This is the time of year that you hardly get to catch your breath before there’s another event to plan and pull together.  We just finished up Sunday’s Dressage Show and now the next show is posted.

The Emma Durrant Dressage and Combined Training Show is open for entries.  The show date is June 17th.  This show will offer lots of options.  You can participate in the dressage show (just like our Mother’s Day show), you can give the two-phase a try, which is dressage and stadium jumping, or you could go all out and do the three phase, which is dressage, stadium and cross country.  We are also offering a stadium only for the riders who just want to jump their horse.

On top of that all we’ll be having our traditional chicken barbecue for the Emma show.  For those of you who have had it in the past, umm, umm, there’s nothing like it.  Puts all the other bbqs in the area to shame.

-Hollie McNeil, Owner/Trainer:Riding Right Farm, Author:40 Fundamentals of English Riding

Christmas Morning?

If we had a Christmas Tree up in the barn it would have looked like Christmas morning yesterday.  The reason?  The “blanket lady” made a delivery.  I’m not so sure she wants to be known as the blanket lady, but that’s what the woman who runs the  blanket repair and wash service is known as to folks around the barn.

Will you look at the pile of clean blankets?  They actually look like they’re spankin’ new.  Her SUV was chocked full, as you might imagine.  The same blankets left the barn a couple of weeks ago in black garbage bags.  They were ripped, missing surcingles, buckles, straps.  They were covered in hair, mud and manure.   They were smelly too.  Okay, not all looked and smelled that bad, but quite a few were in rough shape.

It must be quite an operation to have the washing and drying facilities to deal with all these blankets, not to mention what kind of industrial sewing equipment it must take to pull these blankets back together.  This business does bring to mind the far and wide reach of the horse industry.   Just this little slice of the business is evidence that the horse industry is a truly a multi-billion dollar industry.

-Hollie McNeil, Owner/Trainer:Riding Right Farm, Author:40 Fundamentals of English Riding

Seasoned Veteran

When we began this farm 16 years ago, we had three school ponies to help us get the ball rolling.  It was Jelly Bean, Lukena and Laura Lee.  A few of you readers might even remember those days.

Laura Lee was the least trustworthy of them all.   Her trick at the time was to lay down (with a student on her) if she had decided that she’d had enough.  I remember one particular Mom dashing to my house to give me a lecture about how awful Laura Lee was and how I just had to do something about the terrible situation.  The instructor we had doing the lesson was at a loss of how to keep Laura Lee on her feet.

Laura Lee has revealed her bag of tricks time after time.  There’s almost nothing she likes more than to make a kid cry if she thinks that kid isn’t up to the task of riding her.  What’s that saying?  “doesn’t suffer fools gladly.”  Laura Lee is absolutely intolerant of people who don’t take the job of riding her seriously.   Her attitude is, if you think you deserve to get a good ride out of me, you better not think it comes for free.

In the end, it’s a great attitude because you can never ask too much of the girl.  She will jump extraordinary heights, never refuse a cross-country jump, gallop her little heart out and show off like an Olympic champion in the dressage arena… if you ask and ask correctly.

Once again this past Sunday she was back in the show ring strutting her stuff.    I can hardly remember a show that she has missed in all of her years here.  Her show record is long and varied. Over the years she’s shown at all the local shows and the fairs.  Laura Lee has shown in Pony Club Show Jumping Rallies, Dressage and Eventing.  She’s done three phase events in Cobleskill, Chatham and at Hitching Post.  She’s done the Lendon Gray Youth Dressage Festival multiple times.  She even took a long trip to Ohio one year to compete at the big Halflinger Breed Show, out jumping all the bigger, new style Halfingers at the show.   The number of students who have ribbons on their bedroom walls thanks to Laura Lee is long indeed.

-Hollie McNeil, Owner/Trainer:Riding Right Farm, Author:40 Fundamentals of English Riding

Mother’s Day

When I wake up the morning after a show I feel like I must be hung-over.  Some much happens in a single day.  There’s the set-up, helping riders overcome worries, nerves, and difficult horses.  In between there’s the riding of a horse, the tractor-pull to get a truck out of the mud,  and the problem of not enough sunscreen.

Now that I’m done with my list that sounds like a complaint sheet I’ll say that I just love the Mother’s Day show.  So many Moms!  There are the ones running around making the snack shack hum like a little French Cafe.  There are the Moms that carry the coats and a bottle of water for the kids and are quick with a boot shine.

There are also the Moms who ride.  I think Dianne had the greatest Mother’s Day of all.  There she was riding her beautiful, big, black horse and showing off all of her hard work and how much she loves this thing called dressage, and watching from the side-lines were her two boys.  Could the boys have found a better thing to do on a beautiful Sunday morning?  I can think of many things, other than a dressage show, that would draw the interest of a high schooler and a college student.   Yet, there they were and I’m going to guess that their presence was the best present of all for Dianne.  What a Mother’s Day treat.  Getting to enjoy your children and your horse all at the same time.

-Hollie McNeil, Owner/Trainer:Riding Right Farm, Author:40 Fundamentals of English Riding

May Dressage Photos

Just a quick note to say that photos from the May Dressage Schooling Show are on-line.  We’ve uploaded the photos from the full day, including shots of every single rider.  They’re on our photos page.

-Michael