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Showing posts from November, 2018

Hidden Brook Farm Dressage Schooling Show - June 2, 2019

Ellie and I did a show at our lesson barn this past weekend instead of taking a lesson.  I would have done a lesson on Saturday before the show, but my instructor went to NEDA Spring with her eldest daughter, who was able to get her last Grand Prix score for her USDF Gold Medal!!!  So that is a good reason to not be able to lesson haha.

I admit I was a little bummed about our low scores at the SMDA show two weeks prior.  I know a score of 6 (60%) is called satisfactory, but I really thought our performance was better than a low 60%.
I was determined to ride well and even though Beth was not there, I had her youngest daughter as my back up if the wheels fell off the bus LOL!  She was already in the warmup and at the show ring with her actual students, so it was nice to have her there to remind me to breathe and not hang on the left rein!  ;-)
Ellie unloaded and was totally calm.  Honestly, she loves her lesson barn and knows it is her second home haha.  She was much calmer tied to the tra…
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Dressage Clinic with Ashley Madison - November 24, 2018

Just over a month ago, Beth encouraged me to sign up to ride in a clinic at her farm with Ashley Madison, of Yellow Wood Dressage in Maryland.  Ashley was an accomplished young rider here in Maine and then spent ten years working for Scott and Susanne Hassler before branching out on her own.  She has brought along horses to GP and is a USDF Gold Medalist. 

I love that Beth wants to me clinic with other instructors if I have the chance, as it shows that she is confident enough in herself to know that she's forever my dressage mom at this point (haha) but that we can both also glean insight from others.  Beth was at my lesson and it was also beneficial to her as my primary instructor to hear what Ashely had to say.  As someone who loves to learn in all aspects of life, it is refreshing to be partnered with another person who also wants her students to always be learning, whether that is from her or someone else.  

However, I was hesitant for a few reasons, the biggest being the time o…
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A Weekend of Learning - Part 2 (aka the bucking canter)

After a great in hand lesson a week ago Saturday as I wrote about here, a week ago Sunday we went to Beth's for our regular dressage lesson.  It was cold (five degrees colder up north at her farm than it was at mine!) and windy when we arrived, and I struggled with keeping Ellie's saddle pad from blowing away as I was tacking up LOL.  Needless to say, she was a little tight and reactive when I first got on down at the indoor.  I spent time walking her around, asking for changes of bend to get her to relax.  I asked for a trot and she was still tight; it was obvious that despite the fact she was listening, she was looking for any excuse to spook.

Beth arrived to the indoor and I started feeling like maybe this was going to be a stressful lesson lol.  Ellie isn't an inherently spooky horse in my opinion and she has a good brain, but she is sensitive.  I chatted with Beth a little and just stayed relaxed, and we started working on getting Ellie to really stretch out to the con…
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A Weekend of Learning - Part 1

This past weekend was such an interesting learning experience for Ellie (and for me, too)!  We had two lessons, one Saturday with a new instructor and one on Sunday with Beth, and both left me feeling inspired and ready to enter the worst season for me (winter!).  Anything I can do to feel motivated and inspired when it will soon be below freezing and the footing will turn to ice/snow is a good thing haha.

A dressage rider/trainer/judge from Maine (who spends her winters in Florida) had posted on Facebook that she was available for lessons at a barn fairly close to me, so I immediately sent her a message.  I wasn't interested in taking a dressage lesson but an in-hand/trick training lesson instead!  Besides dressage, Sandy does a ton of performing at liberty, bareback, bridleless, and incorporates tricks as well.  She has started doing an art on horseback thing, too.  Now, I have no aspirations of ever doing performances, nor do I want to paint from my horse's back, but I do wa…
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25 Questions Blog Hop

I finally have time to sit down and join the latest blog hop from Amanda at The $900 Facebook Pony. I have kind of missed NaBloPoMo from last year, but blog hops are just as fun (and less work than posting for 30 days straight for this busy mama haha!)
Why horses? Why not a sane sport, like soccer or softball or curling? That is a darn good question LOL! I don't really remember what first sparked my intense love of all things equine, but I remember begging for almost a year to start riding lessons. At age six, my parents finally indulged me, and I haven't looked back going on thirty four years this spring! What was your riding “career” like as a kid? I was a religious barn rat as a kid! I spent every single Saturday at the barn, doing chores and mucking stalls. I was lucky to start riding at a Morgan breeding farm and rode there until I went to college. I took an hour long group lesson every week at 3pm and went home afterwards. I rode anything my instructor had available f…
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