increase in difficulty of Dressage and Show Jumping has morphed our horses into ones without initiative, and that is the cause of the increase in rotational falls. As he puts it, we have designed a sport by humans for humans, instead of a sport designed by humans for horses. [Eventing Lives in the Balance]
Nine British horses have been entered so far at Rolex, and entries don’t close for another week and a half. The British have WFP bringing two defending Rolex champions and one four-star rookie, Nicola Wilson returning for the first time since the WEG in 2010, and both Zara Phillips and Francis Whittington making their personal Rolex debuts. We love Rolex as our only CCI4* in North America, but we really love when the Europeans come over here and we can ooh and ahh at them! [British Take On Rolex]
Don’t forget to enter this week’s awesome Fab Freebie from SaddleLockers! Here’s your chance to win a prize pack of swag, courtesy of SaddleLockers, Ogilvy, and Higher Standards Leather Care. Entries close Friday at midnight EST and we’ll be announcing the winner in Saturday’s News & Notes. [Fab Freebie: SaddleLockers]
Jen McFall wrote an amazing blog for The Chronicle on how her competitive instinct got in the way of her results with High Times. Billy, as he is known, completed Rolex last year with Jen for the first time, and has already started his competition season on the west coast. Jen blogs about how she decided to really push for the results in dressage that she knew could happen, and her insistence on perfection completely backfired, but it opened her up to a new way of thinking about her relationship with Billy and the competition. [The Power of Perception: Taming the Dragon]
Nyls usually has good ground manners, but at competitions it’s basically his life goal to drag me everywhere, mostly in search of grass at inopportune times. He’s a little bit of the horse that the more you pull, the harder he pulls, and the more you up the ante by putting a chain or some other preventative gadget on him, the worse he acts. For years, I just swallowed my pride and let him drag me around, only occasionally feeling like a good horse mother. Then I discovered the Professional’s Choice rope halter, and bad leading habits disappeared! I can finally walk him around the barns and out to graze without having to fear looking like a kid skidding her heels against a fat shetland pony. #lifegoals [SmartPak Product of the Day]
Congrats to Kristen Forti, the winner of this week’s Fab Freebie giveaway for a SaddleLockers prize pack! Please email [email protected] to claim your prize. Be sure to check out SaddleLockers’ full lineup of amazing tack trunks by clicking here. Congrats to Kristen, and check back Monday for the next Fab Freebie! [Fab Freebie]
