Another picture from the Webb show

Here's another picture of me from the Webb Hunter/Jumper show. This is from our jumper (speed) round. As Tricia says - the expression on my face is priceless. Now, if only Cash were looking the way we were going... perhaps he knew someone was taking a picture... (you can click on most of these pictures to get a closer look)

Photos from May

In anticipation of the next 3-day event this weekend, here's pictures from the one in May. Meg rode him at Novice (2'11"), getting a good 34.5 in dressage, a double clear cross-country (no time/jump penalties) but pulling 2 rails in stadium to finish in 10th.

Dressage:




Stadium:




Cross-country:

Go Team Cash!

So it might be a little while since I last posted... a small thing called my thesis got in the way. But now that's just waiting on feedback and submission I have more time to write about riding. Of course - I was always riding, just not writing about it.

Cash and I have have come so far together in these last few months. He has been putting on weight and muscle, and now has so much more energy than ever. I have become more comfortable with him and able to handle that extra energy. We dont even speed up toward jumps any more (well, not usually). While we still have our little issues (I don't know why he wont stay on the rail in one particular spot, in one direction only) we are slowly working through them and finding new ones instead :)

Today I entered my first show ever (apart from little shows we did at Stanford). It was a small hunter jumper schooling show just a few miles away. It didn't take long for us to pick up our 1st ribbon - a good 2nd place in beginner equitation. This followed soon after with a 1st in hunter hack and even a 4th (out of 12) in the hunter fences round. As my jumping is typically not very elegant I was rather proud with this one!


The best was last - a 2'3" jumper round (which means as fast as you can go without knocking down any fences or getting any refusals). We've been practicing slow and steady jumping recently and I wasn't sure we'd get round the tight rollbacks very fast. However, once we got round the first tight corner without a problem I figured Cash knew what he was doing and we flew round the rest of the course. What a buzz! (Notice the grin...) To make it even better we ended up with another blue ribbon! (OK - so a lot of people forgot the course and were disqualified, but I was proud!)


Next stop - 3-day eventing. Well, maybe next summer, though I did get a taste of x-country the other week. We jumped logs, galloped through water, up and down banks and over ditches. We did well until I started trying to see distances and interfering with Cash - well, we all know that he's the pro around here...

Next weekend Cash is competing at novice level at our local 3-day event with Meg. He already competed at the event earlier this summer and came in a very respectable 11th of a large group. By next summer he'll be ready to take me :)