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!