Second Chances at June Poplar

This weekend was basically a whirlwind of crazy. Originally, my trainer was supposed to drive Fanny and I up there and I'd spend the weekend with her because my parents had a conflict and couldn't take me. Long story short, my trainer's baby got sick right before we needed to leave, my dad had to take me on short notice and did not have any clothing or anything packed for himself, we pulled up to Poplar and got there late with two horses. We had pulled Tainy (my trainer's horse) up to Poplar with us, so that a shipper could pick her up and take her to New York since she had been sold. Wellll, I get a call late Friday night and the sale fell through. My trainer offered me to take what entry was supposed to be hers and show Tainy in the open training division. Keep in mind.. I've never ridden Tainy before.. but she was supposed to be easy.. and we wouldn't have to pay for the entry.. so why the heck not?! Saturday morning came around and we changed the rider on Tainy and began to get ready for my 8:00 dressage ride with Fanny in the P/T. Fanny was tense, but decent, minus one meltdown and flying lead change that shouldn't have happened. I was relatively happy, just beginning to get more frustrated that lately, we haven't been able to make it through a dressage test at a competition without her having a meltdown. She's so capable to score so well, and if she'd act like she does at home, WE COULD! But no, she has to get tense and go nuts..which just gets to be ughhhhhhh. Anyways, that ride scored a 43... not our best but not our worst (although pretty close to our worst). I put it behind me and got ready for my ride with Tainy. She was awesome, and scored a 38. Whichhh, for a horse I'd never ridden before was pretty decent. Then I went into SJ with Fanny... apparently she thought it'd be fun to go as fast as she possibly could and not really feel like steering too well. I rode through it and closed my lower leg and prayed we got a good distance, which we did to most and it was a great round until jump seven, a jump three strides out from a tight turn. She came around the turn too fast, then slowed down too much, chipped in and attempted to make four strides fit, then took the rail. Oh well, we live and we learn.. and taking just one rail in my first prelim SJ course ever wasn't too shabby. I thank Fanny for her carefullness in SJ every time (that's only the second rail we've ever dropped at a HT). I switched tack and got Tainy ready for SJ pretty quick, and had a near perfect double clean round on her. Yay! I went into XC in third (out of 4) on Fanny and 6th out of 8 on Tainy (in a division where I was the only junior, competing against trainers). Fanny was SO good over all the first half of the course and I was so happy with how great she was being, until jump 9. The stupid barricade. It's a tiny little wall on a hill, nothing scary.. AT ALL. It's probably really more like novice height, maybe minimum training height. Why the heck does she feel the need to stop?! Just out of pure bratiness, cause she can? She had just been schooling the week before and I know she didn't stop because she was scared. She went over it just fine on the second attempt and we continued on to finish in third with a stop and a little time. Another quick tack change over to Tainy, who was awesome again and rocked around to finish on our dressage score in fifth place. I'm very thankful to my trainer for letting me ride Tainy so I could redeem myself with second rounds better than the first! Sadly, Tainy had to return to her home at my trainer's after the weekend :( As far as what comes next for Fanny... I guess we'll just have to see.
http://www.wncphoto.com/pp3ht13/004.ppht13/ -- Link to WNC Photography page with Fanny's pictures
http://www.wncphoto.com/pp3ht13/087.ppht13/ -- Link to WNC Photography page with Tainy's pictures

Ready for a move up

 This morning Fanny and I had an absolutely awesome jump lesson! We had been debating on whether to do P/T at Poplar ht next weekend, or whether we should just stick with training. The jump lesson this morning, set at max prelim height, said yes to P/T! Fanny was nearly perfect in every course. Needless to say, I'm beyond excited to be moving a little closer towards my goal of young riders next year! Now we're on the way to Chatt Hills for one last XC school before next weekend. I haven't posted on here in a while, so I'll just do a little update on Rain too. For some reason, Rain decided she would start a lovely new habit of non-stop head tossing. Even a running martingale isn't helping! Our dressage and jumping was just starting to really get good. I try my hardest not to use artificial training aids like draw reins or side reins, but I decided I'd finally give loose draw reins a try. I'm not using them to cut corners and force her head down, just using them a little to help her realize head tossing is a no no and being in the contact isn't all that bad! Hopefully she'll go back to how great she was being before sometime soon..... Oh mares. 

