And the Wins Just Keep on Coming!

The photo above includes some of my favorite owners, students, and the most loyal Blue Clover Eventing supporters. Unfortunately, not a single one of them came to Olney Farm HT this past Sunday, and why they didn't want to spend the 100 degree Sunday outside with us in a field, I can't possible imagine :) In fact, not even our token Lercher went with us to the show! I knew it was going to be hot hot hot - and turns out so were our results! Speaking of the heat, I want to thank the entire crew at Olney, to volunteer is a thankless job and to volunteer on such a miserably hot and humid day, bravo. I also can't imagine what it was like setting up for the HT Thursday-Saturday where I think nearly every day broke a record for heat index in MD.
Luckily our times had us in and out, and Trisha did a great job of keeping everyone on track. We did have several visitors that lent a helping hand (and brought us an amazing peach cake - thank you!!) and it is always fun to share all the gory details with anyone that is willing to listen. Marian didn't have too many gory details, she won on her dressage score in the Training Rider division woop woop! I was quite proud of her as she can be very hard on herself and the past two weeks has made a choice to focus on positive instead of negative, and I say she did a great job and she got ribbons and loot to prove it! The courses at Olney are not the biggest and toughest for their respective levels; but they have a lot of tricky places here and there and Marian and Tanner rose to the occasion and won a nail-biting tie for first that came down to closest to optimum time on cross country.
Our other superstar of the day was my favorite little grey mare, Splish Splash. After a nearly perfect record at Beginner Novice (she was only second ONCE by .5) it really was time for her to make the move up to the big Novice. I thought we were sunk as soon as we started. She grinds on the bit just out of habit, she is a lovely mover and scores in the 20s and she just does it without even thinking. In the indoor at Olney, it was deafeningly silent and with no doors windows nothing I swear I couldn't even hear myself think over the crunch crunch crunch noise of her loose ring double jointed snaffle. If I were the judge I know I would have just fixated on it. But, the streak continues, she was winning after dressage on a 20-something and never looked back! She did look down, and tried to put her feet down, while half way over the log on the lump out on cross country. I had never seen this at novice, it was legitimate! and Splash had certainly never seen anything like it. From up on top of the mound you see the ramp into the water, and ironic as it is Splish Splash didn't care much for water when she first started her eventing career. I was one step ahead of her luckily and through all the flags we went on the first try. (Sabrina, if you are reading this, we will definitely have me school this again once or twice before you and Splash attempt this together lol.)
Lucky did the same thing in his novice division, although unfortunately his day was ruined as soon as he went into the indoor. Apparently Lucky has never seen a mirror and didn't know just how good looking he is, and couldn't get enough of himself anytime we attempted to go down a longside or into a corner. Sadly, Novice Test B calls for you to go both down the long side and into a corner lol. He jumped really really well and was very relaxed in warm up, so we considered that a success.
Next week we are off to Millbrook. There will be some good cross country schooling to be done here in the meantime. Smarty needs some skinnies, Morris needs a bunker-style ditch and a 4x4, and Marian and Trisha are both looking to move up to the big P. So they just need to jump anything and everything that they think looks big and scary!! Oh the fun we will have!!

