I swear I had all good intentions of updating, like, 2 days after the last post. Somewhere between grad school apps, job interviews, transitioning someone into my current role, homeschooling, randomly riding Leo, and holiday prep, that post got pushed down to last priority. So anyways. The biggest change has probably been not having P in my life. But financially, having him on the back burner to do some dressage lessons with just wasn’t working out. Another boarder whose horse is injured had asked if she could take him to a local dressage show, so started riding regularly and P just flourishe ..read more

I didn’t actually do it like this, but it was too funny not to share Novice, baby! And perhaps the biggest change (yes, even bigger than quitting my job)… 2020. What a year ..read more

It’s been forever and a day since I did a any sort of post, let alone a DB post and I HAD to break the cycle of horse show posts! Gah, I love horse shows Pre-Pandemic, my routine was gym from 6-7, work from 8-4, then ride from 4:30-6:30, then home. Then two days before the shutdowns, we moved from 20-25 minutes from the barn to across the street and everything came to a standstill. Hard to sit and do 1st grade school work when you know the horses are RIGHT. THERE. Except riding. Being that in that close proximity and having literally no other place to go saw me riding like I’d never ride again ..read more

So there we were, sitting dead last after show jumping (even though that was due to a scoring error on their part, but I figured I’d deserved to be in last…totes rational), but thankfully the fun part was coming. Until there was mishap after mishap on XC (at all levels) and BN rider after BN rider came off of XC looking dejected after one or more stops. Even Trainer B came off course on a client’s horse and looked quite grim as he described how spooky the course was. The CD had set a few jumps right in the woods, when the horses go from full sun to darkness and then immediately have to jump an ..read more

I swear I do other things besides show. I’ve started at least 6 different posts about non-show things, then I get busy, then I go to a show, and, well, here we are. We headed on up to Windridge last Friday (yes, I’m a week late with this) afternoon, with Husband, kids, and the dog in tow. Since my trailer sleeps one, we rented this RV through rvshare.com and 10/10 recommend. It’s like AirBNB for RVs, and this one did not disappoint. Leo settled in much better than he did at VA, Husband made best friends with everyone around us (it’s what he does and why he’s a kickass salesman), we had a cooko ..read more

I’d be totally lying if I didn’t admit to being way nervous about XC, but for totally a different reason than in times past. Virginia is extremely hilly and Leo doesn’t have stud holes (that’s about to change), so we figured he’d be fine as long as the course was on the drier side. Which it was when I first walked it. Then it poured two days before and the whole Virginia Horse Center was sloppy. And the one day divisions ran and TORE UP the ground before and after all the jumps. Then it poured AGAIN the night before. Trainer B and I were scheduled to walk it the morning of my XC, and I steeled ..read more

So, I did a thing and went to another horse show without telling anyone. I have this super weird hang-up where I don’t really share my plans with anyone- likely from the days of P where I would tell everyone, then I’d get a big ol’ E and have to explain it. But LiveScores always outs me in the end! Me responding to all the texts of “Are you in Virginia??” that I got Anyways, so I entered Leo in the BN Rider two-day division, since that didn’t have too many entries in it (I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t be disappointed to qualify for AECs), but due to a lack of entries, they combined us all i ..read more

After our disastrous (to me, because I overthink things) SJ showing, I spent the night questioning if I should run Leo XC. Maybe I just needed to go home and work on stuff some more. Maybe he needed to get “fixed” by Trainer B before I attempted to jump him again. If you can’t tell, I desperately don’t want Leo to be a stopper. My XC time was 12:47 so I spent the AM packing, helping the team and trying not to think of how a couple fences would definitely get me eliminated on P. Old habits die hard, yo. Jump one had a lot of horses peeking at the mulch below2 was straightforward but P has stopp ..read more

We were scheduled to show jump at 6:15 PM Saturday evening, but the heavens opened up around 3:30 and this massive storm hung over us for what seemed like forever, pushing everything back by 1.5 hours. It was a mess- stalls had lakes in them and the arena footing was just slop. Something I’ve never ridden Leo in until that point. Trainer B and I were able to walk about half the course before they started sending riders in, so I stayed to watch a few rounds to know where I was going. And then I had to walk away. I watched about 7 rounds, and in all 7 rounds horses and riders were slipping, pull ..read more

So as I mentioned, Leo and I had a great ride around the grounds the evening before. He was surprisingly relaxed and I was happy to get on for dressage warmup on Saturday to pick up right where we’d left off. After a 20 minute or so warmup, we headed down to the rings, where Leo took one look at the XC courses in the distance and went: Luckily the judge gave us a little bit of time and a couple laps around the arena gave me 90% of Warmup-Leo back. Which, as you can see, was still AH-MAZING. Gaits: 7.0 Impulsion: 6.5 Submission: 7.0 (this one made me laugh) Rider: 6.5 Score: 30.3 Now, I will ..read more