Cole warming up for a lesson.

I love Olympic years and this is probably the most exciting one for me yet with so many friends in contention. As well as exciting it’s also super motivating, making it very easy to get up with my alarm at 5 am each day! In order to get the most effective ride on each horse, I try to get them ridden before it gets too hot. This week I took Cole to a clinic with Irish eventing hero Eric Smiley. Waredaca Farm hosts him each year, however this was my first time riding with him. I’m never quite sure what to expect when I go to a clinic, it’s hard to change your riding (nor do I want to) in one go. I really hope to get one or two pointers that I haven’t thought of and a tune up of ideas I may have been working on. Eric did just that, making our lesson well worthwhile.

Back on the home front in Australia mum has been making up for the loss of our wonderful mare Fifi in a big way! She got news thru the grapevine of a group of young warmbloods who had found themselves in the local slaughter pen. As foals and yearlings it seemed a little unfair and that their lives would be wasted so prematurely that she brought home the ones that look as tho the will grow into performance horses. So now she has her hands well and truly full! It's quite amazing to think of what their fate would have otherwise been....

One of the lucky, unnamed, youngsters.

I don’t have any eventing competitions until mid July. Which means my days are filled with teaching, training, teaching, sales, teaching and showjumping! Two of my favourite horses at the moment are the Irish guys we imported in November. Both have started competing and, as you can see from the photos, they are real jumpers! Keeping that in mind my next few competitions involve entering Culpepper HITS Showjumping into my GPS and driving to VA! I always feel at home there, perhaps because it’s called the Commonwealth Park, or perhaps because my horses always seem jump well! Both of them are for sale so I’m enjoying the last rides I have on each before they are snapped up by their new owners. 

 VS McCuan Tremendous

VS McCuan Ari Gold

On the home front in Australia, we had to say good bye to my best brood mare Fifi which was unfortunate. Fifi produced some lovely foals for us, including a stunning Regardez Moi that I imported last year. She was a 3/4 sister to dressage star Centaur so I hope we can keep her bloodlines going.

Bromont 2012

Bromont has come and gone for another year and my French STILL hasn't improved.. Perhaps next year! This year I ended up only taking Liberty in the 1 star, leaving Cole at home to work on his eating and relaxing skills. There's nothing like a three day event to mature a young horse and get him to understand his job and Bromont is the best venue I've ever been to for this purpose. It's a three day obviously, the horse has to learn how to trot up (jog), learn to be in a stall,  all the vet checks and compete on three separate days. Somehow Bromont manages to have all these requirements and still have a relaxing feel to it. The surroundings may help, Bromont is a tourist town surrounded by beautiful mountains. However I think it's more the organising committee that gives it that feel. This year both the Canadian and American teams used this event as the Olympic tryouts: the Canadian team was finalised there and the American team shortlist was selected. I was very happy to see Boyd on the shortlist with two horses, I've known him and his riding for over 12 years and have to say he is at his absolute best. His dressage is looking incredible and he showjumping like he should be on the showjumping team, his xc is as good as always. Phillip is also on the shortlist with Heath's Mystery Whisper. VERY exciting, I've seen this horse grow up from a yearling and have competed against him in two different countries. He proudly represents Heath's awesome breeding and training program, and Phillip has gelled with him in such a way that the entire eventing world ought to be very very nervous at the Olympics. Another person I was happy to see on the list is Marilyn Little-Meredith. I did make an ill advised bet with her last year on whether or not she'd make it to Rolex this year given that she had at the time been eventing for only a year. Not only did she make it to Rolex, she made the Olympic shortlist! So I lost my $10.. The only bad thing about this list is that the two people I train with will now be away all summer.
Back to Liberty's Bromont. He's been going so well all season that I thought he'd be in with a great chance to win. As he has become fitter tho, his body shape has changed and his dressage saddle started to pinch him while we were at the event. This led to a more tense than normal test, but a clear and fast xc moved him well up in the standings finishing well within the top 20 at his first international event! Not bad considering his test was not at his competitive best. This is a seriously good horse and I'm so lucky to be involved with training him to reach his fullest potential. He'll now have a break before coming back at the end of the summer where he'll aim for another international competition in the fall.
Thank you to everyone for your kind words and support about Ronnie. He really is missed both on a personal and professional level. Good horses are difficult to find!

