Young Rider Camp

GMHA has a way of feeling like home whether its your first trip or your 20th...
It seems like I've been there hundreds of times, but this was Wesman's first!

Since we were going for Young Rider Camp, and Jerry was one of the coaches we decided that going up together would be a reasonable idea. So Jerry arrived at my house-about 5mins before we were suppose to be at camp...
Everything was packed, including Wesman, and we were off...
The ride up was strange- first I had to run out of the truck at a red light because it had started raining and Jerry's shoes were going to get wet... but the light turned green and he started to drive away! So I ran back to get inside and left his shoes in the bed of the truck to drown! But with some snacks everything was forgotten and it was smooth sailing.

When we arrived at GMHA it was about 8pm. Most everyone was up finishing dinner and talking about the next few days and what was to be expected. I was left to my own devises out at the barns. Wes soon found that there were tons of other horses that he could become friends with and settled in fine while I unloaded "Hanabil" and the rest of my things into the tack stall. By the time I had finished the bus was pulling in and everyone was checking their horses one last time and piling onto the bus. Jerry stopped by and gave me a piece of cake- dinner I suppose. Then it was off to Ascutney!

The first day of riding was upon us and we were all anxious to find out our groups and get to riding. I was in the pink group...
The first day, like every day, we were to ride twice. Once in the morning and then again after lunch. And on the first day the pink group only rode with Jerry. Awesome. Fortunately the very first thing we did was cross country. I tacked up and headed out a little earlier than we were suppose to just in case Jerry had extras planned when in fact he didn't even bother to look at his schedule. So we started with some small stuff- we figured our group was for the green horses or special ed horses like Wes. And eventually came to the water! It's GMHA, water is unavoidable. To get across a little tiny stream the first time it took some coaxing-- By which I mean Jerry fwailing a rain coat around to get Wes to go forward. But seriously after that he was fine with water for the whole span of camp! After that conquest Wes got to be the LEADER horse over the ditch and teach his new best friend, a pony named Gilligan, all about them! A bank in and out of the water mixed with a few of the training jumps and that was that.
So later that day we did some Dressage... with Jerry again. He made a small dressage ring in the dust bowl. The concentration was on being accurate in riding dressage, not just getting the movement done. It was pretty good. Lots of endless 10m circles. Dizzy.

We didn't ride with Jerry again for the rest of camp, which I suppose is good. We rode a few times with Stephie Baer in the Dressage ring and worked a lot on beable to keep conection the entirety of the ride, and be able to handle the sitting trot a little more gentlemanlike.
We went out again to the cross country with Carol Kozlowski and since we went out the first day with Jerry, little Wesman was quick to point out that he did infact know what he was doing. It was hilarous.
The final day we were with Stephie again, but this time for show jumping. We did a bit with gymnastic lines and ended with a couple courses. Wesman was so well behaved that Stephie had a very hard time believing that we couldn't make our way around a simple novice course come show day- frankly I couldn't either.

The ride home was much less exciting- unless of course you count the unofficial gossip that escaped from the two of us in the anything but silent truck.