Dougie Does Gymnastics!

We've been jumping Dougie over small fences at home and he has been cross country schooling twice now, but since he struggles a bit with his coordination we figured it was time to introduce some simple gymnastics into his program.  While he is not the most talented horse in the world, he really tries his heart out and is starting to love his job!  I just love him and he will be a great partner for Scott.  Here are a few videos of his gymnastics yesterday:

Spring Bay Cross Country Videos

Welcome New Sponsor Southern States!!!

It is with great pleasure that I am able to announce our new sponsor, Southern States!  If you're not familiar with the company feel free to contact me for information about the large selection of high quality feeds they offer including Triple Crown, Legends, and their own Southern States brand.  I have been feeding these products for about 4yrs and they are all wonderful!  They offer a selection of feed to suit horses in any stage of life or workload, with several feeds designed to target specific needs or problems that your horse may have.  I currently have Snoopy on Triple Crown Complete, which is a high fat and fiber feed designed to meet the energy demands of rigorous competition.  He is very ulcer-prone and the high fiber content helps me to mange that issue in particular.  He feels great and looks like a million bucks!  Our older QH is on the Triple Crown Low Starch feed, as his age and breed make him prone to things such as founder and Cushing's Disease.  He's doing much better with his weight now and I attribute that to switching him to this  feed last year.  The other horses are on SS Triple 10, which is a high quality, high fat and fiber feed to keep them looking and feeling great.  There is no other comparable feed to the Triple 10 in this area, and is priced VERY competitively!  Feel free to contact me, visit your local store, or the Southern States website for more information.

Be a Part of the Journey!

As the cost of developing Snoopy into a top level competitor grows more by the day, I will no longer be able to manage it on my own.  I have set up an easy way for anyone interested in helping us reach our goals to do so via Paypal on my website at www.starfireeventing.com.

Welcome Rupert!

Welcome 5yr old, 16.3h OTTB, Rupert!  He is our third acquisition from trainer Doug Cowans, Snoopy and M&M's former race trainer, and looks to be just as nice as those two!!   Many thanks to Doug and previous owner Craig Beam for allowing us to bring Rupert home to a new career!!

If that's not the body of a jumping machine I don't know what is!  Hopefully he takes to his new career!

Starfire Eventing is now on Facebook!

Please visit our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Starfire-Eventing-Lauren-Snider/334884036558681  We'd love to here from you!

Pics from Sporting Days March 2012

I finally got my pictures of Snoopy from his first Prelim at Sporting Days!  Can we say "scopey??!!"  I guess I can stop worrying about whether or not he has enough jump for the upper levels!

****ALL photos courtesy of GRC Photo!****

Welcome McKenna!!!!

Wow, there are so many cool things happening around here at the moment!  Lots of excitement in the last few days!  The biggest news is that we are moving to a fabulous new facility in Burlington, KY where I will be teaching all of the dressage and jumping lessons.  There is also a Natural Horsemanship trainer available on site.  The farm is almost 100 acres with ample turnout, indoor arena, 12x12 and 10x12 matted stalls (exterior stalls have windows to the outside!), hot/cold indoor washrack, loads of hacking and galloping, climate controlled tack room and lounge, and a 130x200 sand outdoor to be completed this spring.  It's awesome and we are sooo excited!  Full board, training, and lessons available.  More info and pics to follow very soon.

In other big news, we have finally found the perfect person to lease our beloved Cheddars!  The Miller family will be leasing Cheds for their 11yr old daughter McKenna and it is a perfect fit!  We have turned a few people away, but McKenna and her family are just delightful!  She's also an excellent little rider I might add!  Cheds still has a lot left to teach someone and this will hopefully work out great.  He will remain in our barn which is even better! 

On a final note, we took Snoopy and Dougie cross country schooling yesterday and overall it was a great, educational day for both.  The only thing Snoopy needed to accomplish was to jump as many ditches and coffins as he could stand after our little mishap at Sporting Days and he was great.  He jumped through the Prelim coffin about a hundred times and I think I got my point across!  We also jumped up and down the big steps which he handled like a pro.  He's really a very honest, intelligent little horse, just a tad ditchy.  This was Dougie's very first cross country school and he wasn't too sure about it at first.  Scott did a good job with him though, and I got on him at the end just to try to get his confidence up.  Mission accomplished!  He is a bit chicken about the water though, so we'll have to work on that.  He behaved like a total gentleman all day. 

Today is dressage test day for Snoops, so off we go to work on that Prelim test!

Until next time.....

