Pine Top...

Good morning to all,

6 Horses, 2 early mornings make 3 tired women!

We had a great weekend with all 6 horses at Pine Top, Vegas went again at Prelim and shows steady improvement in dressage, show jumping he stills finds distracting and cross country he was a good boy, although I need a different bit and more work on the flat!  It has been a  long time since I have had a horse that wants to gallop low and it makes me think I am going a whole lot faster than I am.  You can see that on the video on our website,  http://www.csquarefarm.com/pine-top-farm-horse-trials-thomson-ga-march-17-18-2012/ . He ended up 6th though so not a bad weekend.

Vegas
All Photos in this post are from Mark Walter Lehner - Hoofclix.com

R Star finally came home with the blue this weekend.  She has been knocking on the door for a while finishing 3rd at her first training here at Pine Top, while being in the lead, and having a rail at Sporting Days to keep her from first.  So it was nice to finish off our Aiken trip with a wonderful go.  She was super in the dressage, receiving 2 9's and a comment of "absolutely stunning."  I told Neal, to tell her Mother, Faith, our super broodmare, that she continues to make the best babies.  Anyway she jumped an up to snuff show jumping super well only marred by her rider who put her a bit too deep to an oxer and cross country she went around like a Star!  She will make the move up to Prelim probably in April.

R Star

Ballinaugh Ice was my next ride and she is a new ride and a sale horse.  She was outstanding, and put in a good dressage test. I think she could still knock off a few points and she even got relaxed enough to get floppy ears a couple of times.  She then went and jumped a double clean in show jumping and cross country to finish 5th.

Ballinglaugh Ice

Columbus was up next and he belongs to the Gibbons Family.  We had sold Columbus to daughter Molly to take novice and training and Molly is visiting for the next 2 weeks.  Columbus is a big guy, a draft cross, so connecting him is hard work, especially with the heat however he came to work and got a 27 in the dressage, my best score for the weekend, putting him 2nd.  An unfortunate rail dropped him to 6th but a clean and fast cross country put him back up to 4th.  Molly will be with us through Morven so watch out!

Columbus

Neveah finished the training rides for me.  She was a trooper, and while Columbus dressage ring was running late, Nev's was not so she only had a 15 minute warmup.  Still she was a good girl, and I felt good about the test.  I have been working with Kim Severson and she watched most of our test and said she looked really good so I was disappointed with the score unfortunately dressage is subjective.  She also jumped well, having one down in show jumping when I overrode into a combination that had been riding long for me all day, and then cross country she was amazing.  The head of the ground jury came up to me afterwards and said I was the best through the one piece of the cross country he watched.   That is always nice to hear.

Nevaeh

The last ride of the day was little Sport.  He continues to improve but overall he was a bit distracted in all of his warmups this weekend.  This is something we will continue to work on.  He put in a good business like dressage test, although he did call out at one point.  Both Laura, who was videoing and I thought oh please....we hope this doesn't continue, but he settled down and was better.  In show jumping he jumped a clean round and I was surprised yesterday looking at scores to see he had 3 times faults.  On cross country he was a good boy and had a little time. They ran the novices at 400 meters per minute and that is still a little fast for him so we had a good confidence building go and finished out of the ribbons.

Sport

We head home next Saturday and look forward to reconnecting with our Pennsylvania friends.

Hope you all are well,  all the best,

Courtney