Given that I’ve kept you all in the dark these past couple of weeks, I thought I ought to let you know what you can look forward to here on Straight-Up over the spring and summer. I plan on catching all the Badminton action the first weekend of

Today’s post is only peripherally connected to actual horses, but I feel compelled both to explain and garner your sympathy for my failure to keep you entertained over the past couple of weeks. Two days ago, I performed one of the strangest dut

The Fork wasn’t the boys’ best outing. The dressage scores were not as good as hoped for, although Selena was still happy with the tests that the boys put in. Woody had put in a good test, but bucked against the leg in one of the changes. At

This will be the last Florida post – next week is North Carolina. Anne Marie flew down on Sunday to pack up the troops and I fly home today…my airport bus leaves Ringwood in the New Forest at 3:15 a.m., ugh! I have had a wonderful, if sli

Competing in Europe is not as big and scary as all of us at home think it is. It’s the same just on a bit of a bigger scale. Most national shows are only one day and everyone trucks in and out, and all the horses wait on the trucks between classes.

O’Hanlon Eventing South is busy, busy, busy. There is another Canadian Team Training session this week that Selena is looking forward to. Angie Huber arrived on Saturday to spend a couple of weeks down south riding her lovely mare Wisher. Wishe

For those of you who will accept nothing less than a weekly post, here is today’s, which is really just a glorified auto-reply that I’m out of my kitchen office for Easter. I’m off to recharge my batteries on a sunny little corner o

You know that old cliché, “kicking someone when they’re down”? Or how about “adding insult to injury”? Or “flogging a dead horse”? Well, just roll them all together and you have something that approximates w

Selena is not competing this weekend. With two of the three star horses belonging to ourselves, the competition budget is tight. No optional extras. However, in this instance it was just as well. Selena was out riding Solo a couple of days ago and sn

What, you ask? Countdown to Normandy, which is still – according to the Normandy 2014 website – 525 days away? Why of course! Preparing for the second most important championship after the Olympics starts a long, long time before the comp