Clover Ledge Farm

This past weekend, August 22, 2010, was the National Standardbred Show at the Horse Park of New Jersey.  It was the third time Dreamy and I made the trip down all the way from Maine to compete.  I love this show, I love being a member of the group who puts it on (SPHO-NJ), and I love spending time with my NJ friends.  :)  Overall it was a very fun weekend. Dreamy and I rolled out of here on Saturday morning.  I was proud to make the trip from Maine to New Jersey on my own.  My mare and I are two peas in a pod....she is a great traveler and I love our road trips!  The traffic was not that bad until we hit the George Washington bridge...and the whole trip through New Jersey was heavy traffic.  The normal seven hour drive took just over eight hours.  I was tired from driving, but it was all forgotten when Dreamy and I arrived.  Setting up the stall, reconnecting with my friends, hanging out at the stalls, having dinner at the 'Burg that night........SO WORTH IT!  LOL!  :D  I stayed

I have been taking as many lessons as I can lately, as school is starting again soon and my time will obviously be spent teaching English all day rather than playing horses.  :(  I am very sad....and NOT ready to go back yet!  I have had an AMAZING summer!  Usually I try to take two lessons a month, every other week, but I have had them pretty much weekly this summer.  Once school begins, I will try to take at least two a month on the weekends...I hope! Anyway, I had a lesson on this past Tuesday.  We started out with canter work, after I had warmed Dreamy up.  At this point, I really need to improve my seat at the canter in order to help Dreamy improve her canter beyond the first 5-6 strides.  She has an excellent and balanced transition and a great 5-6 strides, but then it begins to fall apart a bit.  Though it is NOT as bad as it once was, I MUST improve my balance for her balance to improve. It is sooooooo frustrating to know exactly what I need to do in my brain, but be unab

This past Sunday my husband had to fix my barn floor.  It is made of wood (not by choice...it is 200 years old so that is what I have...for now!) which is not the best equine flooring in my opinion.  Yes, it looks pretty and is fairly cushiony, but it is a pain in the butt to maintain.  I am careful about airing the urine spots on the stall floors, I use more bedding (shavings) than I probably need to, and all that.  But still, there are rot spots from time to time. There has been a soft spot at the back of the barn for a while now.  It is underneath the mats, so I was not too worried.  When it rained EVERY SINGLE DAY last summer, I was never able to get the back 6-10" of the floor to dry out completely, hence the soft spot of rot in the boards. Well, Reva accidentally stepped on it that morning and CRACK! Yup, it finally gave out.  Thankfully, there were no issues except for the noise...and of course, my sensible filly just kept walking out!  LOL! So anyway, while the bo

I love getting free things, especially when I forget that I ordered them!  LOL!  Today I received a fun gift from Stubben, after I signed up for an introductory care package on their website.  I did it back in the beginning of July when I got my new Juventus (the letter from them with the care package is dated July 19!) and kind of forgot about it.  It was free and sent parcel post, so I figured it would take a few weeks.  :) The letter said I was given Stubben Care Brush On (for my horse's coat) and Stubben Hamanol (leather conditioner).  I admit I was a little bummed, since I wanted the matching leather soap.   But, hey, it is free so how can I possibly complain??  They both retail for $13.95! And I got a cute little cloth bag with the Stubben logo...not sure what I will do with that yet, but I am sure I will find a use for it.  Good thing I checked the bottles...one is indeed the Hamanol but the "Care Brush On" is actually the leather soap!  LOL!  I am pretty sur

I have spent the summer interspersing lessons and harder dressage training rides at home with trail riding and western pleasure work.  Dreamy has been mentally happy and well conditioned.  Sadly, last week when I went out on the trail, there was a small dead deer right next to the dirt road!  I could smell something dead, then suddenly I heard the flies and then saw it........YUCK!  So I have not done any trail riding this week (I guess it has actually been a week from Sunday, so more like 10 days.)  There is no way to get to the trails without going past this spot, so we have done more dressage and ring work this week because I have not wanted to see the dead deer.  :( Anyway, between my last NEDA Flextime lesson and my lesson yesterday with my regular instructor, we have started to increase the rate of difficulty in our work.  This is good, of course, but does feel frustrating since I am pretty used to our "routine" of what we work on this year.  Now instead of just perfe

Yay!  Our first award for 2010!  Yay Dreamy!  I wonder how many other Standardbreds have earned this honor??  :D Yes, I blocked out my address on the letter above.  Sure, you can probably find me easily enough if you wanted to, but publishing my address doesn't seem smart.  :) Any ideas on where to put the patch?  LOL!  I do not currently own any jackets that would match the red and blue.....maybe I should get a new fleece coat?  XD  Putting it on a saddle pad seems odd.  Hmmmmm......maybe I will just leave it here in my office, next to my husband's "Biggest Bucks in Maine Club" patch......ROFLMAO!  :D

I had my second NEDA Flextime lesson with Gwyneth McPherson at Pineland Farm last week.  I rode with her last August as well.  It was nice to see her again and ride at Pineland again, which is an amazing facility.  That is where I rode in the Heather Blitz clinic this past May. Anyway, Gwyneth watched me warm up for a bit.  She noted that Dreamy had improved from last year and even from this past May when she watched me ride with Heather Blitz.  We came to the conclusion that I would work on some movements from Training 4 and then of course, work on her canter. We did some work on 10 m. circles, as I sometimes have issues with overshooting my centerline on my last movement.  Funny enough, we did just fine each time we tried a centerline.  LOL! I guess I am improving without really noticing it.  But because it is technically a half 10m. circle movement, and we really ought to be schooling more First Level movements as Gwyneth reminded me, we did some 10m. trot circles in the corne

