Tuesday, February 9, 2010

I promise at some point I will post all of the entries that are written to fill the void from September and now...
They're written, they're just not posted...
Alas.
The animals and the people are happy thus far...

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Cross Country Schooling at Apple Knoll with Swift River Pony Club

The club finally came together to get a schooling day in at Apple Knoll.
Little Finnegan and I were the champions of the day, being the only pair not to seperate at some point!
Apple Knoll is having a schooling event soon so all the jumps out on course were numbered which was awesome! It was a great oppertunity to see how the jumps would relate to eachother on course verses taking the jumps individually like I tend to normally do when schooling.
Finnegan was great all day, we stuck to mainly the training level fences- which was a great confidence boost after out fail at King Oak last weekend. I finally took Jerry's advice and used the running martengle and it was wonderful! I don't kow why I don't listen to him more often.

Molly took some videos through out the day and as soon as I get the link from her they will be posted!

Sunday, September 13, 2009

King Oak Farm Fall H.T.

It's been a full year since my last event and I was really hoping for better results than the last one too! (Wesman got himself eliminated in Stadium by literally backing into a corner- so typically.)
But little Finnegan was feeling fine the week before and I was excited to finally go to an event!
True to my style of epic preparedness I got to the barn in in the morning, five minutes later than I wanted, only to find that my horse had yet to eat his breakfast because he was still outside and covered in dirt! Luckily my times were late enough in the morning that I could give him a proper bath and braid him before Dad came down with the trailer. It was so wonderful to be able to braid little Finnegan's forelock! (A feat, unfortunately, not regular enough with baby Wesman.)
We pulled into King Oak with a good amount of time before my Dressage test so I ran off right away to walk the cross country. Most of the fences have been there year after year, and the course looked great. One addition that I had not seen at King Oak before was two roll tops before the water on a three stride bending line- Pretty tough for the level, but at the time, I thought nothing of it.
When I returned to the trailer (with a PRIME parking spot right next to the cross country start box) breakfast was served.After some pancakes it was time to yank little Finneus out of the trailer to get ready for our debut.
Warm-up for Dressage was great! He was stretching into the contact, bending beautifully and completely tuned in... The actual test, not so much. By time the whistle blew we had only gone one length of the ring and did not have time to go completely around- so when we were in the ring the voodoo in the woods next to the arena were a lot to handle! The test was tense but accurate and we received at 39. Tied for 10Th place (not that we had any goal set aside from finishing!)
I was very anxious about stadium for reasons still unknown... Our warm-up was rushed and our performance in the ring was unfocused. Turning from the second jump to the third Finnegan slipped on the hill and we didn't get it together soon enough to make it over the jump... I think the stop freaked him out and he stopped again at the third. Bummer. The TD allowed us to go jump around cross country permitting we didn't die.
We trotted the first little inviting log- because we had nothing to lose! and finally got into a rhythm after the third jump. Turning to 6a I had completely forgotten how difficult the 3 stride turn would be to 6b and he soared over the a. We called it quits after that. No sense running at something that isn't there.

So we didn't finish, but we did learn a lot.
It's just some days I feel as though the eventing gods have it out for me...

Pony Club is trying to pull together a schooling day at Apple Knoll soon...and we are entered in Ethel Walker in October.
We shall see...

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

The hunt continues...

Things with Wallendohr didn't work out.
However, the good news is, that I have looked at two another horses!
The first is Jackson. He's a TB/Clyd 17.2 hands! His owner is off to France and needs to sell him ASAP. He's super cute but really inexperienced and not quiet what I'm looking for. If only I had a ton of empty stalls, acres and acres of free land, and money to spare!
The second, though, is Finnegan, he's a little 15 hand TB currently running training level. We went up and tried him last week and he is just darling! His owner is in nursing school and is looking to lease him out until she graduates in two years.
This past weekend we went up to Huntington Farm H.T. to see him compete.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

The hunt is on

After too much time spent waiting for a horse to magically appear in the third stall I decided that perhaps I should take matters into my own hands...
And since I have virtually no money to buy a horse I've posted an want ad for the eventing community in hopes of lease coming my way...
We went up to Kingsbury Hill to look at a horse this past week. His name is Wallendohr he did one event, two years ago, and go eliminated. Welcome to my life. However, he's gorgeous! 10 y/o,TB/WB cross, dappled grey, 17+ hh.

We'll see!