Ron Jeremy

Today is a sad day as we lost one of my favourite up and coming youngsters. Ron was a training level horse that was an event horse thru and thru. I picked him up out of a paddock in the middle of nowhere as a 3yo, so scrawny that even his mother would've struggled to love him. When I got him back home he did, however, show enough promise for my working student Kaden to buy him. Kaden trained him and rode him until he left to return to Australia at which point we purchased him and I started competing him. The first thing we had to do when we got him was to name him. I wanted something like Gambler (his previous owners' occupation) or Champion (his intended occupation) or Genius Extraordinaire (my occupation). I left this process up to Kaden assuming he'd follow this line of thought. But you know what happens when you assume.... He came up with Ron Jeremy, Ron for short. I liked it. I thought it was a strong, solid citizen sounding name. It had integrity. It's none of these things. If you know what I'm talking about, shame on you. If not, Google it. It wasn't until weeks later that I found out who his namesake was. Fortunately he hadn't been registered yet so Ron stayed and the Jeremy was dropped. Ron was the perfect event type: brave, careful, nice movement. Although  he had quite a buck in him, he was very gentle and always tried his absolute hardest.
Last Tuesday he developed an aggressive form of cellulitis in his right hind. With the aid of our wonderful vet we treated him with antibiotics, hitting it as hard as we could. As Ron was in a great deal of pain and  because of his exceptionally high fever, we stayed with him around the clock. Heather (my barn manager), Chloe (working student), Paula (farm manager) and I took turns keeping him on his feet and making sure he stayed with us and checking his temperature as well as administering drugs as he needed them. His hock joint became infected and he developed vasculitis In spite of our efforts his condition continued to deteriorate to the point where he was hospitalised. They were unable to get him stable so he did not return.
Ron was an important part of my team, and more than that, he was very well loved. I just hope he knew that.
Thank you Ronnie for all that you were, and sorry for all that you could have been.

Bromont preparation

Liberty and I earlier this year at Pine Top, GA.

Bromont is a little over a week away and I've well and truly entered the scary end of a three day preparation. This year I've decided to leave Cole at home (we're making some great progress with his dressage and will continue that focus) and I am riding Liberty. In his preparation last year he was injured in an unfortunate clipping accident that left him out of action for the rest of the year. He's come back super strong and has performed very well at his lead up events with some top results. Tomorrow he will gallop for his second last time, then on Thursday a jump lesson followed by a final gallop on Sunday. I'm very fortunate to have access to a state of the art gallop track which takes some of the stress out of the gallops. Some, but not all! This final 10 days before any three day is highly nerve wracking with no time to really change anything in your prep, you can merely put the final touches on! Most of my dreams are filled withs images of enlarged tendons, foot abscesses and runaway horses. Not good for ones sleep patterns!! This weekend I have Wonderful Waredaca with Hot Reels, Fine Art and Lightning. Hot Reels is a really nice young horse who I've very much enjoyed competing, his owner will take over the reins from next week. Fine Art is with me as his regular jockey recovers from a very broken arm. And Lightning is with me to gain some experience before his owner jumps back on. I love being involved with this horse as I originally bought him out of a field in WV where he his life definitely wasn't on the improve. After we produced him, Julie then bought him and has kept me involved with his career. She won a showjumping competition on him last weekend.

May Fair Hill

This weekend I had six horses at Fair Hill's end of Spring event. Having been here only five weeks ago, I was expecting basically the same courses. I couldn't have been more wrong! Each level was well and truly at the toughest end of the spectrum and beautifully dressed up. EG the novice had to jump a cabin landing with one stride into water then a bank out! I had horses at each level so I got to see each first hand. Cole jumped very well around the cross country to end up 4th. Liberty did an uncharacteristically poor dressage but then jumped two super double clears. He's feeling very good and I'm looking forward to Bromont with him, he'll be very competitive. The three novice horses were good: Smokey scored a 28 in the dressage. Lightning showjumped like a star and Fudge finished on a 30. The scores haven't been posted so I can't see where he ended up.... Unfortunately Ron and I had a tumble in the water after he overreached on landing. Both of us are fine, just quite annoyed as he was jumping really well up to that point. I have posted a video of Liberty cross country below.
Thank you to the organisers of the event for running it so smoothly and thank you to my owners who keep me in the game!

