LUCY =]

       Well, hello! A has happened since my last post, we have a new addition to our family! Lucy! Lucy is an 8 year old off the track thoroughbred who we adopted from a rescue in Powell, Wyoming.
    Lucy has had some training but she is still green so i will not be retiring Kiona yet as Lucy is not ready to compete, but as Kiona is 21 next year i feel that the time is coming close. Anyways we are not making any definite plans yet but I know that when I do retrire Kiona she will go to a great home, her second owner was gracious enough to agree to take her back when she was retired. =] But it still makes me sad to know that i will be letting her go soon because she has tught me so much and we have such a great bond.
     As of know it is a blizzard outside. If you know me at all you know that I hate winter, snow, coldness, and wind and pretty much any thing else associated with winter, but it soes give you a good time to plan out next year. I have been trying to pla out next years show schedule but it has proved difficult as USEA has not yet published the summer and fall omnibus. But oh well I will survive thinking of spring, warm weather, and that first cross country clinic.... =]


OOOPS! as of know i don't have any pictures of Lucy! but they will come soon i promice!!!!! =]

Hunter Jumper Shows

          Well a lot has happened since my last post. Kiona got a puncture wound about 4 inches above her knee and her knee swelled up a whole lot. We did the first show in a hunter jumper schooling show series and now it officially winter. And also pouty pony club ponies.
          As for the puncture wound we found it 2 weeks ago when I took her out of the trailer. The thing is that she was not lame at all so we cleaned it and called out vet and he just had us put a sweat wrap on it for 3 days and give her 10 cc of penicillin for 5 days. All of this happened on a satuerday and when I had a dressage lesson on thursday she was completley fine. So we are very fortunate that it was not more serious.
          We are having a jackpot hunter jumper schooling show series here and the first show was last weekend. Me and Kiona did 3 classes, 2 foot hunters, 2'6" hunters and 2'9" hunters. interestingly enough my 2 foot hunter class was quite horrible. There were only 1 other person in the class with me. The course statred out with a straight forward vertical on the diagonal. Then there was a triple combonation, Vertical, 2 strides, oxer, 1 stride and then a brush box oxer. Well it was going very well up until after the second vertical where on the landing side there was a big mud puddle. When I was walking the course I didn't think that the mud was going to be a problem. I was wrong. After the mud splattered on her she was really racy and strung out. Well I won't bore you with all of the details, here are my placings. 2' hunters - second place. 2'6" hunters - second place and 2'9" hunters - first place.
          About the officialy winter part we got 16" inches of snow in 2 days and we got 2 snow days off from school. The best part about this is that we are that much closer to spring every second that passes.
          We just had 2 girls join our local pony club and they bought a pony that another one of the girls had outgrown. They came to their first lesson and they could not get the pony out of the trailer. After the rider, the riders mom, me  and the DC of our pony club (who is also the former owner) trying unsucessfully to get her out we finally just shut the door and left her there.... those stubborn little ponies =]
          Well that's all the news I have for now! I hope to write more regularly! Bye!

Perfect Practice

    This seems to be a week for quotes. Here are the ones that have hit me the hardest. 'Practice does not make perfect unless it is perfect practice.' and 'Your biggest dreams are right around the corner, you just have to decide which corner to turn.'
      The first quote really affected me because it's true, if you don't make your practice perfect you won't get any better. This has caused me to rethink my training approach and I think that it has been a really good thing. The second one really motivates me because it tells you that your dreams really are within reach, you just have to work for them and if things don't turn out just as you had planned you just have to roll with the flow and know that everything has a season and a purpose.
      I am big into things that inspire me and give me hope, so here are a few thoughts, songs and movies that really inspire me.
      'Stronger' by Kanye West. This song relly pumps me up, I like to listen to it before competitions and whenever I am feeling down, it just helps me to remember that nothing is impossible and it reminds me that I will always achieve my dreams if I work for them.
     The next thing is thoughts. When I think about standing on that podium and riding around that victory lap and representing my country I can hardly explain the feeling that that gives me.
     Visual things also provide me with great enjoyment. Here are a few links to thins that really inspire me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoOF0lQf0D4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afEM9bMnEbU


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8WcF_ksxb4


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38ISDdAvgAw

Above is ma riding Kiona at the Abbe Ranch eventing Clinic in May 2009

This is ma riding Kiona to my first novice fence ever, (I swear it was a prelim fence in disguise! =]) Standing is my instructor Tom Ordway.

End of the Summer Season

         It is now the end of September and officialy the end of the summer eventing season. This is quite a drag because, as it often goes with horses my season did not turn out as I had expected. My first event this year was the Abbe Ranch Horse Trials in beginner novice. Not only was this my first event of the year it was also my first event ever! We started out in 12th place with a 48 after dressage. Not that bad considering that I had no idea what 'above the aids' meant. And then onto X-C. We started out ok but entering the woods Kiona (my horse) didn't think that she should really be jumping in the woods but we came out of it alright with 2 refusals and an almost fall, (i made an extrordinary effort to pull myself back on in light of the new 1 fall and your out rule). After exiting the woods the rest of the course went beutifully, but because of the little fiasco in the woods we ended up with 60 time falts and a total score that i am not willing to mention =] So onto stadium we went and unfortunatly Kiona started to get a real bleeder going on out of her left nostril and after talking to the vet and not bieng able to discern the cause we decided to withdraw. Luckily by the time we were back to the trailer and untacked she had stopped bleeding, but not after wiping a big smear across my show shirt! I think that the altitude got to her and she just poked herself with a blade of grass or something.
          So after Abbe Ranch I had planned to go to 1 more event but that didn't pan out. I am now happily setting my sights on next year and getting really excited because I just started jumping novice fences! I can hardly believe that I only started riding englisg a year ago it feels like I have been part of it forever...
        Anyways above are some pictures of Kiona and I.