Summer!

It’s been a couple weeks since I've checked in. I ran JR at Jersey, his was dressage good, particularly his canter. We had an unfortunate elimination in show jumping in the triple, toward the end of the course. It was probably one of the better rounds I've done on him up to that point. I think when I went into the triple, I jumped in with more power than I thought, landed the middle element and said "whoa, whoa", which took his mind off the third and allowed him to spook at the back side of oxer, which was shadowed. Hindsight's great thing—remember, if you have a stop, hit your horse! Tell him NO! Anyway, the second time back I never had enough canter, and at that point he was too suspect of whatever shadow was on the back of that oxer  to go. Not the best result for show jumping, but he was awesome cross-country. David said to me, "Your horse is not a stopper, go to Culpepper and jump around." I did class there and a round at Morningside and a combined test at Maryland and all those show jumps were good. 

The extra practice also allowed Silvio, our show jump coach, to get to know JR quite well. He saw how quickly he falls behind my leg, gets spooky or both. So hopefully it will get better and better from here. It's always something with horses. I try and take the positive and not read too much into the negative, move on and work on things to make him better. Now, every time I school him at home I finish with something different looking so I'm recreating the ride I would have in the ring.

I've had some nice flat schools with David and a really great school with Jacquie Brooks, all preparing for the mandatory outing this week at Great Meadows. I’m pretty excited about this and feel things are going in the right direction. I think David's worked really hard to involve the public in supporting the team and getting them excited about the WEG. I'm also so thankful for and excited about receiving a Land Rover Competition Grant to go to either at Burghley or Blenheim!