Wow- what a failure I am at my attempt to return to blogging. It’s not for lack of things to say- that’s for certain- but a severe deficit in time and energy required to get it all down. Still, I had a wonderful adventure this year and I’ll be damned if it’s not going to be documented somewhere. Most of you likely know already, but I had the opportunity to groom at this year’s Kentucky 5*. It was a long week, but worth every little bit of effort to have witnessed a 5* event from behind the scenes. I figured I’d capture some of my takeaways here for posterity. Expect several parts to this long ..read more

Jack and I have had LOTS of homework this year, and in order to continue working on his shape over fences we’ve also introduced a steady diet of pole work. Sometimes this means a whole arena set up with poles in tons of formations- trot poles, canter poles, elevated poles, etc etc. Other times it’s simply a few trot poles set somewhere accessible that we incorporate into a flat ride. On the days where poles are the key component of our ride, you will notice that I incorporate draw reins. The whole point of working over poles is to encourage Jack to keep his neck soft and poll down (as opposed ..read more

Fuck, you guys, I missed you. So much has happened since I last wrote OVER A YEAR AGO. Here’s the super condensed run down. We ran a whole season at Training Level. A couple shows were good, but most were shit for various reasons I hurt my back, badly, in a fall schooling, which I still feel the repercussions of occasionally. Like so many people, I dealt with a shit ton of pandemic-[partially induced]-mental health issues. I’ve learned a lot about myself and my friends in the process. If I’m honest, I believe much of this anxiety was somewhat responsible for those shit shows mentioned above ..read more

When I first got into eventing, the year was 2002. My ride was a hotter-than-hell Irish Sport Horse mare who was the definition of a fire-breathing-showjumper. Dressage was definitely not her thing, but despite the high (terrible) scores in the sandbox, she was a freak of a jumper, and eventually we faced down our first Training horse trials together at a place called Why Not an American Ark. Following that, I went to college, the mare was bred; I focused on Ivan who was nowhere enough trustworthy to event, then Foster who was trustworthy but not sound enough to make it past a Training CT, fol ..read more

2019 was the year of… everything. It was amazing. I accomplished things I’d not thought possible. It was hard. Not only did I work my ass off to make it all happen, but my family, both human and hairy, changed more this year than ever before. It was just a lot. 2019’s mantra And it culminated in the longest unintentional break from blogging in the 5 years that this blog has existed. Sorry ‘bout that. I figure though, that when I look back at this year, there will be a few events that stand out specifically. So here they are, in chronological order. 1. Foster Early in 2019, I realized some ..read more

So, last week was bananas and I’m lucky to find 5 min today to recap part 1 of our second Championship adventure of the year. First, a little background though: The War Horse Event Series is an amazing competition series that allows competitors to school the day before the show in all three phases, and due to this and it being well run, with beer and wine and snacks available in the hospitality tent throughout the day (even mimosas in the morning!), it’s exceptionally popular. I often participate in these shows throughout the year, and was excited to not only qualify for the year end champions ..read more

I won’t lie, I had a pretty looming sense of anxiety leading up to the Boyd Martin clinic. Despite only having signed up for showjumping, and Jack jumping great recently, I felt ill prepared and the sense that I was going to be that person at the clinic- the one that fudges up so often that everyone else gets frustrated with not getting their due time. In part this ended up being true, but for the most part the lesson went well and of course the day was all about learning anyways. After warming up, we started through a grid set up on the diagonal with ground leading poles. The exercise was a ..read more

First of all, let this post be a secondary declaration of my amateur status, which will not be in question (not that it ever was) after finishing this post. Also, let this post be a testament to both how difficult Jack can be, and how forgiving. Bless. After finishing our dressage from the weekend before, we changed tack and headed out to the XC course to get our first miles over solid training fences. The most amateur of amateur hours Because he was basically warmed up already, we started by popping over a Novice fence once then coming back at it’s Training brother- a tall roll top in the s ..read more

My absence recently hasn’t been due to lack of riding, I can tell you guys that! And since this last weekend included our [soft] move up to Training level, I figured that would be more interesting to capture than the XC at BRHT (though maybe I’ll get back to that). We signed up for the Training CT at the October War Horse, with the plan of schooling the Training cross country course since Jack hasn’t seen some of the questions that are now at this level. My goal for this weekend wasn’t necessarily to be competitive, but more to focus on building confidence over larger fences and different comb ..read more

Showjumping followed pretty darn close to dressage, and basically I had just enough time to wander into the showjumping ring and look vaguely around before having to go tack up again. If it’s one thing I hate, it’s not being able to walk my SJ course. But somehow I have the worst luck when it comes to walking, and the announcer was chivying everyone out of the ring even as I was frantically learning my course at a distance. What was cool though, was that the showjumping was in the same fancy arena that the dressage at WEG had been in. It was a fairly huge arena, one that could easily house at ..read more