CIC* Win for Playtime at Cosequin Stuart HT

I am not going to sit here and lecture; but in life you have two choices. You can focus on the positive or you can focus on the negative. I think I speak for my entire Blue Clover Eventing crew when I say that we had a great time at Stuart! Stuart is one of my favorite events of all time, and I was lucky enough to get interviewed by a TV station up there and tell them the same thing. It has the most supportive, cooperative, and accommodating volunteers and organizers out of any competition I think we attend. The venue is great, the cross country always challenging but in a good kind of way. I was happy to be back this year and you can count of me for 2012!
Playtime aka Smarty convincingly won the CIC* division and I am so thrilled for his owner Chris Ellis who is one of the most enthusiastic owners an eventer could ask for. We have had Smarty in the barn since February and this weekend was a personal best for the chubby little chestnut. He has all the talent in the world and all the ego and attitude that you would expect for a horse named Playtime and nicknamed Smarty. I guess he likes Stuart, however, because he was excellent. We got there on Thursday with quite the truckful, Morris Smarty Richard Jackson Trisha and I. Marian and Gunsmoke were I think quite possibly the only things left behind! We had jog-ups Thursday evening and both boys jogged great, and Trisha had them looking great. He got a little stiff and tense in the dressage; but still moves like a million bucks and is getting quite rideable in there and we were sitting 4th Friday night. The 1* cross country was really an intermediate with green squares! Smarty really rose to the occasion, it was the first time where I had a track to really gallop and get him to focus, have time to set up for the combinations....I think he is going to be quite a 3 day horse. He jumped really well, had a lot of fun galloping, and actually did come back on command! He finished cross country looking for his next fence, just a couple of seconds over the time and there were plenty of places where I could have saved seconds here and there. There was a lot of talk about footing, many people scratched, I chose to be a bit conservative. I had a good looking, good feeling horse Saturday night and he was the same way Sunday morning when it was time to jog. Thanks to Matt Flynn for prancing him down the pavement for me, he was accepted with no hesitations and on to the jumping we went. I was so sore from my fall on Morris (more to follow) that I didn't do too much in warm up. The warmblood in Smarty appreciated that as well and the next thing you knew we were in the ring. He was a little tired and tapped a couple of rails, taking two down actually; but I had them in hand and still won by over 9 points! How lucky is that! It was the smoothest, most consistent show jumping round we have had to date and as soon as he is a little stronger I am going to have quite the horse. I am really looking forward to his future!
Plenty of other things to recap from the weekend. Trisha did a super job grooming at her first FEI competition, there is really only one way to learn a lot of the rules and that is to get thrown right into them, and she was there with a smile on her face! She has been a super addition to the Blue Clover Eventing team and I hope to have her for a long, long time! A couple of other unsung heroes from the weekend would be Richard and Jackson. I got so beat up from falling on Morris that I was quite worthless from about noon on Saturday until now. They were able to do everything, including changing our flat trailer tire Sunday night on the side of 15 while tractor trailers were flying by eek! And now I guess I will quickly recap Morris' weekend. I was so looking forward to competing him again, he hasn't run since VA HT, and his dressage was really good! He stayed very relaxed and got 7s and 8s on his walk hooray! Cross country was going to be a great track, the 2* asked a lot of great questions and he came out of the start box with his ears pricked. His confidence in his new jumping form has really been growing and I was thrilled to be on him after having such a good go on Smarty. The first two combinations went well, and we galloped out to the back field, got a good jump at the corn feeder at 9 and set up for the coffin. Great stride, good line, felt like a good jump and instead of landing on the way to the ditch we were skidding sideways across the ground. Turns out, Morris made a mistake, I guess he is allowed from time to time; but there is really no good time for things like this. When you look at the pictures, his right front leg never left the ground. Perfect form with 3 out of 4 and unfortunately that just isn't going to work at a vertical set of airy rails on the lip of a hill one stride before a ditch! Luckily he was up and moving right away, more so than his rider. When you fall together like that the air vest doesn't blow up because you aren't far enough away from the horse and I am still some kind of sore. Nothing wrong with anything important just seriously sore everywhere. I am going to be just fine by tomorrow, have a truck load of babies heading to Olney HT this weekend, and it just makes for that much better of a story when describing Smarty's victory!

MD HT I - All Done!

Fear the turtles! And many poor little Beginner Novice horses did. But not our Splish Splash super star, she flew over them and into the water she went. Next stop, novice! She has her game face in in the picture above. Don't let the halter fuzzies fool you. She is fierce!


The intense July sun wasn't the only thing that was hot this weekend, the Blue Clover Eventing Team was on a roll both days at the first MD HT at Loch Moy! We absolutely lucked out the first day, crack of dawn dressage times ended up getting us a great parking spot right in front of the secretary, and more importantly the food booth next to the secretary, and more importantly the smoothie people inside that food booth :) We had a really fun guest with us, one of my dear friends
Amanda who sadly lives across the whole country in AZ; but fun for us to get to entertain her for a day. She is the one responsible for my owning Gunsmoke, so I know many of you love her even though you have never met her! She got to see the Smokes in all of his glory, passed out under the truck and trailer for the entire day. Anyway, it was fun for her to get to be back at an event in Area II, especially one as nice as Loch Moy. I am continually impressed by the reinvestment that Carolyn and her crew put into the facility and it really has become a destination event for a lot of reasons. Sadly however they fill a void in the middle of July when it is blazing hot!

