Rolex Bound

I've been totally remiss in my duties this winter and spring. Updating the blog has been seriously neglected!

Today Rolex 2014 wrapped up. William Fox-Pitt won again. Well done him, but I am still disappointed. Allison Springer was in first after the dressage and then she running a beautiful cross country course only to have a blow by at a steeply angled brush fence near the end of the course. It was heart breaking! I feel like Allison works hard and she is very often the bridesmaid, but never the bride. Plus, she lost to colic that really lovely, really expensive, horse she bought last year from non other than William Fox-Pitt. Can't she catch a break?

Arthur reminds me a little of Elliot. All the talent, but perhaps not always 100% trustworthy. This probably sounds self aggrandizing at best and maybe a little delusional. Everyone thinks their horse is going to Rolex, and at the moment Elliot and I have been struggling around intermediate. Still, I think he is a very talented beast. So we've hit a rocky spot, I'm holding on to the dream of riding him at Rolex. Even if it takes longer than expected!

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'Progress'

No horse makes progress the same way. There's no magic program to follow. No 'wiki-how' step by step guide. Some pick up everything easily and take everything in stride. Others need to learn lessons more than once. Still others learn quickly but don't get confident and so they need their hands held for a long time. It's one of the reasons training horses stays exciting. Each horse is different and each horse can be different on each day.

Since I've been riding Elliot, progress has been basically linear. He was not always confident in the beginning but he nevertheless took forward steps. He ran beginner novice. Then he ran novice. Then he ran training and then preliminary. We had a brief disruption when he strained a tendon and had colic surgery, but for the most part, we made 'progress'.

Last season he ran around a bunch of tough intermediates and a CIC2. AECs was the first blip on the radar. It was followed closely by the Fair Hill debacle. After a little winter down time, this season has been rocky. We got eliminated at Rocking Horse I, dropped to preliminary for Ocala II but still had a couple stops on cross country, and had a couple stops on the intermediate cross country at Rocking Horse III. Not progress.

Who really knows what caused the back slide. Was he ulcery? Was he sore somewhere? Or maybe he was weak? Did he lose confidence after carting me around all those intermediates last season? Were the holes in our training starting to show up? Or did we just lose our mojo after a silly mistake at AECs, getting foiled at Fair Hill, and then a lot of down time to stew about it? I don't really have an answer.

The plan for this season was to move up to Advanced in Florida. I wish that had happened, but it didn't. I'm sorry we have holes or lost mojo or whatever you want to call it, but I'm happy to be fixing the issues now rather than having them show up next year while we're trying to get qualified for something really big like Rolex. The horse is still very special and he's young. He's not lame. He looks great right now and he is fitter and getting stronger than ever. Maybe the setback was good. More training. More preparation. Another season of intermediate will only make him better. We can plan to move up in the fall.

Progress with horses isn't always linear. As my dad reminded me today, it isn't even always 'progress'. You just keep moving.

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Riding with Lucinda

The weekend was pretty miserable. Wet. Cold. Rainy. Not really the weather we were hoping for, but we got to ride with Lucinda Green!

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Mississippi Mud

Mississippi winters are no fun. My northern friends will probably roll their eyes and curse me for what I'm about to say, but I'd almost rather be in New England. I know it is brutally cold and there is snow, but at least the ground freezes and most places have indoors. Down here it's just soggy so we're just SOL.


The rain starts in November and doesn't end until sometime in May. The ground gets saturated. Worse yet, the soil is mostly clay so you don't just get muddy, you get caked in clay. It's like you and your horses are wearing concrete boots. It's no joke; neither Elliot nor I find it amusing. He gets cranky and tired of slipping and sliding. I get tired of pushing a wheelbarrow through six inches of mud.


There isn't really a good place to gallop or jump so conditioning is tricky. We do a lot of trotting down the road, which keeps the horses relatively fit, but is a little like playing Russian roulette. We go over a couple bridges and often drivers don't slow down much. Even the school bus tries to engage us in a good game of chicken. I forfeit every time.

I cannot wait to go to Ocala. We are counting down the days! Just under two weeks.

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