We took a full trailer load to Chatt Hills outside of Atlanta, GA. There were some last minute changes which meant James and Elliot had to stay home, and some green beans were loaded up on the trailer (everyone is feeling much better and should be back on for River Glen coming up in a couple weeks).
Aly got dropped down to novice after loosing some confidence in the mud two weekends ago at Poplar Place. It was a good decisions and she ran around clean XC as well as SJ.
Joe, who is brand new to eventing and got thrown on the trailer for James, was amazing at his very first event. He ran around the beginning novice XC with ears pricked ready for more. He also went into his very first proper SJ course in the big arena at Chatt Hills and cantered around like he'd been doing it all his life. He truely lived up to his name this weekend. Good Man!
Heidi, bred and owned by Meredith Michelfelder and Midway Farms Inc., is improving with leaps and bounds. She went through the tough Preliminary B dressage test with only one major error, loosing the right lead counter canter. She ran around a very hard XC course with many max prelim obstacles and technical questions worthy of a 1*. There was some pilot error at 9AB, but the mare is quite spectacular. She also show jumped clean around a big technical course. Things are coming together! This is amazing progress for a mare that has been passed around between three riders in last year because she is not easy and has only been in training with RBF less than six months. Watch this one in the future.
Zoey had her first outing out since November and her first outing out with Jessie. It did not go quite as planned. She is a neat mare with a lot of talent, but not necessarily the work ethic. She put in a respectable, obedient dressage test. Jessie made a valiant effort on the XC, but the mare showed her A move which consists some spectacular canter halt transitions with her head between her legs: looks something like this:
Jessie stuck it with some pretty incredible acrobatics, but had stops at 2, 3, 4, and then somewhere later on the course which resulted in the big E. Good news is Zoey didn't realize she was eliminated and she jumped the hard stuff including a half coffin and the water complex with no problem. Because of her Saturday afternoon antics however, she was read the riot act Sunday schooling. She redeemed herself jumping the full training coffin, the training water complex, the training bank complex, and jumped off into water. All this without a moment's hesitation. She even ran away from the other horses without a second thought. The fences are certainly not the probelm. We just need to sort out some barn sour issues!
Sarah Sage had her first outing on Warren and we are so proud of them! After a bit of a tough dressage test (ie a few errors), Sarah pulled it together and rocked around the XC course like a champ. She show jumped equally well, only pulling one rail!
Reagan Bugg had a good day Saturday, but unfortunately popped off in the SJ Sunday (we've all been there). Everyone walked away with nothing more than a bruised ego and are ready for Poplar Place in a few weeks!