I brought a fleet of ponies all set to move up to the next level and I am happy to say I have a fleet of ponies all set to move up to the next level! Smarty put in yet another (yawn) boringly beautiful dressage test. As he gets stronger, the scores keep going up and up. Hooray! He had another fantastic moment in show jumping - please sense the sarcasm - he was having his best round yet and he went over the liverpool and snap he went into jumper mode. The triple was next and he wanted to make this ridiculous jump off type bid and while I didn't let that happen, it wasn't a distance I would pick on my own, either. He left all of the rails up and finished with a clean round inside the time. It was also the fastest he had been on cross country, double hooray. There were several tricky questions that made you feel like you were on an Int horse. He did both really, really well. I think this track set him up well for the CIC1* at Stuart, and who knows, hopefully an Int shortly hereafter?! He just needs to get a little stronger and then we can go even faster, even with our time faults this weekend we finished 3rd!
The newbie of the crew, Portman aka Lucky, also competed on Saturday and finished 4th in his US eventing debut! This little 4 year old should be a future star for Blue Clover Eventing once he learns that horse shows and horse races are two entirely different things. Horse racing, he was no good at, so he may as well give all that behavior the 'adios' and learn how to be a show horse :) His dressage got better and better especially once we got away from all of the pinto horses in warm up, which he really didn't care for at all and what were the odds that there would be like 10 in the novice warm-up?? On a serious note, he is a ridiculously good jumper, the right balance of forward and careful, and quite a natural athlete. Really works against you when he is leaping and spinning away from cantering horses in warm-up; but I was really thrilled to tool him around the cross country. Look for this guy at Olney and Millbrook.
I guess the star of the show for us was Splash, one of my favorites even though I'm not supposed to have favorites ha ha ha. She went late in the day on Sunday, stepped off of the trailer bright white, not a hair out of place, and bopped herself down to the dressage ring where we got compliment after compliment about how fancy she is. She just does everything with flair, puts in 110% and you know I love horses like that. She was winning handily after the dressage, and then put in a super show jumping round. She isn't a very big horse, probably sticks right at 15.2, and so I have really had to work on her making the horse distances in the jumping lines. She got them this weekend easy easy and what a huge difference that makes, letting our show jumping round now look like a hunter round over jumper jumps. I made the executive decision that we would do the ditch option at fence 6, I figured she would see them next time at novice so she better go ahead and see it this time around. She just flew right over it without thinking twice. I deem her ready for novice at Olney, hope to see you all there!

Small and Mighty!

The lercher was completely wiped out after a hectic yet successful weekend at Seneca Valley's Horse Trials. We had an action packed two days, Smarty and Trisha's horse Bailey competed on Saturday in the PH and TR respectively. Sunday we had a pretty fun group, 17.2h Freddie Mac competing in the NH, and then a fleet of BN horses and ponies! Marian's horse Tanner also competed in the ON on Saturday; but sadly Marian got kicked out of camp and was forced to park with the bumper pull trailers on the other side of the show grounds. She was closer to the Smoothie Lady, however, so perhaps that was a good call after all...
Things were exciting early with us trying to figure out how exactly we were going to get to Seneca with the US Open in town and road blocks everywhere along our normal route. Luckily golfers don't get up at the crazy hours that we do, well maybe they do but their fans don't so smooth sailing on the way to the competition. Smarty put in an excellent dressage, winning on a 24. He can actually canter now! Unfortunately, however, had a major hiccup in that canter at fence 3 in the show jumping. He cantered himself right into the middle of an oxer and that was really fun and if you want more fun look up the pictures from GRC and be as amazed as I was that I stayed on! Cross country he totally redeemed himself and it was probably his best round yet, quite rideable and there were lots of skinny questions. Trisha did an awesome job with Bailey, coming in 7th in her debut competition in Area II! Very proud of her, we turned her flatwork upside down in the two weeks that she has had Bailey here and it paid off immediately, was sitting 4th after the dressage. We will work on in and outs until her next competition at Loch Moy :) Seriously though, she busted her tail all weekend long and I am so thankful to have her on the team.
Good hustle by Trisha and Marian to turn us around Saturday evening, and thanks to Richard for the pizza and beer needed to do so! We were off again Sunday with two full trailers and man did all my youngsters show up to play! Marian finished 4th in her novice, a really great way to start Tanner's comeback after a nasty injury that had him sitting out for a year. He proved he's ready for Training and beyond and that's what he's going to get! Freddie Mac was back in action after some time off from eventing this winter, and he proved to the world that some time off was just what he needed as he won on a 27 or something fantastic like that. Now 7 years old, he grew more than a hand since we imported him last April and that poor boy just couldn't keep up with his legs or anything else for that matter. He was brilliant in all 3 phases and clocked around like he had competed the day before. Looking forward to moving him up to training soon. My 3 little ones were super stars, with Bijou setting a high standard as our first out and finished 5th. Splish Splash gets our most improved award and you can bet she's going up to novice and I expect her to continue her winning ways, she finished second .5 behind the leader! Bling got more attention than I think any horse I have ever sat on at a competition. We had a flock of people surrounding her at the trailers, and I got stopped walking from trailer parking to dressage at least 5 times by people asking me who I was riding. She didn't let her admirers down, winning on her dressage score. In fact, I didn't add a single jumping fault to my dressage scores on Sunday, that's something that I am very proud of and I know their owners are pleased with that as well. We work circles in the ring tirelessly so that one day we get a good dressage mark, and then you just don't add anything to it. It's that easy, right?! Hmm, we will see if we can pull it off next time, to Loch Moy and the Maryland Horse Trials I we go!

