Monday, March 21, 2011

Full Gallop, and Coming Home!

Hello to everyone...

So, with packing, shipping horses and getting home after being gone for 8 weeks, the blog just did not get done!

My apologies!

Where to start....our last event at Full Gallop had its shares of ups and downs.  Courtney Olmstead came in on Saturday to help me out as our super help for Aiken, Summer Cogan, had a birtheday party for her recently turned 5 year old Jersey.  Courtney was great help and after Saturday, Tag lead the OI, and Connie and Hope were both tied for 5th and Caylee was, I think, 9th in her division.  More jumping followed on Sunday and Tag had some really good moments and then, well, all I can say is one very misunderstood moment at the sunken road where I popped off!  Oh, the humbling sport we do!

Connie and Hope came in to brighten my day as they both jumped well in show jumping and cross country with Hope just adding a rail and Connie won and Hope got her first placing, a 7th in her second novice.  Not too shabby.

Caylee, aka Cedilah Dancer, had a mysterious swelling on her leg so we did not take the chance to run her but after more tests she was determined to be fine, but better safe than sorry.

Some of the horses then shipped home on Monday with Neal coming down Tuesday morning and helping me take the rest of them and me and Peyton home on Wednesday.

Our new wonderful groom Liz Hammond joined us at home and has helped the settling in process and we are now back and for the most part caught up.

It is super to be home and the weather has been beautiful and the daffodils are coming out.

We hope to see you soon as we head to Area II events, as always feel free to stop by and say hello.

Talk soon,
Courtney

Monday, March 7, 2011

Sporting Days Recap

Well our little girl is growing up...Hope did her first novice yesterday and while her dressage work needs a 1,000 more transitions, like her brothers and mother the girl knows how to jump.

In show jumping she cantered sweetly around like a show horse and had a couple of rails when she became distracted by things outside of the ring, not to worry nothing that more mileage can't help!

On cross country she was galloping around so well and I was thinking to myself how much fun Neal is going to have on her that I did not ride very strongly down to the ditch and she just spooked at the painted rails...oops!

She still was great and jumped in a lovely rhythm and so I am thrilled with her...

It sometimes is easy to forget that 7 weeks ago she had never been off the farm, never been in water or jumped a show jump course or even a cross country fence....!

This weekend we have Full Gallop with Connie and Cedilah Dancer two sale horses and Tag and Hope will go again as well.

Then we head home and although the weather has been lovely and the horses have been going well, I miss home and Neal....

Talk later, and hope to see you soon,
Courtney

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Success with Both!

Hi everyone,

We had a really good day at Sporting Days with Foxy finishing well in his first preliminary with a clean cross country run!  The show jumping caused problems all morning and he jumped well but had two rails early in the course, his dressage was also very good.

Nevaeh was a star!  She was very good in the dressage ending up 4th in a big division.  And then she jumped a double clean in show jumping and cross country which was beautiful and FUN!

She is now qualified for the Eventing Championships after just 3 training level events....go big Nev!

Onto Hope tomorrow.

Talk later,
Courtney

Friday, March 4, 2011

recap of the week....

HI,

My apologies for not writing about Pine Top earlier, I had tried a couple of different ideas at Pine Top and some were successful and some were not but I now have feed back that I can use and try to get better with....as they say nothing ventured nothing gained!

The sale of Gretchen and George Wintersteen's lovely Irish horse Ringwood Murphy that our friend Boyd Martin rode to Preliminary was finalized to the Holtzman family in California this week...we wish them all the best of luck and look forward to hearing about his continued success!

We also sold a lovely horse Simply Fred to the Rowley family near Erie Pennsylvania they came to visit on Pine Top weekend...we also wish them the best of luck and continued success!  Also thank you to Babette Lenna for her help with this sale.

The rest of this week has been busy with several people looking at horses including Leo and Lynne a lovely couple from Virginia who work with Kristen Bachmann.

We have other folks coming in over the weekend and we also have a busy weekend at Sporting Days with Foxy doing his first Prelim, Hope doing her first Novice and beautiful Nev Nev doing training.

Hope to be reporting in later this weekend.

Talk later,
Courtney