About

This is a very important year for me and my horses.  This blog was supposed to have begun in March.  OK, OK, prompt I’m not, unless it’s about getting horse show entries submitted in time.   Back to the ‘about’ part.  I am an unemployed (at least by an outside company – I’m actually busier than I’ve ever been here at home), sixty year old (OMG, how odd it feels to say that) woman.  My marvelous husband and I live, with two Gordon Setters, three cats and four horses in San Benito County, California.    This is a beautiful place, the small farm we own.  The panorama of this valley feeds the soul. We and our adult children and extended family are all happy and well.  We are  blessed.

Looking Out Our Front Gate

Last winter I got to thinking about turning sixty, my riding, and the upcoming show season.  A logical person would cease and desist showing horses without any visible income.  A sane person would forego even the thought of qualifying for USDF Regional Championships and Arabian Sport Horse Nationals in a down economy and at an advanced age.  (I was feeling particularly old around then.)  Since I am neither logical or sane, we’re doing both those things this year.  In fact they’re both done.  The big guy, aka Pooka or Mo, offically Maestoso II Omegga is qualified for CDS and USDF Regional Championships at Intermediare II.  The baby, Fyrrepower+, a glorious four year old Trakehner-Arab cross gelding is qualified for Arabian Sport Horse Nationals in Training Level Open with our talented young trainer, Jennifer Coyne-Wilhite, Sport Horse In Hand both ATH and Open with me.  And the horse of my heart, my darling little Arabian mare Margarita Mia and I are qualified for Sport Horse Under Saddle ATR, Sport Horse in Hand and 1st level ATR.  She and Jennifer are qualified for 2nd level open.

What does all this mean?  It means we’re going to Nampa, ID in September to Nationals!  This is the last year we will have an opportunity to go as from here on out, according to the folks at AHA, this show will be held in Kentucky.  Don’t get me wrong, the Kentucky Horse Park is a lovely venue.  It is just way too far away for us to travel for a four day horse show.   It also means we go to Burbank in October for our region’s annual show.  Oh joy, driving a 4-horse rig on LA freeways.

Halt, Salute, Laugh

Someone asked me at a recent clinic if I have a life outside horses.  Yes, I do, but as this is the year of the horses, it’s OK not to have a lot of life outside the barn.  I will land a job eventually and a good one.  I will  get back into the 8 to 5, two hour commute world.  My body will eventually cry ‘uncle’ and I’ll stop riding.  Those things will come later.  For now it’s all about the horses.

The cast of characters:

Maestoso II Omegga Doing His Job

Maestoso II Omegga, 11 year old Lipizzan gelding, going Intermediare II this year with plan to dip his hooves into Grand Prix.  Mo is a talented, opinionated, athletic guy with charisma and looks.  And he knows it.  Everyone familiar with Lipizzans told me they were ‘different.’  And they are.  Never have I met such an opinionated soul in a horse suit.  He is very cognizant of who he is and how things should be.  He handles correction well, unless, and this is a big unless, he believes it is unfair as in too harsh or undeserved.  Then things get interesting.  He has a crafty sense of humor and is a touch lazy.  That said, he is also incredibly strong, fit and beautifully built for the work he is doing.  He loves his work and gets quite cranky with too much time off.  His rider and trainer, a talented young woman with just the right dose of patience and obstinance, deals with him beautifully.

He was a gangly two year old when I bought him.  Young Lips are not the most attractive horses in the world; all head neck and big bodied with interesting growth spurts.  He’s grown into himself .  Of course, he ignored I wanted a nice 15.1 or 15.2h horse, since I am all of 5’3″ tall.  He is 16.1.

Pretty Face: Margarita

Margaria Mia, a nine year old Arabian mare is ‘my’ horse.  She is half sister to my senior, now retired show gelding PC Sermano+.  Bred by close friends Shirley Koch and the late Edie Lehman, Margarita is the horse of my heart.  She was not the horse I’d planned to buy or the most likely candidate for dressage.  She’s very typey, which in Arab-speak means she has a very refined face and head though her ears are far from the dainty affairs Arab people prefer.  What do I say about Margarita?  She’s sweet, kind, gentle, athletic as all get out and a mare.  Not having had a mare for quite a long time, I forgot how important it is to remember girls have their own ideas about  things.  Always.  Margarita is beautifully conformed for the sport horse disciplines with a big, strong hindquarter, free shoulder and lovely head and neck conformation.  She is also delicately boned and 14.3h…not your typical sport horse.  Nobody told her.

