To my great dismay, I have never been eventing in British Columbia. After looking at these photos that Chelan sent from the Johvale event in BC last weekend, particularly the top one, my next step after publishing this post is to call Delta and buy a plane ticket. Seriously, how many margaritas do you have to make in a day to justify a margarita powered by a gas engine? With a full handle throttle no less. If you don’t understand the bottom photo then clearly you have never hopped off a horse wearing a Point Two without unclipping it. I’ve done it once and I figure pretty much everyone will do it once. The best is when it happens to someone at Rolex with a bunch of reporters standing around them. As always, thanks for the photos and recap Chelan. [Chelan’s website]
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From Chelan:
Johvale is located in Pritchard, BC. Thirty minutes east of Kamloops BC, five hours from Vancouver into the interior of BC.
This past long weekend (we Canucks celebrate ‘Queen’ Victoria day with a Monday holiday in May) My 3 DAZE gang attended in full force with 14 students plus myself riding. I like to say that we travel in a herd. About 20 horse rider combinations pulled out due to the EVH-1 situation. While keeping our horses safe and sound and healthy is a top priority, our group made an educated decision to attend, as the tiny number of horses exposed in the Utah competition had been quarantined and thus far no further cases have been recorded in our province. I am the first to play it safe where horse safety and welfare is concerned, but when making such decisions, fact needs to prioritize high drama and gossip. So, up we went and felt as safe doing so, as we could ever feel at a competition. My big boost in confidence was that my vet’s wife brought her horse up. She loves her horse and if her husband figured it was safe and it wasn’t, just IMAGINE the marital discord.
Many of you will have read my previous post on EN called ‘Eventing west Coast style’. Johvale is a TRUE west coast BC event. No running water (they have to ship water up this HUGE mountain and put the water in big plastic tanks) No flush toilets. Needless to say, the camping is basic. So is the stabling. Horses at the event are housed in pole corral stabling, which works remarkably well! Many back country horsemen in the area high line horses when they go on long rides, so pole corrals are actually a luxury. As it turned out the outdoor pole corrals actually provided a quarantine of sorts. there is enough stabling that each barn/group could be out of nose to nose contact and no real shared air space.
Johvale used to have FEI levels, but with the growth in area 7, that need has gravitated south of the 49th parallel. They ran intermediate up until a few years ago. Pine beetle destroyed a huge portion of the course area, and the event organizers had to rebuild. The event now runs to preliminary, and offers an IP division. The footing is natural sand, and later in the summer, the footing gets hard. in May though, it is positively sublime!! They have spectacular natural terrain, with a magnificent view.
Dressage and SJ run on Saturday, with XC on Sunday. The SJ course is possibly the toughest in N.A. yes, you heard me!!! Canadian rules allow for training level and above to have 25% of the fences over height, so SJ is on steroids to begin with in Canada, same as CIC’s can have bigger SJ. Add to it HILLY terrain, and a challenging course design and you have a tough, but fair test. Although there are not a string of clear rounds, I always feel like my students learn so much having to deal with terrain in SJ. speaking of hills, check out the photo of the horses on the hillside! This is the turn out behind the barn. I think those ponies are close to 4 star fit.
The cross country course sports two water jumps and plenty of hilly terrain to practice on. Roger Haller designs the course, and has wonderful progression through the levels.
There were a coupe of air vest deployments on Saturday, one of which was followed by a classic BC scenario. Girl falls of horse (absolutely fine, thanks Mr air vest…) horse gallops away, various random people shout ‘loose horse’ several make vain attempts to catch said beast. YAWN, seen that movie before. What happens next is quintessential West Coast. A rider on a cutting horse who also events (previously up to INT no less!!) gallops out of the XC warm up area and handily catches the horse. By catches, I mean he gets his head low stares the lose horse down and at the last second whips his body perpendicular to the loose horse, trapping him between the cow pony slash event horse and the fence line. Loved it!!
Now I’m not one to brag, but 3 DAZE riders won three out of the six divisions, and nearly won a fourth division until a protest was lodged, so second place after that. Technically, I won the IP too, but since I was the only entry, I’m pretty sure we can’t count that. On a personal note, my INT horse Escalade last competed and walked of the XC at Galway as he was stopping. We discovered he was sore, not chicken, which is so much easier to fix! Anyhow, he feels like a million bucks and we are back in action. Poor things, if they could only tell us when they are not 100% so we could act faster to help them!
The other photos is fairly self explanatory. When I get an e mail or a phone call about a new client I always ask myself, “would I want to have a glass of wine with this person after work?” If the answer is ‘no’ then I’m suddenly not taking new students! Point is, life is too short to have bad apples in the mix. I am so fortunate to have wonderful clients. The Dad in this photos has a 2 stroke engine powered margarita mixer. Yes, your eyes do not deceive you, those are motorcycle handle bars that power the motor. Fresh strawberry daiquiris Saturday night- YUM!! Clearly they made the 3DAZE client ‘cut’ easily… We actually did an EN cheer with the drinks. Strawberry red on the right, white on the left, insanity in the middle!
My gang stayed on the holiday Monday to enjoy a XC school which was offered to participants and so much appreciated. Property owner and organizer Heather Blomgren is a ‘typical’ organizer- works her tail off with a slew of volunteers to put on a fantastic event for the riders to enjoy. Thanks, Heather, and all of you organizers who run events so that we riders can play. We salute you!
Short video of a few of my gang enjoying the event. There are many such grass roots events all over North America. Of course we get all hyped up about the 4 stars and other biggies, but these events are the heart and soul of our sport. Go eventing!
