The answer to this weekend’s quiz question was of course Arthur and Allison Springer – congratulations to everyone and thank you for all your (correct!) guesses! Even though I groan that I was too easy on the Eventing Nation, I absolutely love it when the emails start pouring in with the answers, the weekend quiz has become such a fun thing, for me anyway (“put hand in shape of an L on my forehead – LOSER!”)
Allison was kind enough to update us on Arthur and her spring training, and I Iook forward to seeing them out and about soon,
From Allison:
Things are going very well for me, working hard and very happy! Arthur is wonderful and is headed to Rolex this spring. So far this year he has done a trip down to Wellington for a few days of dressage lessons with my wonderful instructor of many years — JJ Tate. We also got “selected” to ride in the Bettina Hoy clinic hosted by Boyd 😉 I LOVE Bettina. It was amazing to see her work with everyone — I watched her teach Jan, Boyd and Coleman. It was great to see her ride Neville Bardos and Nevada Bay, definitely the best I have seen those 2 horses look. Arthur was a star and I feel very inspired. Arthur’s season will start at the Advanced Pine Top in 2 weeks, Red Hills, Southern Pines (Advanced Combined Test) and The Fork. He enjoyed a long break at the end of last year and is looking truly spectacular! He’s always been a looker, but I started feeding Buckeye Equine Nutrition program this past year and I am blown away by how great all the horses look. My beloved Burger is for sale and I have done a horrible job at trying to sell him because I feel like a piece of my soul will be lost when he goes. He brings so much joy to our barn everyday, he truly has a larger than life personality which is very entertaining. I know he should show a deserving Young Rider the ropes. I have been teaching Kelly Pugh on him and it is amazing how much he has taught her how to ride her own horse better, he is such a great teacher. I am also very excited to have Going for Gusto (aka The Big Goose) back in action. He is an ex race horse that is enormously talented and shows up for work everyday. I have BIG hopes for him. I am blessed to have a wonderful group of horses in training, customers, GREAT girls working for me, amazing sponsors and my parents here in Aiken with me for the month of February. Hoping I will have time to improve my golf game! (Below is a picture of Colby Balazs from SmartPak and I golfing last week. Not sure what we are doing here, most likely giving up the search for lost balls!)
Many thanks to Allison for being such a good sport – golf, quizzes, updates…! Here’s a picture of Burger from Red Hills from last year. I had a very brief chat with course designer Hugh Lochore who’s excited about changes he’s made to the course this year and we’ll have more on that soon on Eventing Nation; Hugh will also be the new Course Designer for Chattahoochee Hills starting this May and we’ll talk to him about that also.
If you have any pictures you think would be suitable to stump the Eventing Nation in the Weekend Quiz please send them along to me at [email protected], I feel like next weekend needs to be really hard! In the meantime, enjoy your week, don’t forget your loved ones tomorrow – Valentine’s Day, (Leo is getting an extra treat, and of course we already have something lined up for the Eventing Nation!) and Go Eventing!