Margarita and I are strongly bonded, more so than I’ve experienced in a lifetime with horses.  We do tons of interesting things together.  We trail ride frequently up in the nearby hills with our friends Gail and Munch.  We go to trail trials.  We  worked hard on learning all the ins and outs of trail, both out and about and in the show ring.  She loves trail work, whether it’s dragging a log  or doing barrels in the arena or carrying me up steep hills and across wooden bridges at Dinosaur Point, a nearby CA State Park.  All the hill work has turned her into a  buff and athletic little girl.  Maybe I should have been the one doing all the walking up and down.  It’s difficult to keep up with her.  I tire out long before she does.

A social being, Margarita prefers hanging out with the people under the tent chatting than be stuck in a stall at a show.  She is a passive-aggressive sort, i.e. she doesn’t necessarily fight about the work, she just ignores you and does what she wants.  If I am tense, she gets tense, then her tension increases mine and so we spiral out of control.  It has taken me several years of showing to grasp this simple concept.  The first two years were pretty miserable.  This year and last have been much better and a lot more fun.  We show on the Arabian show circuit most of the time with an occasional open show thrown in. We show in the sport horse division, which is sport horse under saddle, dressage and sport horse in hand.  I have shown her most of the time.  As a result she isn’t as far up the levels as she could be, had our trainer shown her more. 

Fyrrepower May 2010

Then there is the baby, aka Fyrrepower+, a four year old Trakehner-Arab cross gelding.  This is the horse I should have had at 35.  He is incredible.  He is the nicest youngster I’ve ever handled.  His dam is Margarita’s big sister, Lenita Mia++.  His sire, Feuertanzer, which means Fire Dancer in German, was a lovely 16.0h chestnut stallion.  Had they been willing to sell I would have bought Lenita her first year.  She is a solid mare who looks exactly like Margarita, just bigger boned and taller.  She is 15.3h to Margarita’s 14.3h.   When she was bred to Feuertanzer, we joked that if her foal were a filly they  would keep it; if it were a colt, he would come to me.  Lenita gave me my boy.

It is difficult to talk about Fyrrepower+ without using superlatives. He is athletic, quite well put together and a lovely, effortless mover, yet the best thing about this boy is his temperament.  He has the most willing attitude we’ve ever seen.  He is very serious about his work…earnest in his desire to please and loving toward those around him.  Edie said once he was an old soul in a young body.  When I look into his large, liquid eye, I feel what she meant.

Though only four, this boy has an extensive show record, earning his Legion of Honor (the ‘+’ behind his name) as a two year old…something nearly unheard of  in the Arab world.  Shown sport horse in hand his first three years, he is comfortable and relatively relaxed away from home.  He has ‘been there, done that’ enough to be OK with it.  This year he has been to two shows under saddle and done incredibly well.  He is going training level with Jennifer.  The last show was an open show at a place he’d never been, with lots of scarey, new decorations and a tight indoor warm up arena.  He took it all in stride, sometimes wide-eyed but always trying to do as he was asked and be a good boy.  His scores are in the mid to high 60%’s.  Not bad for a four year old!

Sherman 2004 Sport Horse Nationals

Not to be forgotten, there is the horse who started all this dressage stuff in my world:   PC Sermano+ aka Sherman.  Sherman came to me as an eight year old.  He is twenty-six this, his 19th year with me.  It doesn’t seem possible.  Wasn’t it only yesterday I brought him home from Edie and Shirley’s?  He is Margarita’s half  brother; they share the same sire, El Hermano+.  He is irascible, incorrigible, talented, athletic, a gorgeous mover in his day and has multiple Regional Championships as well as a National Top Ten.  He is the grandest of grand old men.  His job these days is to keep the baby in line and he takes it seriously.  Until Baby learned to dodge he was covered in bite marks. . . corrections from his Uncle Sherman.

We have had our ups and downs together, this horse and I.  We could clear a warm up arena in seconds early on.  He got quite active when he didn’t get his way.  He taught me to ride dressage.  He put up with my inadequacies, my long slow learning process and we still did well together.  He more than earned the leisure time he is enjoying these last few years.

Enjoy!

Jan