A Cold, Rainy, and Rather Disappointing Weekend

Unfortunately this weekend did not go the way I'd been hoping it would. I had been working so hard to try to make it good, but the conditions this weekend were just not in my favor :/ It rained ALL day Saturday, steadily a good rain and at times pouring.. But the show must go on. I did my dressage in a muddy, puddly ring in the rain. It started out great, the first but of trot work and canter work was wonderful. Then Fanny decided she'd have a "Fanny" moment and threw a temper tantrum on the wrong lead canter which brought our score down (or I guess you'd consider it up) to a 35. We were in a four way tie for second before XC. The course was a good course with some tough questions, but they had been easily doable for Fanny and I in both schoolings... But the rain made it a bit harder. The ground was slop and it was super slick. Seeing in the pouring rain isn't super easy either. The course was actually going surprisingly well despite the conditions and we were perfectly on my minute markers... Until jump 9. By this jump, we'd been through water and tackled one of the super tough lines in the woods along with some scary jumps. We come to this log table, nothing scary, just your usual big log table cart thing. But, we had a runout. Fanny then proceeded popping and being stupid (like she does every time she runs out/stops because she knows she's gonna get in BIG trouble). We picked back up our gallop and cleared it no problem the second time. I have noooo idea what her problem was, but I'm figuring it may have something to do with the fact she did have a little slip about 8 strides out. I think it spooked her and she was just a little scared to jump right after it. Whatever her problem was, it wasn't an acceptable one. That freakout after her runout added a lot of time so we came out with 20 time penalties as well. We then moved to 7th, a good bit behind the rider in 6th :/ I played with the idea of withdrawing before SJ as I really didn't see a point in riding in the slop again. But, it dried out this morning and the footing looked great.. So why the heck not? We ended up having a great round and still finished the weekend in 7th. On the plus side, atleast we got a pretty purple ribbon and some cool prizes. If it wasn't for that ONE runout, we would have finished in second or possibly even first place :( Sad weekend, but hey, well be back next year.... Perhaps at prelim :)

A Super XC School

I haven't exactly kept up with this blog as much as I'd like, but it's not too late to update from a few days ago! This past Wednesday, we took a trip to go to Poplar one last time to XC school before champs. It went really really well! Even though Katie couldn't be there (she was doing unimportant things like having a baby...), we had help from Ashley Giles! Ashley is super nice and will be helping me at champs next weekend as well, since new baby will still be too new to make a road trip :( Boo. I won't have Katie there, but I will have Ashley's great help.. It's just not the same as your own trainer though :/ Anyways, the school was AWESOME and Fanny didnt really look at anything, even the trakehner :D We did a few new prelim things, which is always super fun. I'm feeling ready and excited for next weekend! Although today we took a trip over to PHJA.. I'm tired so I'll split this blog in two and write about that tomorrow ;)

The Adventures of Area A

This whole week has been great! We took a trip up to Poplar on Tuesday for XC schooling and Fanny was perfect. We did some technical training lines, did our first prelim steeplechase fence, jumped through a house for the first time, and conquered some other prelim questions! We had no problems with trakehners or ditches today, which was a great feeling :D I also did the prelim up bank down bank bounce and then I finally found a jump I hated more than ditches, the awful prelim tree corner. I don't really know what is so awful about it, it just wasn't a good ride. According to Katie, it causes a lot of problems for other people too. But, we're gonna school it every time we go so it'll get better and better and be perfect before I run prelim in the fall :) Anyways, this weekend we made the short trip over to Marianna for the 4H Area A Horse Show. It was soooo much fun to finally have friends at a show! Every horse trial I go to, it's just my trainer and I. I loved having friends and we all did great. A total of seven riders came from our county and cleaned up in every division there was! Since Fanny was a little too "high class" for Area and Rain still isn't trained enough, I chose to take my big Alex man :) He's always reliable, loves to show, and never fails to try as hard as he can to please. We basically got robbed in our dressage class because the judge admitted she had no idea what she was doing because she'd only ever even watched dressage once. We got second because his headset was supposedly tense because "he wasn't looking around at everything" and apparently I shouldn't have ridden into my corners.... It's like it was Opposite Day and no one told us! But oh well. On Saturday, we did the rest of our classes. We got fifth in showmanship (out of nine), which is a really big accomplishment for me because I'm usually awful at showmanship :D Then we got first in two out of three of our hunter classes and third in our last hunter class. If I wouldn't have won the dressage or the last hunter class I would have won overall English junior high point! But unfortunately since we did not win either, we didn't get that title :( It's alright though, we'll be back next year ;) Now ill be focusing on getting Fanny 100% ready to rock it at Area champs in a few weeks!

An Interesting Day

Well, today I learned a lot. Rain had her first outing at a small, local schooling show. I was so excited to go and I had all these lovely visions in my head of her being great and us doing so well... lets just say those didn't end up happening like I had hoped. Over the past two weeks, Rain has really started to catch on with everything and been so so good. With all this progress, I figured it'd be a good idea to take her to this little schooling show just to get her out. She was like a different horse when I got on her at the showgrounds, and definitely not in a good way. Yes, I was expecting her to be a little different, since it was her first show. But, I was not expecting her to be this different. I got on her and she decided it'd be a good day to toss her head every five seconds, which wasn't that big of a deal, although she never does that at home. What was the worst was when in our w/t/c classes, she decided she would absolutely not pick up the correct lead either direction and she'd throw a temper tantrum and go up and down. Not cool Rain.. not cool. This was so not the horse I have at home, Rain has never bucked or hopped or anything at home, and has only picked up the wrong lead twice in the two months I've had her. I guess it was just nerves and stress, but it made for a frustrating day :( But, i'll keep riding her and getting better and better and we'll keep going to some fun little schooling shows to hopefully relax and let her learn it doesn't have to be stressful and scary :) On a side note.. I thought it was pretty funny that Fanny decided to jump the electric fence between her and another empty paddock beside hers while I was gone today. The electric fence is a good 4 and a half feet tall and Fanny is generally pretty lazy at home.. maybe she was mad I didn't take her to the show?(;

                              Rain in the warm up at the show today!

