about my blog!  Well, no, I haven’t!  I just plain haven’t had the time to sit down and write anything!  We have been busy busy busy, despite the soaring hot high temperatures and the overwhelming humidity.  There’s always something going on at the farm, whether it be taking care of the orphan foal and getting him loaded on to a trailer to go to the vet clinic after he tries to run through a fence or dealing with a colicy horse or just the day to day necessities of cleaning and feeding and turn out and bring in of 50+ horses.  I tell you, these 15 hour work days can wear you out!

   We also had another opportunity to participate in an ICP workshop – this time in Maryland at the beautiful Bascule Farm.  Jenna, Ashlynn and I hauled our horses over for a day of dressage.  The clinic this time was being supervised by Eric Horgan, so it was another exciting opportunity to ride in front of some very educated people.  Mine and Gemini’s job was to perform a preliminary level test, and then we were to get remarks and insight on it and then go ride it again, with the idea being that it would be better.  Which, it certainly was!  Gemini got plenty of positive comments and I got to take home some valuable perspectives and point of views from Eric.  It was a fun way to spend the day and good practice for our dressage test.

   This past weekend we returned to Waredaca to compete in our last event in Area II.  Yes, after much consideration and planning and thinking on it, I have finally set a date for my return to Colorado!  Funds are running out and time is slipping by, and I do, at some point, have to force myself to leave the safety of the Windchase bubble and attempt to do this whole riding and training gig on my own so I have begun to wrap things up here at Windchase.  But first, of course… Waredaca!  I was hoping for a positive round, I felt like we got things back together at Maryland last month but after a little break and upon returning to our schooling, we sort of came across a few glitches in our training and accidentally opened up a can of worms that I’ll admit probably needed to be opened up, but the timing just wasn’t right.  In the midst of a cross country school, we happened upon an issue at corner and narrow accuracy fences, in which I’m not quite keeping Gemini straight in the corridor and maintaining the right canter to the fence.  We’ve gotten by with it, because he’s been so bold and we’ve been able to glance through with our canter just a little bit too long.  In our attempt at shortening the canter and getting to the base more, we created a little bit of a problem in which Gemini now thinks he can get away with running out at narrows.  Oooops.  Serious problem here.     We had a really tough show jump school prior to the event and agressively confronted this issue, but it did come back to get us at the event.

  Despite not having hind studs (an issue which I took up with my farrier the next day!) our dressage was quite acceptable, I thought, and at least consistent with the rest of our tests this year.  Our score of 40 didn’t reflect it nbut the judge was tough and scored the entire division high, so we were placed quite well despite this.  Our dressage is now less of just ‘getting through the test’ than it is refining the sophistication and making it just that much better, so I feel like we’ve really turned a corner with our dressage work.  Show jump was perhaps the highlight of my day – Gemini jumped a clean round and I finally felt like I was riding each individual fence in the course rather than the course as a whole.  I was reacting immediately.. adjusting my stride correctly to make the lines ride better, and because of this we had far less awkard jumps and long spots, now the course was starting to flow smoothly and the jumps coming up easy and nicely.  Hooray!  I was elated and hoped this would carry on through to cross country.
  Of course, my horse became a beast out on cross country!  We got a little bit of an awkward spot to the first fence, I felt just because we were just coming out of the box and he wasn’t quite turned on and it was a big not that inviting fence.  Gemini seemed appalled by it or something because he took off bolting afterwards!  I brought him back and rode the next few fences fine, but whenever either he or I had a bit of a green moment, such as when he did the downward steps (a new question to him) he reacted by bolting afterwards.  I’m still trying to decide if this is a sign of confidence or un-confidence, but I’m leaning towards un-confidence!  We had moments, such as the trakehner, the bank complex and the half coffin where things rode perfectly, the jumps were great and we were perfectly in balance.  Then we would get a bit of a long spot to a table and Gem would bolt off.  Hmmm.  Ok, so we’ve got a few things to refine here, for sure!  After getting out of the water combination on a little bit of a half stride, Gem bolted and by this time he was so hot and lathered my reins were literally soaked – I went to grab them and they slid right through my soaked gloved fingers and I found myself galloping towards the corner with no left rein!  Oy… no surprise we had a bit of a drive by there, and upon reorganizing we made it over just fine.  We had but two fences left on course when Gemini came up to a narrow chevron/step type fence, I thought I prepared quite well and got to the base nicely, but at the last moment Gemini seemed to remember all of our issues from the week before and decided he was better off not jumping it today!  He dropped his shoulder left, bumped the flag with his head and was uninterested in proceeding on course any further.  I was frustrated, as there were only two fences left, this one and practically just a log before the finish, and despite the earlier run out I thought our ride had been decent, but I knew where the issue had come from and I didn’t want to push it so we retired.  What can we say, it’s a pretty tough sport right?

   So obviously the weekend didn’t go as planned, which I was pretty bummed about, and it has created some serious doubts about my next plans.  We had intended to run the Preliminary championships at AECs in Chicago on our way home next month and at the moment I’m undecided as to whether that will still happen or not.  We’ve only done a handful of preliminarys this year and are still quite green at the level and I don’t want to ruin everything we’ve gained this year by pushing it a little too much, so there might be an option of dropping down and running the Training championships instead.  We’ll see what will work out and what will be the best for Gemini and where he is at in his training but hopefully it will be a fun and exciting experience nonetheless!  After that it’s home to Colorado.  I feel like i’m returning home after being away at war – I have so many stories and experiences, I’m sure I could talk for hours about everything that has happened here at Windchase.  I have 3 more weeks of lessons and training and I plan to make the most out of it.  There is a huge part of me that doesn’t want to tear myself away, my little room on the porch in the Little House has become my home, the thought of packing everything up and leaving seems so strange!  But I feel like it’s time for the next chapter to begin…. =D