Welcome Trisha and Marian!

I am very excited to get to introduce you to the two new working student extraordinaires here at Blue Clover Eventing- Marian and Trisha! Both girls nailed their interviews, have great competitive goals, and so far have survived their trial periods lol. In all seriousness, however, we are already working together as a great team. Marian (first picture) just graduated from UVM and was looking to fulfill her goals of riding at preliminary on her very nice Argentinian horse, Tanner, purchased several years ago from Sinead and Rebecca. He's been a great college horse, going to and from school and at the same time that made serious competition difficult. At the end of the fall season Marian is hoping to go to grad school and so we are making the most of her time with us! She is bringing back her good old pony club skills and her laid back attitude is appreciated by the horses and I alike! We are extra impressed by her driving skills, she's a "Beltway Bandit" as we call them around here, choosing to stay at home and commute to the barn and her horse daily. I don't know how much coffee it takes her in the morning; but she's at the barn every day by 7 and I've seen that traffic first hand.....

Trisha is our other newbie that we have welcomed with open arms. She better not be leaving in November lol! Trisha is with us as Valerie's long term right hand and she has all the skills and experience to do the job well. Her super people skills have allowed her to fit right in to the program and she really already owns the job. In fact, I saw her sprinting out to Morris' field last week at the sight of the first fly so the big horse would agree that she's a keeper :) Trisha is new to Area II, she finally got smart and left freezing RI and is looking forward to winter this year - in Florida and Aiken! Her partner in crime is Bailey, her own 16.2h OTTB that we are moving up to prelim soon.

The girls have their work cut out for them next weekend, each riding her own horse and I'm riding 5....let's put those skills to the ultimate test! If you are at Seneca, come stop in and say hello and maybe bring us something to eat?! Looking forward to seeing you there!

Where Does the Time Go?!

I hope that I can speak for everyone when I say that a good time was had by all this past weekend while I judged the Combined Test at Hidden Hollow in Gladstone, NJ! I was very excited to judge my first competition as a licensed 'r' and I was fortunate enough to work with a great group of people (pictured above scribe and show manager Holly Payne and winner of First Level Test 2 and 3 Kathy Hall aboard Sullivan). The show was a great mix of people ready to move up to the next level, as well as those who were just starting out with competitions. I do hope that I helped all of them!
I got a little help myself....I coordinated my trip to judge with lessons from expert judge Marilyn Payne. I took Morris and Smarty, Morris had to dressage every day and Smarty got lucky his last day and was able to show jump and then play around over some of the new cross country fences at Marilyn's lovely Applewood Farm. It was a great tune up on my position and Marilyn was really on my case all 3 days, with both horses. I have enjoyed working on all of my exercises since I've returned, not sure if Morris and Smarty feel the same way?! Smarty was moving like a million bucks by the time that I left, and that is really saying something because he nailed the dressage at Fair Hill on Memorial Day, scoring a 25 in the Preliminary Horse division!! Morris had some beautiful canterwork and Marilyn helped us gain a couple of extra points here and there with some tips on the Advanced tests.

There was no rest for the weary, as the very next day we loaded up the mother ship and went cross country schooling at Waredaca. They had the courses open from the weekend and we took advantage of it all, I think I schooled from Beginner Novice thru Intermediate! Smarty was jumping brilliantly and I really appreciated getting to school a lot of skinnies, and more specifically a lot of downhill skinnies. Splash gets the gold star for the day, I really love that little horse and she does everything with 200% effort. The Freddie Mac is back and started up right where he left off, schooling a majority of the novice and training. We plan on schooling again next week at Rubicon and bringing the masses (so if you are reading this and need to sign up for a group get in touch with me now so we can get times coordinated!). Our next competition is Seneca Valley in 2 weeks, looking forward to 2 action packed days with 6 horses going whew I hope the weather breaks by then!

MCTA - Glad I Went!