It's a good thing she's so cute ;)

The Start To a Great Year

2013 has started off to be a great year and I'm very excited for what's to come! To start off, my name is Lily. I'm 14 years old and my life revolves around my horses 100%. I have thirteen horses, but I focus on my main competition horse and my current project horse. I am mainly an eventer, but occasionally do dressage and jumpers on the side :) My main competition horse is Feinbrand's Fantom (known around the barn as Fanny), a ten year old oldenburg mare. My current project horse is Reigning Diamonds (known around the barn as Rain), a fourteen year old TB mare. Fanny and I currently compete at training level. We started off this year with a great clinic with Sinead Halpin. Sinead was awesome and had some great exercises. I learned a lot and can't wait for her to come back this fall!! Then we headed down to a Rocking Horse Schooling Show to do a training level combined training, where we took the win on our dressage score of 36. We then worked all through February working to be ready to kick off the real competition season at Rocking Horse Winter III Horse Trial. Although it was a FREEZING and very windy weekend, Fanny was perfect and we brought home the blue on our dressage score of 29. That was our best dressage score so far. Show jumping was ehh okay I guess. We did make it around clear, which I greatly thank Fanny for because she saved my butt several times. I guess that's one reason why it's a good idea to get a horse who's done it already to start out with. XC was great, we rocked around a super tough course and ended up double clean. My previous two training HTs in 2012, we had a problem making time. I got a little to used to that comfortable novice pace, but this time we got around with the fastest time in our division :D We then went back down to Rocking Horse two weeks later to compete at the Sunshine Region Pony Club Eventing Rally. We had a great dressage test with the very tough Jim Graham as our judge, and scored a solid 36.274. I have another girl on my team named Lilli, who was also competing training, and we scored the exact same dressage score, to all three decimal points. How weird is that?! We had another clear show jumping round, and I felt it improved from the last time. We had a great XC round, but had one runout at the trakehner. I think the runout was more my fault than hers, I reached back to smack her about two strides out and took my leg off, and Fanny (who doesn't like ditches very much) saw the open gate to the next part of the course right next to the trakehner and took the opportunity to use it. I was very happy with the rest of the course though. I feel like we're making a lot of progress and next we will be headed to Poplar Place Farm the first weekend of May to compete in Area III Championships. I'm hoping we will continue to get better and better and be ready to move up to prelim by the start of this fall show season. Moving up to prelim this fall is another big step towards one of my major goals, which is to be on the Area III NAJYRC 2014 team :D Anyways, enough about Fanny. Now, Rain is basically the sweetest horse on earth. I found her on craigslist locally in January, and thought it'd be worth it to go try her. Let's just say, the ad was a bit deceiving. By reading this ad, I was under the impression this horse was schooling second level dressage and calmly jumping around 2'3. This was not the case. I got on to try her and was quite shocked. Here I was on this old TB mare going around like a giraffe, dragging on the forehand, rushing everywhere, doing random changes in the back, and galloping uncontrollably before and after 18" cross rails. Some might say.. why the heck would you want an old fourteen year old underweight, un-trained TB mare? Well, there's just something about her. She's so sweet and so willing. I think she just hasn't had the right opportunities and training and has just been "a diamond in the rough".. see what I did there?(; Anywho, Rain has much improved over the past month and a half. She is now understanding contact and how to be a dressage horse and also how to use her hind-end. We've also calmed down in our jumping, and can quietly trot/canter small courses now. Rain is a thick TB, and approved by Oldenburg for breeding. We will breed her next month to my trainer's lovely stallion, San City. San City is a 6 year old Hanoverian stallion successfully running around intermediate. His movement is beautiful, his temperament is great, his conformation is perfect, he's basically pretty awesome. So, next year we should have a super new foal for me to raise and train for the first time. Yayy! I'm pretty excited. Rain has her very first show this weekend, so we'll see how that goes! But, I guess that's all I have to say for now...

                         Fanny and I on show jumping day at the Sinead Halpin clinic, January 2013.

              Fanny and I before our awesome XC round at Rocking Horse Winter III HT, March 2013!

              This is Rain just a week ago XC schooling for the very first time! She was super.. as always :)

                                               Rain just chillin in her paddock. Pretty girl!