Congratulations on a stellar weekend!!

What a champion Linguine has become!  At only four years old, lovingly and carefully brought along by his dear friend and mentor Sarah, Linguine is quickly becoming a very successful event horse. 

Today, he added another jewel in his crown… Sarah and Linguine started their day off right, performing a much improved, fluid test and it was happily rewarded, scoring one 6, a couple of 7’s,and the rest 8’s!  The collective marks were: 8, 8, 8, 7.  Amazing.  He scored a very impressive 24.5 in dressage, earning a lead of NINE points over his nearest competitor. And in case you think the judging was just soft… The second placed horse earned a 33, so Linguine picked up nine points on the rest of the field.  He continued in excellent form, jumping double clean in SJ and attacking the XC for a double clean.  Of course, the scores weren’t posted yet, so we knew they were doing well, but it was thrilling at the end of a cold, wet, forty-five degree day to see that they WON their division of Beginner Novice at the Flying Cross HT on their dressage score of 24.5.    Congratulations!!!

Mike and Spud had a fabulous day.  They showed off their newfound bending skills to improve on their previous dressage tests and show that hard work pays off!  They scored a 40.0 in dressage, and clocked a clean show jumping round with the very, very exhuberant Spud.  (Shown here at the very first fence at the Flying Cross HT today… Don’t they look great???)  They were excellent on XC, cantering the whole course (a first!) and finishing on their dressage score of 40!!  I left with the horse trailer before their ribbons were posted, so I’m hoping that Mike will chime in as to their final result in this BIG field of 14 starter horses.

Maddy took Wasabi to his first show today! He stood happily all day tied to a horse trailer in 45 degree weather like champ, happily munching hay like an old pro… A great accomplishment for any horse’s first show!!  He was quiet in warmup and very easy going.  He had a wonderful dressage test where he scored a 40.5 even with a rider error, so would have been in the 30’s without skipping the first halt.  🙂   (The event was using the Intro tests, which have a halt at the beginning, unlike the eventing tests we’re accustomed to… So Maddy just skipped it!)   🙂    He had a beautiful show jumping round at 2’3″ even including flying changes, and picked up just 4 faults.  Then he was even more impressive on cross country, never batting an eye at the jumps and cantering around in the most beautiful rhythm.  Hope said it best when she said “He’s so steady in his canter” on his xc round.

Kim Hicks & We Go also had an amazing day in their first horse trial together.  They put together an amazing cross country course (with us screaming cheers all the way) jumping a great clear round!  She was in the same division, so I’m unsure of final results…

The last photo is the gang from today… Can you tell how cold it is?  45 and spitting rain… With the coldest wind… It felt like Spring Bay!!  Talk about freezing!!

Hope was AMAZING and did a huge amount of videoing, so I’m hoping that maybe we’ll have some clips soon??  Congrats to all!