Shows and more shows

Where to begin - I have been lax on my blogging due to a super busy summer. I will start with Regal, our first show out this year, Plantation, I moved him up to novice, he put in a pretty relaxed test, despite an Amish buggy driving by during our free walk to earn us a 30. Overall I was OK with it given he is much more unsettled this year, calling in the warm up and the ring. Stadium he was beyond distracted, he looked and spooked at everything from the jumps to the people, he went but had 3 rails. The first 2 were distracted baby rails where he wasn’t dialed in enough to me to listen up and his biggest flop was grabbing the bit and running down a line with 3 jumps (lucky only 1 rail). We then headed to XC, which was clean with 1 sec time penalty, he was also super looky but did both waters and down bank just fine. We ended up in the ribbons but left MUCH to be desired. A few weeks later was the NJ Horse Park. This time I screwed up my dressage, I have been working on some things at home and made the mistake of changing my warm up and way of riding the test. I tried to school too much and we ended with a 35.5, won’t make that mistake this coming weekend! In a last minute idea and with no prior schooling (we had been schooling well at home), I decided to put in a slow twist full cheek and a running martingale on for jumping, I figured it couldn’t be worse than last time. This was a winning combo, I had more control and he was unable to take the bit away, we rattled a few rails but everything stayed in the cups and we were double clear on a very twisty course with some challenging lines. Cross country was also double clear and he really felt like he knew what his job was. This made me super happy. So the plan will be to run him novice again this weekend at NJ Horse Park, then we will head to Waredaca in Marylad for another novice and pending nothing major will look to move him to training end of Aug or Sept. In the meantime I will be working on our jumping (mainly not being Regal’s 5^th leg) and continue our lateral work progression.

Noor was making some awesome progress, she has been coming out relaxed ready to work and while still resistance I’ve been able to work through pretty well. However our last few rides have been pretty awful, she comes out nervous, anxious and on edge. So I am looking to see if anything has changed in her routine or life to give us this upset . I also learned this past week if it is raining the mare needs some time to sort it out, she is not a fan of rain in the face…diva. So feeling a bit disappointed in recent progress, I will schedule her for the chiropractor as well and make sure everything is OK there. I think we will still go ahead and breed her next year, I will continue to work her and compete as she is able.

The Penwick Eventing Team has been rocking and rolling, we took a few weeks to go cross country a few places and well as just getting out in school, there are so many young horses and new riders it has been much needed. We all headed to Oxbow and results were wonderful, Leyla shaved nearly 20 points off her dressage score for 4^th, Amanda kept Noble in the dressage ring J and finished close behind 2^nd place for 3^rd, Ceara had a catch ride on Shadow after digger decided to pop and abcess and rode lovely rounds on a pony she’d never taken XC for 7th, Irina moved up to 2’ course and a new dressage test, riding very well. She had a little blip of forgetting where she was going cost her 2 points in dressage but she came out smiling from both phases and Elizabeth finished at the top with a blue and will move up to Beginner novice at the next show.  



Noble and Amanda

Quest

Spiderman

Shadow

Dimmu is growing like a weed and hit his naughty teenager stage, nothing is safe from the little thief but luckily he doesn’t chew, just grabs and runs, this makes getting tacked up or un-tacked a challenge to say the least. The Fall is looking busy for Penwick Event Team and I will try to be better about my updates!

My co-pilot

  

Dimmu digging a hole