Maybe this is the case at all the big horse shows… it probably is. Remember, I show locally and my A/AA experience is just as a bystander at mostly regional A shows. Before I visited WEF, the biggest show I’d ever watched was the Duke Children’s Classic in my hometown of Raleigh, NC. At Duke there were lots of amazing horses, but I don’t remember scrim sheets. WEF has tons of amazing fashion and beautiful horses, but I swear the…
First off, thanks everyone to your kind words about my little freak out post yesterday. I am feeling better about the situation, but still not great. Trying to tell myself that just because my dogs no longer fit into the family model they used to, they can still be happy and healthy creatures for the rest of their lives. Not there yet, but getting there. Today I am genuinely curious about a topic I love – braiding. Specifically hunter braids,…
Good – Eliot and Pascale are getting along really well lately. Eliot’s new medication makes him more playful, and I’ve witnessed them wrestling together in the yard on more than one occasion. Bad – Eliot went after BT again last night very aggressively. He injured her remaining eye, although not very badly and she should be 100% fine (hopefully). This attack came out of the blue with all the current medication and training we’ve been doing in place. Fact – My husband first…
A few years ago, the helmet scene at WEF was pretty standard. A survey would have been useless because the answer would have pretty much been “GPA” across all three rings. This year? Not so much! There are more competitors on the market (I call it the Euro invasion) and the styles do seem to vary more from ring to ring than I have noticed in years past. Of course, these are all just my observations from my few days…
For each week during the Winter Equestrian Festival, there is a “Saturday Night Light” class that is open to the public and hosts a big show jumping (usually) or occasional hunter class. These vary in difficulty and prize money, and every year I’ve previously visited I’ve been lucky enough to go for the $500k WEF Finale Grand Prix… which is massive and filled with the best of the best. This year I went during week 10 instead of 12, and…
This past weekend I asked my lovely husband if he would come to the barn for my lesson to take some video. Since it had been a while since he stuffed Simon full of treats, he happily agreed. Simon happily ate the treats, and it was okay because we had a pretty nice lesson. I was happy during the flat warm-up because Simon felt forward and pretty strong. No tripping, no stiffness, no nonsense. Our rides during the week had…
Over the weekend, two horses died while competing at The Fork horse trials. On Monday, I came across a good article on the subject from Chronicle of the Horse and posted it to my facebook page. If you haven’t read Molly Sorge’s “We Need to Ask Why” I suggest you do before continuing this post. Now I’m not an event rider, and I definitely don’t claim to be. I know I joke about my weeniness here, but cowardice is not…
As soon as I saw this awesome blog hop from Viva Carlos I knew I had to participate. I’m kind of obsessed with my tack trunk. Even though I know that one piece of tack or equipment does not make or break a rider by any means, I still always thought a vinyl tack trunk would help me “belong” in the hunter world. I got mine as a very generous Christmas gift when I was in college, and it’s probably one…