Reports from Ocala jokingly suggest that we might have a new eventing power couple, but I’ll leave that to your considerable imaginations. The awesome Lauren Kieffer was kind enough to write to us about her experience at the Ocala U25 Training Sessions last week. Thanks for writing this Lauren and thank you for reading.
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From Lauren:
We have hit the ground running in January! After running a couple at the Longwood unrecognized horse trials, we headed over to Southern Cross for a schooling jumper show with a couple trailers full of horses and had a great time jumping Scott Keach’s courses. That weekend we went off to the first event at Rocking Horse and all the horses performed really well. It’s nice to have a run and get back in the swing of things, I always spend the first few fences of the first cross country run of the year going, “Here spot, spot, spot… where arrrrree you!”
Right after Rocking Horse we jumped into training sessions. The 25 and Under Training Sessions were fantastic. It was a week filled with education and huge improvements made in everyone and every horse. It was a great group of people and everyone discovered new talents. Need a shoe put on? Give Caitlin a call. Knot in your horse’s bum? Jenny has “magic hands.” Want to learn how to “Dougie?” Jacob and Nora are pros. Our survival skills were put to the test when the arctic came to Ocala on Thursday, but with lots of horse blankets and some awkward snuggling, we survived. There were also marriages, break ups, declarations of love, and the discovery that certain people fall off in dressage lessons (take a guess who in the comments section).
Throughout all of this we absorbed all the information DOC threw at us. The use of video review was extremely helpful. We were able to make immediate observations and changes by using the iPad in the ring and also spent an evening reviewing our rides on the TV (luckily Connor had some technical skills or we would still be staring at a blue screen). At the end of the week everyone left feeling excited, inspired, and ready to get to work.
February will bring another schooling show at Southern Cross, Ocala 2, Rocking Horse 2, and a trip down to Wellington, so until next time, stay warm EN!
