Hi. Cole here again! Apparently Kate has lost her creative inspiration and now I'm the one in charge of keeping everyone up to date with the goings on around here. Let's start with me! Whilst I would consider myself a smart, nay, clever horse, I'm still trying to get a grasp on the English language. For example 'gallop day' doesn't always mean gallop. There is actually quite of lot of cantering involved. Nowhere near as exciting as galloping. Here we see the English language being misused. Going for a 'quiet hack out with Liberty': again English language misrepresented. There is NOTHING 'quiet' about a hack out with Liberty. All it takes is one squirrel running up a tree or one Llama charging towards the fence by the road and he jumps on top of me like a koala scaling a eucalyptus! And then there's the 'mini' prix. Mario told me a lot about the Grand Prix's he would do with Kate. Most of his stories involved Kate shaking like a leaf in a cyclone in fear at the size of the jumps. And how he would sail over them with the ease of Bionic Man leaping over Empire State in spite of what she was doing on his back. He would also explain how the jumps were above his head and wider than our stalls. So you can easily see how I would be mislead into thinking that a MINI prix would be a very small version of what he was talking about.Perhaps the jumps would be like the dog ones you see at Plantation, ie thin rails, about the height of a human waist. Easily jumpable! So when Kate told me we were doing a Mini Prix at Highfields I was pretty excited. I mean, I DID win the last time I was there! How hard could it be? Let me answer that question in plain simple English: REALLY REALLY REALLY hard! Apparently the only time 'mini' means small is in reference to mini Snickers bars! These jumps were HUGE! Not sure what Kate was trying to accomplish but I don't think I'll ever complain about eventing show jumping again! If I must say, I did rally to the effort and had just the first down, which I think was Kat's fault anyhow. So this brings me to this coming weekend.
Liberty's is the only one with an iPhone in the barn so I asked him to check my ride times for this weekend. He told me I was entered in the advanced! The pre Mini Prix me wouldn't have thought anything of it, just another word for intermediate (perhaps for the horses with an advanced intelligence). But now I'm getting quite apprehensive. Particularly when Liberty said I'm the only one from our barn going to the event! Always a bad sign! So I asked my room mate Arrow what he thought. He's 22 and seen EVERYTHING there is. He went into a LONG explanation about the technicalities of speed, heights, lengths, dimensions of the cross country course. He talked about advanced's. 3 stars, 4 stars, Bruce Davidson this, Bruce Davidson that. He talked about how it felt galloping into the Head of the Lake at Rolex. How the crowd clapped and cheered for him. All this sounded fun and interesting UNTIL he backtracked to the dressage. At the advanced level I'm expected to do flying changes! On command! How do I do that?! I still trot through my changes when I'm galloping out in the field during the day! So now I'm standing here in my stall hoping like anything Arrow is wrong and that Advanced actually means Novice with an IQ test at the end. But given how many changes I've had to practice recently, and the fact Kate lies to me on a regular basis, I don't like my chances! Wish me luck!

Collection Pass, aka Cole, has been bugging me for quite some time to let him update my blog. He's VERY persistent and persuasive so, just this once, I'm letting him do one. I may regret it! Also please forgive any spelling or grammatical errors, he's a horse and struggles with the touch typing..

Hi! Cole here! Kate said I can start adding my own updates to her blog on a regular basis! For my first one I'll give you a rundown of my last week or so starting with last weekend at Pine Top. Kate told me that she requested an afternoon ride time for my dressage so that I could have a sleep in a rest well in preparation for my test. She's so nice! Personally I'm not sure of the point of dressage, I OBVIOUSLY know how to turn and go and slow down and speed up judging by my cross country. And my judging by my showjumping I'm OBVIOUSLY good at collection and I'm obedient. Kate tells me these are the things they look for in a dressage test, why can't we skip the sandpit ring work and head straight to the jumping? The judges can see all they need there! Anyhow, truth be told, I'm a little claustrophobic and those little white fences around the ring freak me out a bit. Why are they so small? Why are they white? And what are the letters for? And why o why does the judge have to sit right next to the ring and rate my every movement?! I CAN HEAR YOU Mr Judge! I can hear you say that I need more suppleness, that I need more reach in my mediums, that my halt wasn't quite square. I know it's your job to rate us. But to be quite honest, it hurts my feelings to hear you talk like that. I WANT to be more supple (I've started yoga), I WANT to reach more in my mediums and I'm not sure what a 'square' halt means. I stopped didn't I! How about a little 'way to go Cole, you stayed in the ring!' or 'good try ol boy, I'm giving you a 10 for effort!'. Perhaps THAT would encourage me a bit more! ANYWAY back to Pine Top. After my sleep in we headed to the event. Kate had said there was a chance of rain in the afternoon, how wrong she was! On our way there it started POURING with rain! And then Liberty texted me to tell me there had been a tornado warning issued! Needless to say I started to get VERY excited that the dressage may be cancelled and we could head straight to the cross country. Alas this was not the case. But I didn't want to let go of my dream that easily. As we headed down the centreline toward 'I' for our first halt, I thought I saw a tornado off in the distance! So I put my head up to check it out (I could've been a hero and sounded the alert that saved everyone!), as I put my head up I sensed Kate's displeasure (she's so annoying sometimes). Let's just say that if a real tornado had lifted up a house and blown it in between 'I' and the judge, I believe it would've greatly helped our score. Anyhow, I think I did really well and my mum (in the brief 3 months I knew her) told me that's all that matters! The cross country and showjumping was a piece of cake and I'm pretty sure I was the best one out there. Which is why I think we have started our lessons with Phillip again, to showcase my talents. I'm pretty sure I'm the best jumper he's ever seen. And I'm pretty sure I'm there to teach him. I know I'm definitely teaching Kate. So in our lesson yesterday I tested both of their skills and threw in a couple of missteps and a little hiccup to keep them on the top of their game. I added a link to one of the exercises.

Back on the home front Lola told me that Trevor told her that Ari overhead Kate telling Chloe that we are heading home to MD a little earlier this year. Apparently the ground in MD isn't frozen and everyone misses me. I also thought I overheard a rumour that Liberty, Ron and I are going to Florida next week. If it's true then this is great news! I really need a holiday! And I love FL in the winter! Thanks for reading, I've got to go now. Kate's on her phone and distracted so if I hit the 'publish post' button now, she won't get a chance to proofread it! BTW, I now have a Facebook page (so passe I know, but apparently if you don't have one these days you're a nobody!). Search 'Collection Pass' or just go to Kate's and search the pages she likes, it'll come up.