Chatt Hills April 2013

Well...Chatt Hills didn't exactly go as planned!

Heath was great! I actually love his ride over fences when he is jumping new jumps...it is totally different than at home. We put in an okay dressage test...not great but not horrible either. I remembered my test and I felt like all was going well, but I got a 41. I should have shortened my rains and raised his poll a bit, but all in all I felt it was a positive ride.

Heath's braid job!

XC was spectacular!!! He was excellent and I loved the ride. We were clean and fast, and I trotted the last two jumps because I had a lot of time to kill...Optimum was around 5 minutes, and I was at 3ish minutes with only those two elements left!

Water Complex at sunset

SJ...oh. Show jumping I consider my strong suit. Having shown hunters and jumpers for over 10 years, not much rattles me, especially at 2'6''....but yesterday was definitely a new one for me! Let's just say that I really hope there are pictures of the incident.

He jumped around quite well and up until fence 9 I was super pleased with our performance. At the second to last fence, I couldn't make up my mind about a distance, and decided to let him sort it out (sorry bud.) I should have put more leg on, and as I felt him take off, I got into 2-point. He was long and weak jumping the vertical, and started to rotate over it. Fortunately, he caught himself, but I was already on the neck. Upon landing, I held on for dear life, and he began to canter away, I momentarily thought I was going to be able to save it, but when he turned left around the corner, I started slipping under the neck, and let go before I was completely under him. I got a little stepped on, but no worse for the wear! Ready to get back in the game at Poplar Place in early May.

Home Again

Romeo spent Christmas season with me in Memphis so that I could ride him over break. Yesterday, I loaded the dog in the truck, hooked up the trailers and went out to go get Romes. He was supposed to leave last week but he lost a shoe in the mud. Well, we fixed that so we were rearing to go!

What do I get out of the pasture? A 3-shoed horse. Fortunately, this time I found the shoe, and my farrier was at my TB's barn shoeing him. I threw Romeo in the trailer and trucked over to the other barn. James had his shoe back on in a matter of moments!

Hmmm...what could possibly be missing?

So off we went back to Mississippi. Beezie was a great co-pilot...until she fell asleep.

We arrived in MS last night around 6:30.

Today, we had an open ride day at the MS Horse Park. I had a fabulous dressage school on Heath, and he was actually getting round and really working from behind. Today was my first time schooling Heath in Romeo's dressage saddle. It seemed to fit him quite well.

I then hopped on little Romeo and walked and trotted him around the big ring. He was great too!

Standing in front of my little trailer. I love it so!!

He seemed pretty happy to be in a new place :)

All in all, a great weekend/Monday/Tuesday! Everybody was well behaved and everyone seemed to have a good time. I love taking little field trips and wish I got to more often! Hope everyone else had a great long weekend!

The Muddy Mississippi

The Muddy, Mighty Mississippi River definitely lives up to its name. However, now the rest of Mississippi is mighty muddy as well. It has been pouring cats and dogs for TWO entire days now, and does not seem to want to rest! On top of that, the ground is already so saturated that we have flash flood warning, and more importantly, it's going to take forever for the pastures and ring to dry :(

Am I being too selfish to ask the rain to stop? For once in a long while I have a happy, sound horse to ride, and now I can't. I see many road hacks in our future...(if it ever stops pouring.)


This was the ring at the end of LAST week...before the monsoons resumed yesterday.

Isn't it beautiful??

So instead of riding, I went out and gave heath a bajillion cookies...maybe too many.


This face doesn't make me look guilty at all does it?

I'm pretty sure he knows how cute he is too...

So what have I been doing if there is no riding to do?

Slaving away on The Wholesome Horse's website of course and updating my facebook page:

www.facebook.com/thewholesomehorse

(School work? No thanks.)

I haven't decided if it is going to become a LLC or not, and if anyone has experience with that, it would be greatly appreciated!

Hope you all are enjoying the sun and warmth...it is literally 32* and RAINING here.

ilovemississippiilovemississippiilovemississppi...I will just keep telling that to myself.

Website update

Okay - have changed the name of the website and have made some changes to the design...

The Wholesome Horse
www.thewholesomehorse.com

More critiques would be great! I have really appreciated every single critique so far, I think constructive criticism is a wonderful tool and I hope I have changed/fixed a lot in a short amount of time!


Also, a quick pic of the new guy ; )

Meet Heath!