What can I say, looks like a typical picture of Morris and Valerie. Valerie busy thinking, plotting, planning, studying. And Morris, staring at cross country, hoping that he gets to run and jump!

Run and jump we did for the past several days at the beautiful MCTA at Shawan Downs. Lucky for me, this event is only an hour away from the barn and the weather for the past several days has been pretty perfecto for eventing. I think this has been, by farm, my most positive experience at this horse trials. In fact, I haven't competed at MCTA for probably 2 or 3 years. I know last year I went to work on my judge's license and thought for a fleeting moment or two that maybe I would be willing to give it a try again. The weather is usually rainy, the footing wet and deep, and the courses notoriously more difficult than you think they should be. They offer schooling after the event, and previously charged an arm and a leg to attend. I must say that this year things were really on the up and up! All of the courses seemed to have better flow, even though the advanced still wiped out half the division and it more or less rode like the hardest course I have ever ridden. Coming off of an elimination thanks to the skinnies at the Fair Hill CIC3* (and yes I still have a very painful and broken right thumb) I wasn't the happiest of campers walking around the advanced. However, by the end of the weekend, and even after schooling a bunch of critters today, I give the whole experience two thumbs up.
The headliner, perhaps, for the weekend was an oldie but a goodie...Private Buck. He was an old prelim horse of mine that went on with his owner to do all sorts of unrecognized things like fox hunting, hunter pacing, and being a guest horse extraordinaire. We decided to go ahead and sell him and to do so wanted to get a current record. So after a week of eventing bootcamp, off to MCTA we went. I entered him in the ON, and after an early morning on Saturday (Morris started the day with an 8 o'clock dressage test) poor Private Buck didn't get to do his test until 2. He didn't get to jump until 5:30! But let me tell you, it was worth the wait. He was soooo happy getting to strut his stuff again. He really turned it on in the dressage arena and was sitting second on a 27.5. He show jumped like he had just been around a highly decorated arena yesterday, not even getting close to the rails. And then he bombed around cross country clean and easily within the time, ears pricked looking for his fence the whole way. We ended up moving into the lead with all of our double clears and taking the top spot by quite the margin of victory for novice. Way to go Buck!
Playtime had a little too much playtime this weekend. His dressage was good, unfortunately he wasn't capable of counter cantering down the hill in the corner of the dressage arena and broke to the trot. You know what that means, if you said more canter poles you were absolutely correct!! Show jumping was frustrating, actually. He jumped the first fence and landed kind of dead, distracted, uninterested in the fact that he was on course. It was a bit of a forward bending line and so I kicked him into gear; but Mr. Warmblood had a bit of a delayed response and we got to 2 unorganized, on a half stride, and he kinda stopped and ducked out all at the same time. Instantly following that was a huge leap and buck because he knew he was about to get a beating. Brat! He then proceeded to put in an absolutely perfect round, I think I barely had to touch a rein or add my leg for the rest of the course and he was sailing a foot over all of the fences. Cross country was a bit the same story. He needs to get a little better still about organizing before his fences so that we can find a nice forward move up stride. This is especially important when you are facing related distances with skinnies and chevrons, like the water jump. We had a cheap run out at the third element. Good news is, 2 months ago I probably would've had a cheap run out at the second element :) So we are making progress.
Speaking of progress, Morris made some serious progress this weekend. I ran him in the advanced and was hoping to prove our performance at Fair Hill was a fluke due to soggy boggy conditions. Morris finished the advanced in third place! By far our best finish yet, and more like his usual form we posted the fastest time on cross country. You have to have a real cross country horse to get around clean and fast and without terrifying spectators at MCTA and I feel like we delivered. Okay, so our bounce probably would've gotten a good gasp or two out of the crowd; but I promise that was probably it. We were straight up and over every skinny out there, and he was surprisingly game for the new intimidating bounce bank. The water was pretty action packed, and the world famous coffin rode much better now that it was at the end of the course and not feeling like such a steep effort in and out. If I could redo anything from the weekend with Morris, I would love another crack at show jumping. He was a little slow off the ground here and there and I should have thrown careful out the window a bit and gotten after him a little more. I know, even perfect Morris needs a little(big) tap(whack) every now and then lol.
Today I drove to Shawan Downs yet again to go cross country schooling. I took my fleet of beginner novice horses. Laugh all you want, they are the cutest, most athletic and fun things I have had in my barn in a long time! Every single one can win the dressage, and they jump and bounce and bop around in their little snaffles and they point their little toes and I cannot wait to compete them all at Seneca mid-June! Need to go schooling once or twice more, not going to lie, but you just wait......!