If this doesn’t demonstrate what a partnership is all about then I’ve been doing it wrong for decades now. Today Patrick gave me his best efforts on the VAHT Intermediate XC and as you’ll see (pardon the language) at fence 21 A I thought I had balanced enough for a quite difficult question coming so late in the course with two upright narrow boxes on a very short one stride after two galloping efforts downhill. Needless to say I failed at my job, causing Paddy to hit a knee sending me forward onto his neck and by George that horse held the line WITHOUT my help and jumped the second out of a perfect distance and a lovely shape (Mary Brant Gamma has pics to prove) pushing me back into the saddle and away we went fault free and full of confidence! I am not condoning mistakes here people but what I am encouraging you “next generation riders” to do is to take that extra time to groom your horse, clean his stall, take him on hacks and become his friend. In moments like these you’ll sure be glad that you did. What a horse! #callhimpaddy #poweredbyottb
Posted by Lainey Ashker on Saturday, May 25, 2019
Lainey Ashker has a string of serious up-and-comers in her stable right now, one of them being Call Him Paddy, a 2010 off-the-track Thoroughbred gelding (Alymagic X Woodford Princess, by Candi’s Gold) with whom she competed in the 2015 Retired Racehorse Project Thoroughbred Makeover.
Lainey ran “Patrick” in the hotly-contested Open Intermediate division at Virginia Horse Trials over the weekend and made easy work of the course up until a late-course question, when a rider error caused a hairy moment that Patrick could have easily opted to run out from the second element. Instead, his training and relationship with his rider kicked in and brought them both home free of jumping faults.
Hear what happened from Lainey herself:
“If this doesn’t demonstrate what a partnership is all about then I’ve been doing it wrong for decades now. Today Patrick gave me his best efforts on the VAHT Intermediate XC and as you’ll see (pardon the language) at fence 21 A I thought I had balanced enough for a quite difficult question coming so late in the course with two upright narrow boxes on a very short one stride after two galloping efforts downhill. Needless to say I failed at my job, causing Paddy to hit a knee sending me forward onto his neck and by George that horse held the line WITHOUT my help and jumped the second out of a perfect distance and a lovely shape (Mary Brant Gamma has pics to prove) pushing me back into the saddle and away we went fault free and full of confidence!
“I am not condoning mistakes here people but what I am encouraging you ‘next generation riders’ to do is to take that extra time to groom your horse, clean his stall, take him on hacks and become his friend. In moments like these you’ll sure be glad that you did. What a horse! #callhimpaddy #poweredbyottb”
Lainey and Patrick added a rail in stadium and a handful of time across country to their score to move from 12th place after dressage to finish the event in 4th place.
