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...

Ten days after the April 22 dressage show at HBF, we were back for their second show! It felt like a lot of showing after a winter off, but it also was good to test where we were so early on. Plus, these shows are so laid back and ho-hum for us, since it is our lesson barn, it is always good to practice tests in the ring where we lesson! We had run through First 2 earlier that week in our lesson and Beth really liked how I rode that test better than First 1. This was especially true in the canter work, as you lengthen the stride and then circle 15 m. in First 1 but you do the opposite in First 2. For where we are right now, cantering the 15 m. circle and THEN asking for the lengthening seems to help Ellie balance and develop her medium canter much more than how it is asked for in First 1. I know we are not ready quite yet for the canter loops of First 3, but to me it didn't matter which of the other First level tests we rode. So as Beth is the show secretary haha, she just had me r...

Our final NEJA show in their winter series was at the end of April. On a whim, I decided to kick it old school and wear my rust breeches and navy coat. I definitely got a few "looks" from some of the HJ crowd, but it was worth being the weirdo eventer girl haha. It was a gorgeous spring day and our rounds were all excellent. Rejoice really seems to enjoy her newfound jumper pony status and powered around like she knew what she was doing haha.  My goals for the day were to win the ground poles speed class by taking a sneaky route someone's trainer would not approve of again haha like I did at the March show and to remember my jump off round like I did NOT do at the March show! Though there wasn't a super sneaky route to take in the ground poles class, I made sure to set her up for tight turns and rollbacks. We did win the class out of nine riders! Whoot! Our speed cross rails was also a good class, with Rejoice willing to listen to half halts, turn on a dime, and also ...

While Rejoice and I were busy playing jumper pony, Ellie and I had been concentrating on our dressage lessons during the late winter and early spring. It felt good to come back from a pretty laidback winter and not to have lost any training; in fact, I think Ellie's winter break did her a world of good. It felt as though she had matured a ton and was ready to be a First Level horse. She is coming nine this year and I think it is my favorite age so far! this was March but pretty representative of our winter rides Beth and I agreed it would be a good idea to knock off the rust and get the first 2021 show under our belt, so I entered the little schooling show her barn held during April school vacation. It ended up being freezing cold and spitting sn*w (which is better than the rain that was forecasted I suppose lol), so the weather wasn't exactly ideal and fun, but it was worth getting into the big outside ring and riding First 1 to see where we were at. We had not ridden this tes...

I feel as though winter shows always feel like a fun thing to do until it is actually the morning of, and it is SO FREAKING COLD outside, and you think why am I like this? so cold but so cute But I digress. Margaret and I decided it would be super fun and exciting to bring Rejoice to the winter schooling shows at a local farm. Rejoice is actually a pretty decent jumper and seems to enjoy it much more than anything too dressage related haha. After our success at the three versatility challenges in 2020, I figured it might be fun to bop around a few little courses. Jumping Rejoice also helped give me confidence that had been lost in 2020 with Ellie's stopping issues. Rejoice is honest and the jumps were so tiny that it gave me the opportunity to just jump without much thought. I mean really, we did ground poles and cross rails. Adorable and so fun!  look at her cute little ears and plump & fuzzy mama belly Rejoice was a little wide eyed and I definitely was overthinking everythin...

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...

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...