… is Lori Golitzin!  And she wasn’t even there. But as I was driving home, I felt like I had won the top prize of a horse, Max Factor. Erin Spohr, from  the bay area in California, was riding the lovely paint in the training division and I completely fell in love. You are thinking of the horse, but I mean that about Erin too. She is a lovely rider who has a great way with the horses and people, its really nice to work with a trainer that you trust implicitly. I just met her, but she is high on my list of riders who I would want to hang out with. But back to the horse. (more…)

The barn has had a teensy shake up lately… and the end result is that Lori Golitizin and I went horse shopping on Saturday. The shake up is that Lori’s beloved Maverick, wonder-mustang-of-the-world, is gently becoming Carolyn Bersch’s horse. This is a within barn transfer, and I say ‘gently’ because while this makes Carolyn so excited that she cant sleep at night (if you ever want to see a very happy middle-aged woman appear to be 12 again, come watch her jump Mav in a lesson), it is also bittersweet for Lori. Lori has out-grown Maverick in riding needs and goals, but the love for him is no less. (more…)

Affectionately know as Dino.  Ive been anxiously waiting for these photos to arrive in the mail because I knew some of them would be good. Dino has had a busy 4 year old spring (more…)

Yea…. we did it! Taco and I finally completed an event together. That might not sound like a big deal to some, but Ive been treading on a thin line of enough training vs. sore feet since early this year. That sounds like a long time, and it is. Because he seems to rid himself of shoes more quickly than a bikini top at a frat party, this has been a challenging, wet spring. I have not been able to use our xc field with him because he can somehow find every mole hill in the field to remove those pesky shoes, no water schooling, no skinny schooling…. I did pop over a ditch, but that is it. So, needless to say, Ive been feeling slightly under-prepared for such a great event like Aspen.Taukalot and Meika SJ at Aspen (more…)

And so it has! Just when I had gotten so discouraged by the bad weather that I started to gulp giant handfuls of Vitamin D pills, the rain suddenly has disappeared. Lately, I log onto KOMO weather to get an update to the bad news.  And I see google earth photos of a storm cloud that is 9 million square miles big heading directly toward us… I get depressed. Its a little hard not to get depressed with the news that the next 2 weeks will be miserable. When you work outside in the elements, you get personally insulted by the rain. I am SICK of it. And yet, today was beautiful, thus renewing my  love of this area.

Today was busy, we had French Creek Pony Club with a D level testing- I hope that went great and all 3 girls  passed. Also,  we had Ruth Moore and Dushka Fowler with their clans all using the XC course to prepare for the Aspen event next weekend. This would not normally be a big deal, but since our parking pasture is under water, we are all squishing into our main parking lot (which is not bit).  Despite the rain, I managed to get some mowing done, and move jumps to new locations.  I dont know about other farms, but when you come to school xc here at Polestar, you are riding on footing that has been carefully prepared. I try to move jumps to new locations every other week, keep the area mowed, weed-eat the ditches and water jumps…. in other words, it take at least 10 hours of tractor time to get an area prepared for schooling. I know the folks that use our schooling area appreciate it!

I hope everyone kept their shoes on and got a good school to feel ready for the event. We are coming up to quite a few good events:  Aspen HT, Inavale HT and Rebecca Farms HT all are the ‘meat’ of Area VII eventing. The top notch events that invest heavily into preparing their  new and exciting courses every year and investing in good footing. I am incredibly grateful to each of theses farm owners and organizers for their work, time and money.  I know how much it costs and I want to shout-out to their efforts!