We are still reeling from the incredible support our fundraiser Horses for Japan engendered. It was one of those ‘lie in bed on a Monday morning’ ideas that took over my life for a couple of weeks. I am always amazed by the huge scale of people’s generosity when something like this happens. I literally had people CHASING me to make donations, people like Omega Alpha who started by donating one year’s worth of product and finished by donating OVER three year’s worth of product. Horse Sport magazine, the first ones in with a full page advert donation. These and dozens of other individuals and companies gave of thier time, products and services without giving the matter a second thought. As I have said many times, the horse community is a wonderful, eclectic, big hearted bunch of people. I believe we are close to $14,500 in total to be handed over to the Canadian Red Cross’s earthquake relief fund for Japan. Thank you everyone.

Prior to that particular side event in my life, Selena and I were at Can-Am again. It was even more fun than last time and great to see Selena. She stayed over for her birthday on March 21st. It was the same night that we had the local fund raiser here in Kingston and a good time was had by all. A week later saw me on my way down south to start shipping the horses home from Florida, it’s hard to believe it’s that time of the year already. The first three came home a week ago and are here in the barn. The last group goes to The Fork this Wednesday (I fly down tomorrow at 5.30am from Syracuse….no sleep for me tonight) and we will leave Ocala at some unearthly hour the next morning and drive to Norwood, NC. Colombo, Solo (aka A First Romance) and Woody (aka Foxwood High) are all competing. Woody has upgraded to Intermediate at the last Rocking Horse where he was fifth. Solo is also running OI and he was 8th at the last Rocking Horse – he is SUCH a clown in the dressage, he thinks it is the BEST game to spook and carry on during the ‘boring’ dressage test. It is frustrating as he is sooooo beautiful when he ‘goes’. Oh well, you can’t get too sniffy when he goes double clean and almost every outing both XC and SJ. Just have to get his brain around the dressage…sigh. Woody however is improving his dressage in leaps and  bounds. It was a big weak point in his performance at the beginning of the season, however, he is a good boy and is getting more adept by the outing. Colombo does a CIC*** and Solo and Woody do another OI.  

We drive home from The Fork on Monday the eleventh of April and Selena and Anne Marie will be flying to England on the 13th or therabouts to go to Badminton. Colombo will fly out of Atlanta on the 14th. They will train at a barn in England and ship to Badminton on Monday 18th. I hope to fly to England to watch the competition, flying overnight on the nineteenth. Eek!

I keep waiting for ‘things to slow down’ so that I can look around our lovely new facilities here in Kingston and plan where we need to build cross country jumps and how we want to set up our pole and jump exercises in the GIGANTIC sand ring. Huge dillemas…for instance…which sand ring to allocate for jumping and which to use for dressage! We are all looking forward to the summer, this past week or so we have ridden outside and it’s SO much more fun. All the horses are positively chipper to be outside, in fact some are a tiny bit too chipper…