Sporting Days Videos

Here are the SJ and XC videos of Snoop from this weekend.  Let me just say again that this rank behavior in the SJ arena did NOT show itself in warm-up!  I wish I had that on video, but it was raining so Scott didn't want to mess the camera too much.  He was so quiet and professional and then his switch got flipped as it does sometimes without warning.

Sporting Days March-Still Smiling

Ok, so Snoopy decided today that I should get my nice beige full seat britches nice and muddy and so I ended up on the ground in the coffin-and I'm still smiling!  No, it's not sarcasm, I really still do have a lot to smile about.  This weekend marked Snoopy's big Preliminary debut, and while ending up in a ditch 3 fences from home after an otherwise clean round was not exactly how I envisioned ending my weekend, there were a lot of good moments too.  I was very nervous leading up to this event, being Snoop's first prelim and my first event above Training in almost 8 years (yikes!!!!)  The course was a lot more difficult than it has been in previous years, so I was a bit taken aback when I walked it Friday morning.  Lots of butterflies :) !!  But I guess I should start from the beginning.

He was still very tense in the dressage this weekend, but far more rideable than he was at the February event.  His score was 9 points better than that test, even with an error (duh, mom.)  He got a 7 on his gaits and I got a 7 as well.  It was nice to be rewarded for doing a good job of riding my horse on one of his more difficult days.  He didn't do anything wrong, but she could not give us higher marks due to his tension.  Every comment was spot on and her scores were very fair.  Even got 7's on his counter-canter loops, which we struggled with this winter!  Something about this place just gets him so wound up, I haven't quite figured it out.

My show jumping warm-up would've made a grand-prix jumper rider proud.  It was awesome!  After a less than ideal (terrible, actually) jump lesson last weekend, the warm-up he gave me today had me grinning ear to ear.  He was quiet, getting to the base of the fences, and jumping the crap out of them with room to spare.  There were some pretty big names with some high-dollar animals in that ring and my little rat was just as good if not better than all of them!  My little pony will hold his own!  Unfortunately he was just plain rank in the show ring.  He was very honest though and the size didn't bother him a bit.  He had 2 down and I can honestly say for once that they weren't my fault!  Just caught both rails with a hind foot because he was wild.  (Video to come!)

He was great on cross-country, although a bit puzzled by the corner and single chevron.  He's just hasn't quite figured out how to read those yet.  He jumped them for me anyway and the big, solid fences didn't intimidate him a bit.  I had sort of hoped that they would back him off at least a smidge!  Fence 14 is where things started to get screwed up.  It was an off-set combination of BIG palisades with brush on top.  I was most worried about these because he's never seen anything like that and the poor little pony could hardly see over them!  Just as I was setting my line up the fence judge ran out from behind the bushes and flagged me down for a hold on course.  Talk about nervous!  I was only held for about 30 seconds and he jumped through them like a star.  Next fence was an big open oxer and he no trouble with that either.  As I was galloping around the corner and downhill to the difficult coffin, the rider and horse that fell there before me were in the galloping lane, along with fence judges, and EMTs.  Snoop got very distracted and so did I.  I just couldn't get his focus back and he jumped in, but saw that HUGE ditch at the last second and just didn't have time to sort it out.  He landed and took one stride then did a serious 180 back up the hill to the other horse.  And that's how he got mom dirty today.  It was heartbreaking to be only 3 fences from home and have that happen, but such is the sport.  Naughty pony!

We head back to Kentucky tomorrow and I'm more excited and motivated than ever before!  However, there will be some serious ditch schooling before the next event!!

Pleasant Surprise

My new mare Missy's vacation ended today with her introduction to ground work and lunging and she was a star!  She's a bit sassy so I sort of expected her to give me a fair amount of the typical OTTB grief, but instead I was very pleasantly surprised as to how she responded.  She was obviously well started for the track and at least knew how to run around in circles BOTH directions.  I've found that if my OTTBs know how to lunge at all, they were only asked to go to the left just to get the bucks out and then the rider got on.  She's very smart and was to quick to pick up things like "whoa" when asked and to eventually slow the pace down and trot in a civilized manner as opposed to tearing around like an idiot.  I was even able to use very loose side reins, which she played with, but accepted quite well.  She is very well balanced, supple, and super cute!  I think as long as I'm positive with her and lead her to believe that each new thing we do is her idea she'll progress quickly.  Patience will definitely be key with this one!  More updates on Missy and a video in the coming weeks.  Until then here's a pic of her in the roundpen the day she arrived.

Until next time....

Sporting Days-Feb. 2012: Snoop Gone Wild!!!

