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First Dressage Test

Solo had his first school in a real dressage arena on the weekend. He was not terribly impressed….as per usual, he had opinions that had to be expressed. He looked and spooked his way around the ring, and mumbled and grumbled about it the entir
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Psych!

As it turned out, the dressage show was NEXT Sunday the ninth,  and we couldn’t enter him.  It was a question of too many young horses at once. We have already entered two big four year old Holsteiners for the show – both of whom are at
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Doing The Ditch

Finally the sun shone and all the cross country fields dried up. Even the water jump is at a fun level for the first time this year. I was also able to get my camera out again without fear of ruining it in the incessant rain. Solo has been hopping ne
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Dressage Days

Solo seems to be growing up, he is easier in all sorts of ways. Easier and calmer at feed times, less anxious when his buddy Waldo is working and quieter to turnout and bring in. He is also getting better to pony, he was always a bit of a pain to pon
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The Count Down is On

The weeks are flying past and Solo’s first under saddle show is fast approaching. This time in two weeks, he will be on the road to Millbrook NY. So far we have not worked out a way of getting him to another small show beforehand. Selena’
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Getting the Hang of Things

Yesterday we took Solo and another four year old off the property to school. It was very hot during the day so we took them later in the evening but even then, we were still limited by the heat and humidity. Both the youngsters behaved like stars. We
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Deep Breaths

“The best laid plans o’ mice and men, gang aft agley” is a quote from Rabbie Burns the Scottish poet (if I got it right), and that just about sums up the last few days. Monday morning dawned bright and clear, and my mind, which neve
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..and it got Worse!

Finally at about 11.30am we had the health certificate from the vet and all that left to be done was to take them to the federal office in Kingston or Brockville and have them stamped.  Wary by this time, I had phoned ahead to the Kingston office to
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Spark…le

Obviously if we had sparkled as expected you would all have heard about it. We sparkled without the “L”. His first warm up was like a wiggly worm. Not being stupid or terribly excited and not doing anything he has not done at home –
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Spark…le Part 2

Next was the jumping phase. We had been led to believe this was a stadium course. We had also been under the impression that doing this class would be a nice introduction for Solo before he did a Pre Training event. We were expecting something betwee