On the horse side, mine have all have been great. Rem (Urrem) continues to amaze me—she’s easy about everything and you can tell she really likes eventing. I’m competing her this weekend in the Preliminary at Seneca. Both Joe and Nolo (Call to Order) went to the Virginia Horse Trials and were super. Joe is completely ready to move up to Preliminary and I feel like all my hard work teaching how to gallop normally and not like a race horse has paid off. Dashwood (Nora), my young mare that Anita Antenucci and I own together, is getting ready to do our Surefire Horse trials for her first outing.
I’ve been teaching clinics, in Louisville, Boston and Idaho. I love my long-time groups in Boston and Louisville, they continually impress me. I went to Idaho for the first time and Tom was able to go with me, to see our friends Stephanie Goodman and Josh Sylce at their farm, Wasatch Sport Horses, in Eagle. I got to ride their horses and also teach Steph and Christi Payne. I also got to teach at the Mittleider’s great facility in Kuna, which was quite impressive. The quality of riding that I saw at both Wasatch and the Mittleider’s was very good.
Steph and Josh took us for a mountain bike ride one afternoon. We went straight up and then came down switchbacks. Tom thought he was going to die but as we got the hang of it we got into it. Josh coached me to use speed to control the bike going but I decided I needed to slow down. Because of damage to my right hand, I couldn’t make that hand brake work and just used the left, front brake which flipped bike. I had a big old rasberry on my chin and bruised ribs on my right side. I don’t know why I didn’t have my air vest on! Give me a horse any day—a bike doesn’t think, a horse does and they want to stay on their feet!
I’ll let you know how things go at Seneca and with our crazy horse trials prep, more soon.