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

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

Ride Times Up

The Mother’s Day Dressage Schooling Show is now posted with ride times.  You can get them right here on the website under the shows-entries menu.  It’s looking like a great show with lots of rides from Intro Level to First Level.  We offered the Dressage Equitation classes again and they are very busy.  Happy to see that.  Having a judge look at how well you’re riding in regards to your position and aids is a top priority of mine.

Our in-house Show Manager (Andrea) has been hard at work organizing and preparing and was so happy to see that all the entries were in on time!   ( You really don’t want to see how cranky our normally mild-mannered Andrea can be when entries are late. )

We’ve got the dressage show arena up ahead of the rain, which has turned the outdoor arena to slop.  Based on the forecast we’re thinking this slop is temporary and we’ll be in fine shape come Sunday.

The snack bar organizers really deserve a little blog time too.  Here’s the situation: our little snack shack is being organized by Kelly Brown (as in Brown’s Brew Pub of Troy… one of the Capital Region’s most popular and highly rated establishments!  and Gail Anderson, Culinary Institute of America graduate and past owner of two restaurants.  How did this happen?  Both women have not one but two daughters riding in Sunday’s show.  Both women jumped at the chance to take over the snack bar.    All I can say is even if you don’t give a hoot about dressage you might be interested in checking out our five-star snack shack.  It is Mother’s Day after all and Mom might just love some culinary treats from the Riding Right Farm Snack Shack.

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

Entry Time

It’s Show Time!  With Mother’s Day just a week and change away we are getting ready for our annual Mother’s Day Dressage Show.

Entries are due on May 6th… which is Sunday, so if you’re interested in showing download your entry form and get it to us ASAP.  Show Management…umm (that would be Andrea) is not inclined to accept any late entries.

New this year to take note of is a year end Championship.  We will be keeping track of all scores for all classes for each horse/rider combination throughout our show season.   Year end awards will be based a formula that values each dressage score, stadium jumping score and cross country.  Full details are here on the website under our show menu.

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

The Video Advantage

There’s the old saying that a “picture is worth a thousand words.”  When you add up the value of moving pictures it must run into the millions.  Some members of our adult dressage team got to take advantage of the idea of moving pictures this past weekend when we offered up the chance to videotape a dressage test ride.

Our camera-guy (very scary to a couple of horses) was strategically placed in the bed of a truck right at letter C, where the judge would sit.  Riders warmed up outside and then came into the indoor arena to ride a test of their choice.  When all of our riders finished up their tests we got together for a little pot luck dinner while the video was being prepared for viewing.  From there, we all sat down as a group and watched the test rides, complete with group critique.  You could call it, the good, the bad and the ugly (although there really wasn’t any ugly…)

Most of the riders know where their mistakes were but there was an overall appreciation for what seems like the number one comment coming from judges at this stage of riding- “more forward!”   That comment doesn’t mean race around the arena but it does mean energy and movement.   This is opposed to the sensation that a horse is just plugging around and we’d all like to go out and get a cup of coffee.

We were able to copy of the tests onto dvds for every rider to take with them and I”m sure by now they’ve been watched several times over.

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