Wow, what a whirlwind of a weekend!  After galloping my race horses Thursday morning, our crew consisting of myself, Scott, Snoopy, and Dougie departed for Aiken to the Sporting Days Horse Trials.  This has always been on of my favorite events and I was very excited to be back this year and with a horse that is actually going places (literally!)  The trip was uneventful except for a 30 minute hold-up on I-40 due to some rock blasting.  The horses handled it well and we arrived at about 8 Thursday night.  Snoopy was there to compete in his final training level event before moving up to Prelim in March (yay!!!!) and Dougie just came along for the experience and to keep Snoop sane in the trailer.  We put them to bed and then put ourselves to bed after a long day of travelling!  

We arrived at the barn early Friday morning and that's when things started to get really interesting.  Snoopy was beyond obnoxious, both on the ground and under saddle.  I'm not quite sure what got into him this weekend, but he was very much a fire-breathing dragon from the get-go!  He spent more time in the air than on the ground and was just super strong and keyed-up as I've ever seen him.  I chalked it up to the beautiful weather, his fitness, and the fact that he was actually out of the mud and on good footing for the first time in awhile.   He could not quite seem to contain his enthusiasm and I think he was very aware of why he was there and was excited to get to the running and jumping for the first time since October.  Needless to say I was not feeling very confident about the dressage on Saturday and boy was I right!  He was very naughty to say the least!  If I could've bottled up his tension and excitement during that test I probably could've used it to power my house for a week!  He barely stayed in the ring and while it was disappointing considering he's been working so well at home, I'm gonna give him a free pass THIS TIME.  Just spring fever, right?

He jumped fantastic and was very brave in both show jumping and cross country, although still borderline rideable and very, very strong.  He skipped  around with ease and I think he is more than ready for the big move up to prelim next month!  That's all I really wanted from this trip-to see if he had the confidence and skills to move up and he does.  I knew there would be kinks in the dressage, but I think he was just really excited to be back in action after 3mos away from showing!

I leave you with some sights and sounds from the weekend.  Go Eventing!

 

Mid-Winter Update: He Can TROT!!!!

Wow, I can't believe January is almost half over!  The big news around here as of late has been the weather.  One day it's 55 degrees and raining and 12 hours later it's 14 degrees and snowing with 30mph winds.  Then the cycle starts back over again it seems!  Neck rugs on, neck rugs off, blanket liners, no blanket liners, snow pants and a face mask one day and a windbreaker the next!  While I'm glad we've had a relatively mild winter, it's been a bit stressful trying to care for and ride the horses.  I feel like I check my weather app about 30 times a day to plan for changes in turnout and horse clothes and the like.  The freezing and thawing and rain have also wreaked havoc on the footing here.  I have been able to deal with my footing issues somewhat by putting studs in Snoop's shoes EVERYDAY and that also means cleaning and drying muddy legs to put Woof boots on EVERYDAY.  It's definitely allowed me to accomplish more  though so it's worth it.

The first event of the season is just a little over 2 weeks away and I'm very excited, albeit a little anxious, to see how the little man comes back this year.  He'll do one more training then move up to Prelim in March barring any disasters.  He's very happy right now and feels fantastic.  He's finally re-developing the big trot he once had on the racetrack!  All the hours we've spent jogging in straight lines in the field and going really forward have seriously improved his medium gaits.  I think he just forgot he could use himself like that and I wasn't helping any.  We've been south for a few jumping lessons and he's been great.  Well, almost great if you don't count the stop we had at a 2ft oxer last week that resulted in me almost falling off!  He just cantered up to it so quietly and then decided the flowers and extra poles laying down inside of it were ghastly, Snoopy eating trolls and I was totally unprepared for his reaction!  How embarrassing!  He had absolutely no issue with the 3'9" oxer in the middle of the arena or anything else for that matter.  Goofy pony!  He likes to make sure I'm paying attention.

Scott and Dougie are doing well.  They started work with trot poles and little x-rails this week.  He's a little apprehensive, but we'll just go slow until he gets it all figured out.  They are a great match!  They will be making the trip to Aiken to help keep Snoopy calm and happy on the trailer.  Talk about high maintenance!  We plan to get him over to Jumping Branch while we're there to introduce him to some little xc jumps.  Road Trip!!!

I did something the other day that I haven't done since I was 12yrs old and it was so much fun.  It started as a hack out on some unexplored territory and ended up as a gallop through the woods, up and down the hills fox hunter style!  Snoopy and I had a blast.  I've gotten so caught up in protecting my show horses that I forgot how much they can benefit from doing things like that once in while.  They're not made of porcelain and they don't need to be treated as such.  I also found out how handy and sure footed he is.  He didn't put a foot wrong.  It was great for his mind and it can only make him a better, tougher event horse.

Wish us luck in Aiken and go have some fun with your horse!