Clover Ledge Farm

For our first horse trial of the year, I felt dropping down a level to Advanced Elementary was a solid decision. Babette agreed with me, and after several positive jump lessons through the spring, I felt confident and ready for the Course Brook schooling event in Massachusetts.  Basically, the jumps are four inches shorter than Beginner Novice (2'3' instead of 2'7") and we had to ride BN Test A instead of BN Test B. The four inches don't seem like a lot, but my trepidation of Ellie's stopping behavior is still there. I am not scared or nervous, but it stresses me out when I do everything right and she will still choose to stop. Granted, there are times I forget to give after a half halt on the approach or forget to put my leg on, but there are definitely plenty of times when she just stops despite the fact I am doing everything "right". Getting to Course Brook is a three hour haul, but I have now been there enough that the drive is not that bad. I act...

Whew! That was a whole lotta posts in a short amount of time! All caught up with 2020 and now we are moving forward! is this not the CUTEST photo of my youngest riding Rejoice back in January?? I never really wrote any goals for 2021, but they are pretty simple: Keep the ponies happy and healthy Ellie: Have multiple solid experiences at BN level Maybe have Babette take Ellie N by fall Confident in all First Level movements by end of 2021 Rejoice: Continue to have fun outings when we can! Dreamy: Keep her comfortable, sound, and in good weight (she was looking a bit elderly/unsound this winter to me so she is back on Equioxx) this was my favorite Bernie meme even better is that Janet Foy made it her FB profile pic hahaha I gave Ellie most of the winter off and just did some toodling around in the sn*w here and there. I felt as though we had grown SO much in 2020 that we both needed a little down time to digest it all. Babette was in Aiken anyway and I did not want to take dressage lesso...

Ellie finally became a foxhunter! She was such a star and thought it was the most exciting trail ride of her life haha. It included new horses to meet, hounds that looked like fun to meet,  three deer jumping into our path, going fast through the fields, and then getting to eat grass at the holds while wearing her bridle. She took it all in stride and with a maturity I wasn't sure would ever happen LOL! This was a perfect culmination of a year of growing up and learning how to work as a team. We had SO MUCH FUN! I hope to do a few more fox hunts this fall in 2021! before we headed out we are way in the back haha Ellie is on the far left!

Through September, I felt as though Ellie and I had overcome most of our major challenges. This is not to say things were suddenly perfect, and I certainly did stupid things like forget to put my leg on at times, but Babette had helped me learn how to balance her before a jump so 1. Ellie stopped fussing and could SEE the jump and 2. I could put my leg on because she wasn't rushing at the fence. I stopped allowing myself to be fooled by the fact she would take me to the fence and feel so forward and then surprisingly grind to a stop. It wasn't a true forward and it was too unbalanced. I learned how to set the canter pace and use leg to ask her to go forward at the base. It sounds so much easier when I write it out, but honestly it took me some time as a rider to really iron this out with Ellie. So, with that newfound confidence, we entered the Fall XC Derby at Rest & Be Thankful (RABT), the farm where we take our jumping lessons. I was excited to give BN another try on a co...

By mid September, Ellie and I had started to get ourselves together. It wasn't perfect, but it felt so much better to have put in the time, sweat, and tears to begin to move past our issues with stopping. I felt really discouraged for most of the summer, so moving through that was huge. Of course, my rides at Green Acres and Esprit in August had still contained stops, but our lessons were where we really showed improvement.  when you ask your small child to take a photo of you on your horse and he wants a selfie, too  I took Ellie down one day to the farm where Babette was based out of for years called Gathering Farm (she is now at a new barn because Gathering sold over the winter). It was an opportunity to take a lesson over fences in a new place, so while it wasn't totally like a show, it was nice to jump in that environment. And can I just say that Hamilton, MA is such beautiful horse country! It is home to Myopia Hunt as well as many other lovely barns like Ledyard Farm. B...

This was the event where Babette was to ride Ellie to give her (and I) confidence around show jump and XC. It was super weird for me to have my horse at an event but not be her rider! But I was so excited for this and knew it would be good for me to see. I also literally had just gotten a new saddle that week before this show and LOVED IT so much. So Babette was the first one to compete in it haha.  Ellie was great in the huge and chaotic dressage warm up. Babette rode her conservatively, which was fine. She never really got her over her back though (not an issue since she was there to jump the mare and not get some outstanding dressage score) and that meant her free walk was non existent haha. But it didn't matter as they put in a respectable test and were sitting 4th out of a BN division of 11 riders. The SJ and XC courses all looked good to me, except honestly there was one fence on XC I was really glad Babette was going to be dealing with instead of me. The farm has a random sm...

