Clover Ledge Farm

The third and final show at my lesson barn was this past Sunday!  It was also a fundraiser for the Western Maine Dressage Association and a "team" show, which meant we were organized into teams for an awards ceremony at the end of the day.  Each test was awarded 1-7th like usual, but then the team scores were averaged for a champion and reserve champion in each division.  There were four types of teams: same test levels, same rider designation (AA, open, or jr/yr), mixed bag of nuts (any levels/designations), and free range (freestyle tests only).  I paired up with two other riders from my lesson barn who were also doing Training level tests. Yup, that's right, I put on my big girl pants and rode our first Training level 1 test!  Whoo!  The plan had been to ride Intro B as a warm up and then Training 1.  Now looking back, I kinda wish we had done a Training 1 and a Training 1 reride, which is something that is becoming more popular at shows here in the last couple years

I feel as though I have a lot of little things to document, but nothing alone warrants its own post.  So, as has seem to be my trend this summer, I will put a bunch of updates all together in between all the showing and lesson posts. Now that Ellie has shown she is happy in a Neue Schule eggbutt and a drop noseband, I briefly considered buying her a Micklem.  Not wanting to spend $200 on a bridle she may not like, I have been keeping an eye on Facebook for a used one.  I came across a "small horse" aka cob sized black Micklem a few weeks ago for $100 shipped and scooped it up.  I figured for that price I can easily resell it and make my money back. She definitely liked it!  However, the floppy cheekpieces drove me insane, so after initially using velcro tabs to keep them calm and contained, I bought the Nunn Finer rubber keepers instead.  Thankfully they came in a pack of ten, since trying to finagle those tiny things onto the Micklem was not easy!  The first one broke,

After our first ever combined test last weekend at Esprit Equestrian Center , we headed back there this weekend for their CMDA affiliated show.  Essentially it was the same exact show, just affiliated with a state GMO.   I have limited media because I went alone to this show, and my friend who showed up to ride her First level tests later on wasn't going to hold a phone out in the pouring rain for our jumping haha, though she did get a short 30 second clip of Intro C and a few pics. This time around, I had a solid game plan, since we had shown there just six days earlier.  The show started at 9am and we were the fourth dressage ride of the day, so I arrived a hour and a half early in order to handwalk her in the scary indoor.  I asked permission ahead of time, of course, and doing this helped immensely.  It was dark that morning with the promise of rain (which did end up starting later in the morning), so the lights were on and the indoor seemed gloomier.  Ellie is a stop and loo