I completely adore the SSG All Weather gloves .  I use them for both schooling and showing.  They are inexpensive enough that you don't feel bad when they wear out, but at the same time they are well made and certainly nice enough for the show ring.  I have worn them at rated USDF shows, "A" rated hunter shows, and "AA" rated Morgan breed shows. Now, I think leather gloves are best for showing, because I am a purist.  :)  But I actually HATE the feeling of leather gloves.  They drive me nuts.  And I have very small hands....I am only 5 feet tall and my hands are broad but short.  Most glove fingers are too long and I cannot wear them.   But I have found the SSG All Weather gloves to fit me quite well for whatever reason.  I have the leopard print for schooling (LOL), and three pairs for showing: white (dressage), black (hunter), and brown (driving).  Actually I have two pairs of black gloves...as I found a pair on sale once and could not pass them up. I l

This past Tuesday I took Reva to my instructor's farm for a lesson.  This was only her second time off the farm, the first time having been the Chris Lombard clinic back in June.  Of course, Reva was Little Miss Perfect.  She trailered there without issue, stood quietly at the trailer while I tacked her up, and was very good the entire lesson.   We had been having some issue with the trot lately, as she wants to only walk or canter.  So at times her trot would be "hoppy" where she would  try to go up into the canter.  She obviously does not know what a half-halt is just yet, so I had been doing my best to push her forward into a trot and maintain it.  I focused on just the walk/trot and trot/walk transitions.  I even stopped cantering for now, because I know she can do it, but I want her to understand that anything faster than a walk does not always have to be a canter. We began by working on turn on the forehand, as a way to reinforce moving off my leg and connecti

Here are the professional pics from the UNH dressage show on July 31.  Ignore the god awful one she got just when we picked up the canter.  Yep, Dreamy sometimes will still throw her body and neck after the transition.  Nice....... :P We are #20!  And the sun makes her look so much more like a bay than a black horse!  LOL! Thoughts on what I should purchase????  :D http://mysticalphotography.instaproofs.com/category.php?event=255332&id=663374#72320128

Four posts in one day!  Whew!  I have had so much to write about but very little time to do so.  Happy reading!!!  :) Dreamy and I have come so far in everything we have tried.  All I have to do is go back and read earlier blog posts to prove this.  Having proof of progress was the driving force behind my reason to start a blog, so that I could have a training journal and take stock on how far we had come, especially when I had a not-so-stellar ride. Despite having grown up with Morgans, I have always loved to event.  I evented my Morgan mare Sparky and loved it.  I had to stop jumping her when she turned 19 because of bone spavin in her hocks, so I switched disciplines to carriage driving.  We competed successfully until I retired her at age 24.   When I began riding Dreamy, eventing was my goal because I missed it.  I wanted to do some low level eventing and have fun.  And we have done just that.....hence the reason for my blog "handle" of STB Eventer.  :D  I could n

This post could also be titled Dreams Do Come True , or some other such corny line.  LOL!  I love showing at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) because I went to school there.  I wrote about all that here after the July UNH show (they do two dressage shows and three horse trials each year).   I only needed ONE more show for a USDF All Breed Award.  I had all my scores (you need 8) but you also need 4 shows.  So instead of entering for both days, I only signed up for classes on Saturday.  I did this because four scores were not needed, but I also did this to save money.  Rated shows are EXPENSIVE!  Technically, all I needed to do was ride one test at UNH, but I signed up for both Training 1 and 2, just in case!  LOL! Dreamy warmed up well.  We were to ride both tests for Marlene Schneider (S).  Unfortunately we had to ride both tests in the grass ring which is always difficult footing.  I think they ought to just take the sod off and make it dirt like the other two, but whateve

So, as I wrote about here , I have a new dressage saddle.  I completely adore this saddle.  I love how it has shorted panels so I can actually get my leg down on my horse.  I was pretty confident that it fit Dreamy well and it truly fits me PERFECT.   I was able to get an appointment with my saddle fitter, Nancy Shedrick, for last Thursday.  I was so pleased when she took a look at my saddle and said it was a good fit for Dreamy!  YAY!  She complimented me, saying I had a good eye.  Well, SHE is the one to thank for that!  Nancy taught me well at our first fitting in April.   I had a few concerns though.  One was how low the saddle was to her withers.  I mean, there was three of my tiny fingers clearance and it cleared her spine with no problems, but it did seem low.  My instructor Judy echoed the same thing when she saw it.  Nancy agreed that while it was a tiny bit lower than she would like, it was fine.  Why?  Because I am a tiny 5 foot nothing, 120 pound rider.  She said ther

I was very fortunate this year to receive two NEDA Flextime lesson grants, one with Jennifer Wilson-Horr and the other with Gwyneth McPherson. I took my lesson with Jen last Wednesday.  It was a good lesson overall.  I began by telling her what I wanted to work on, which was the connection to the bit and Dreamy's tendency to avoid  going into the right rein while tracking left.  Immediately, she had me dismount and showed me how to stretch and unlock her poll.  Dreamy likes to stretch, but Jen wanted more.  It took some effort on her part to get Dreamy to drop her head from the ground.  Then she showed me how to work her on the ground, moving her hindquarters and encouraging her to engage her inside hind leg.  We found (no surprise) that Dreamy is stiff in her left stifle, which made moving over to the right a bit harder.   I mounted back up and did some warm-up so Jen could watch us work.  Then she asked to ride Dreamy to see how she felt.  This was neat, since my own ins