After the mostly successful but still a lot of refusals event at Green Acres two weeks earlier, I decided to take Ellie out to a local 2-phase for another experience over fences. I knew we could get eliminated, but the point was to get her out and get her over everything for my own confidence. And when I put my leg on I had to mean it.  Dressage was status quo with a 36.67 and the comment nicely forward but needs to be more supple, tight today . It is not a great indoor in which to do a calm dressage test, so we had some tension issues we normally do not have. But whatever, I was here to jump not worry about a dressage score. still cute above the kick boards on each long side are stalls all the horses are left inside and it is noisy Ellie is just short enough she cannot see anything over the walls but she hears and reacts to everything. T his is not just an Ellie issue - lots of riders are not fond of riding tests in this indoor (they do have an outdoor but don't use it for small a...

Again, before I recap this show and why we did it, I need to give some training background. After the not-so-good TE at CourseBrook's USEA event,  Babette rode Ellie and we made some decisions. Ellie was stopping at fences with me because I did not always put my leg on, yes. However, in riding Ellie, Babette was able to realize that there were times that everything was "correct" and Ellie would still stop. She was fussing and flipping her head up at half halts before a fence that there were times she legit did not even see the fence until the very last moment. Then we had the OMG A FENCE surprise stop that even Babette wasn't prepared for.  Huh. I nervously worried aloud that maybe it was because she had an eyesight issue? No, as Babette was able to show me, when Ellie accepted the balancing half halt before the fence, saw the fence, and you were able to then put your leg on, she was fine. Like amazingly fine. Ellie had been jumping in the NS beval, so Babette had me ...

So, this was the big recognized BN event I had planned for and hoped for in 2020. Ellie and I had done well at the BN 2-phase in May and the BN cross country derby the week prior. I thought we could do just fine. Yet, we had started to have a problem with jumping that sort of began slowly and ended up becoming a real problem. At the time, I had a bad habit of taking my leg off and expecting my horse to jump, as my previous Standardbreds were so incredibly honest. Ellie is brave and willing, but as the fences got bigger (not that BN is that high, but 2'7" was certainly the largest we had jumped by 2020!) and I just sort of sat there passively, Ellie started to stop. She would stop if she thought the jump looked a bit scary, she would stop if she just didn't understand the question, she would stop because she really wasn't seeing the jump. Hmm. It took Babette and I a while to figure this all out, but the catalyst was this recognized event at Course Brook Farm in MA. We ...

Ellie and I had a late start to starting up dressage lessons in the spring of 2020, which was fine with me since I appreciated the opportunity to get out for lessons at all! So many of our issues at the time stemmed from connection (a lack thereof) and Ellie blowing off my seat/half halts. It was nice to look at 2020 as an opportunity to really buckle down on training and not worry about showing rated or pushing ourselves to really get solid at First level. Beth (my instructor) wanted us to tackle First level in the competition ring, even though we still had plenty of bobbles and Ellie did not always want to work as a team haha. But the pressure was off due to COVID which was actually just what we needed. We tackled First Level in the middle of June 2020. We ended up only doing dressage tests/shows at Hidden Brook Farm, where we take lessons, which was perfect. And we only did First 1 last year because we were NOT ready to do much else haha. It was a huge growing year. Our debut at Fir...

Again this year, Ellie won her fair share (and then some) of year-end awards for 2019!  We competed at Training level dressage and three consecutive levels in eventing.  We started the year in June at pre-elementary and won, then did two events at elementary for a first and second, and ended the year moving up to advanced elementary in October.  We also did two what I think of as "regular horse shows", the Vermont Heritage Days and the Maine Morgan Breeder's Cup Benefit Show. I am listing this in order of banquet dates, so that is why there seems to be no rhyme or reason.  (Plus, having posted this over a year later, can I just say how weird it is to see pics of everyone without masks???) Maine Horse Association  Training Level Champion with a 67.4995% American Morgan Horse Association  Open Competition Program Reserve Champion Eventing 5th place Traini ng level dressage    Central Maine Dressage Association 3rd place Tr...