Lessons

Lessons are a vital part of any riders life. This applies to everyone regardless of level, from beginners to Olympic riders. This is a truth I've been aware of since my first trainer had me on the lunge line  at 5 years of age on my first pony, Bluey. Since then I've had many lessons varying in consistency and quality. Initially the goal was to keep me from falling off my pony. That achieved, we moved onto rising trot. At this point my ultimate goal was to be able to canter and perhaps compete in the Grand National just like in National Velvet. So I started cantering. Bluey then understood my Grand National goals and took it into her owns hands/hooves to teach me the gallop we would need if I were to win whilst competing against the 17hh monster thoroughbreds on my little 12.2hh Welsh Pony mare. She did this by bolting from the bottom of the paddock back to the house. I thought this was wonderful, the adults did not. SO annoying. Back on the lunge we went, for what seemed like ETERNITY. It was probably only a few weeks or a few days, but when you're five that amount of time is actually quite long in relation to the amount of time you've been alive!  I think it was at this point I started to see lessons as a necessary evil, something that must be done in order to improve but not to be enjoyed. Now, 20 something years later, I'm just starting to see differently.
Even through Pony Club I saw my lessons as the evil one must do in order to prove you have enough control of your pony to be allowed to jump or do games. It didn't help that my second pony, Princess, was very inappropriately named. She-Devil or Killer would have been more suitable names. The pony club trainers viewed us as a lost cause and often treated us as such, basically if I didn't fall off I was allowed to go and jump with the other kids. I was even allowed on the odd occasion to go thru the 'jump lane'! This involved taking away our stirrups and reins, lining our ponies up in chute, smacking them on the bottom and yelling 'heels down', 'eyes up' while we galloped uncontrollably thru a line of jumps. This is actually one of my favourite memories! A little while later I graduated to a bigger, faster horse called Apollo. With him I developed a love for going even faster, now adding in cows (we loved campdrafting) and xc jumps. All of my training at this point had been thru the pony club. By now my parents saw I wasn't going to stop riding so they got me some lessons privately. Money was in VERY short supply in my house so I'm eternally grateful to them for doing this. I like to think they did it to give me some education, however I think they actually did it as a form of health insurance. Particularly after I built a xc course in the paddock and timed myself to see how fast I could do it. Then devoted several weeks to beating each 'record' I set.
By now I had given up on my Grand National aspirations, who was I kidding that I would be able to do that? Plus the movie International Velvet had just made it to TV and I'd decided on a different career path, international eventer! I renamed Apollo, he became Pie (anyone who's seen the movie will understand) and we practiced our winning xc round over and over and over again. At some point I realised dressage was a part of eventing, I also realised I wasn't very good at xc and realised the showjump rails weren't going to keep themselves up. So I got a job (I was 13 now, perfectly legal in Australia) and started investing in more lessons.
This brings me back to the point of the story: I've had many lessons from many trainers. Some great eg: Heath Ryan (inspiration, builder of careers), Rozzie Ryan (dressage extraordinaire and most patient woman in the world), Vicki Roycroft (just the one but boy did it stick!), Wayne Roycroft (I've never felt so small and big at the same time), Prue Barrett (just the one but genius), Craig Barrett (genius also), Martina Hannover-Sternberg (o to ride like her), Boyd Martin (whom I worked for, learnt a lot about riding and a LOT about life!), Phillip Dutton (still working with as often as money allows), Marilyn Meredith-Little (taught me how to jump BIG jumps). There are other trainers who I learnt good and bad things from but the thing that I had never acheived in a lesson was enjoyment or pleasure. Not once was I happy with a lesson, not once have I looked forward to one, not once did I look back on one thinking it was successful. I saw them as a time where I was being judged and told what I was bad at. I know that's the point of a lesson but I saw that as failing. And each time I went to a lesson I would be failing at something. Just recently something weird happened. I was on my way to a lesson with Phillip (it's a two hour drive, great thinking time) and found myself looking forward to it. So I went with it and told myself how much fun it would be. Lo and behold I've never learnt so much in one go! And afterwards more of the lesson sank in. On the way home I made a mental note to myself to remember that. Then at my next lesson I went in with the same view. I think I've now started to enjoy learning and am not ashamed that I don't have ALL the answers. One small step for me, one giant leap for learning!