Thursday, November 29, 2012

Prelim Bound!

Cross Country prep:


Longwood schooling, Check!

Stadium Jumping prep:


Debbie Stephens's lesson, Check!

Dressage Prep:

Lauren to Farrah - See, we get to leg yield here, counter canter here, it will be so much more exciting then the training tests!

Farrah to Lauren - WTF!  Leg yield and counter canter in a 20 x 40?  You are kidding, right?  A 20 x 60, maybe.....a big open field and I can accomodate you.


Sigh, we will have to see if Lauren and Farrah (with Bill) can put their game faces on and bring the dressage up to snuff.  Who knew playing in the sandbox could be SO MUCH FUN!???  NO CHECK.

Farrah and Lauren did manage to do very well at their last recognized outing - 31.6 in the Open Training to finish 4th on their dressage score :)

Monday, November 12, 2012

The pictures say it all!

Farrah loves the Full Format!

Now that we have competed Farrah in her first recognized with Lauren (instead of me), I am not sure I will get her back from Lauren any time soon!  We all had a great time at the Fall Horse Trials at Rocking Horse (Altoona, FL), and Farrah competed in the Novice 3Day (I didn't compete in enough Training level recognized shows to qualify her for the T3D).  Farrah loved the challenge!  Thanks so much, Lauren, for doing such a great job with Farrah!


It was so much fun to go through all the paces :)  The jog in the fog..........



Followed by Roads and Tracks.......



Farrah LOVED steeplechase.




And Farrah always enjoys a victory gallop!

Farrah runs in two weeks at the Florida Horse Park November trials (Training).  Many thanks to Alice (the organizer), the sponsors who donated generous prizes and the ground jury and trainers who donated their time to make this full format truly educational.  The riders/horses were treated to pizza and a session on what to prepare for in the jog and the vet boxes, driven around roads and tracks, held a training steeplechase session with Joe Meyers, had a course walk XC with Robin Walker, a SJ course walk and lots of interaction with the awesome people at Rocking Horse to make sure no one got a TE on something silly!  Very educational for both horse and rider and I hope we as competitors in the South can encourage this venue to continue to offer the full phase opportunity for our horses!

I didn't completely miss out on riding over the weekend, as I talked my friend Jody into hauling up my 3-year old for me to hack out....she is  half pony and will be an up and coming pony eventer, even though she is horse sized ;) 



Introducing Mia, WH Top Gun (Connemara) x Black Dog's Fiorella (Trakehner).  If I have to hand the reins on Farrah to Lauren to qualify Farrah for a One Star, at least I have something that I can compete on in 2013 :)