****ALL photos courtesy of GRC Photo!****
Lauren and Dudley
Lauren Snider and The Provost
Thursday, March 22, 2012
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!****
****ALL photos courtesy of GRC Photo!****
Sunday, March 11, 2012
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.....
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.....
Sunday, March 4, 2012
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.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
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!!
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!!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)