Introducing Fox Valley Nova

We're all still recovering from the horseshow, but we did get home safely Monday evening.  We ended up coming home with four horses, so a full trailer!  

The two in the back behind the screens were geldings that I brought to simplify transport to their new home in Georgia.  It was definitely easier for their new owners to get them from here than from NJ! They were picked up yesterday and headed to what sounds like a wonderful equine facilitated sports psychology program for volleyball players, coaches, and family members.

Lynx was in the front.  He came back with me and will continue on to his new home in KS  beginning of next week. I'm glad he's getting a few days of down time to recover from the trip and show before heading to his new home where he'll do competitive trail riding and some dressage.

Next to Lynx was Fox Vally Nova, my new project.  They were a little funny with each other during the trip, they had a very sibling rivalry thing going.  Whenever we stopped for water and a rest break and I opened the windows, Lynx and Nova would make faces at each other, but it was more of a "Kiiiim!  She's LOOKING at me!" than any kind of actual arguing.  I did find out they were in the same racing barn for a while, so they probably remembered each other and were just irritating each other for fun.

Nova is 5 years old and she's quite nicely put together, though I think she's got a lot of growing left to do. I measured her with a stick and level, and she's currently 16.2 and 1/2". I string tested her and she measures to 17.2 when she's fully mature! It's not out of the realm of possibility, I've had several big ones that didn't get their last half inch of height until their 8 y/o year...! We'll see how she does in the next few months.  Growth spurts and coordination are often at odds with each other!

Miss Nova got a haircut this morning to begin her transition to sporthorse life.  She also figured out the head tilt/lips wiggle to earn cookies.  She's been very fun so far.  I've missed having a youngster around, my current herd is getting to be elderly.  While I am grateful their brains have finally kicked in and they are a lot less work than when they were young and always causing trouble, it's fun to have a squirrely baby again.

She does like all the cookies I've offered her, and has figured out the head tilt and lip wiggle to ask for additional snacks.  I prefer this to getting mugged for treats, so I like to teach this party trick early.

She of course raced under the name Fox Valley Nova, and has been going by Nova since her racing career ended.  In this part of the country however, "NOVA" is short for Northern Virginia.  There's a general consensus around here that SOVA (Southern Virginia) is preferred to NOVA, so she may be called Sova while she's here in training.  It sounds similar enough that I don't think she'll get confused, and everyone here loves Sova!

Rookie Hunter Division Champion

It's late and we're all tired, but we ended Saturday with beautiful jumping rounds over both crossrails and 2'. Lynx was so extremely tired as his last jump round wasn't until after dark, and we'd started with the first class of the day at 8am! He really pulled it together and landed us with a clean sweep of first place ribbons in all his jumping classes. This resulted in him winning the Rookie Hunter Division championship title for the entire National show! What an incredible accomplishment for this horse who only arrived at Bit of Honey Training LLC on July 6th to learn to be a riding horse.

We did a crossrails jumping class and a 2' class. Lynx impressed everyone in both by having really good form, and tight knees over each fence.

What a great overachieving effort right in front of the judge!

I love the expression on his face, he enjoyed the jumping so much!

What a wildly successful show!  This horse really showed everyone what he could do and all he'd learned at Bit of Honey Training.  I'm so very proud of him!

Here's the video from his last jumping round.

https://youtu.be/qn81Z5Pimc4?is=kbLqSigsS-xGT4Wx

Dressage Day

Finished dressage! Lynx tried so hard and was so confused.... I had bridle tag numbers on the sides of his browband, as is appropriate for dressage tests, but he thought they were odd blinkers and so defaulted to the old correct answer of "pace". I did eventually get him into the trot during the second half of the tests, so I count it as a victory. 

Between tests we hacked around the show grounds in an effort to help him understand the job here is like the job at home, trot only. Once we'd walked all over and then returned to the arena he realized trot was the right answer. Our second test was similar, he didn't get the trot until the second half. He had it beautiful in the warmup, so he DID do all I asked of him this morning. What a good guy.

This halt photo makes me laugh...  the look on Lynx's face says "well what the heck was THAT?!" A surprisingly common reaction horses have to their first official dressage test.  He's an awfully good sport!

Back at the stall afterwards Lynx has been super chill.  He does look for me when I leave the stall, but had been happily eating and drinking.

Arrived!

Smiling photos as we started on the road this morning...  ah we were younger then. 

It was kind of a wretched drive up, taking many hours longer than it should have.  With three accidents (thankfully none involving us), truly scary drivers cutting us off trying to get ahead.  Horrific traffic around DC, and again Baltimore, and again Philadelphia and again getting on the NJ turnpike.  Yeesh.  

We did arrive safely, if grumpy, just barely before dark. Lynx is already a champion for riding in the trailer that long and being that well behaved! He ate and drank well in the trailer.  He unloaded and happily had a long guzzle of water, ate his dinner, and was busy working on his hay bag when we left him to go set up camp with my trailer.

Our ride times are about 8:45am for our first dressage test, and about 10am for the second.  It will be an early start, but we'll be done before lunch.  Hopefully we're both feeling better in the morning!

Last Jump School Before Nationals

Well we had quite a morning here at Bit of Honey!  Kathy and Dylan came over to ride with us, and happily it was in the 60s instead of the 100+ degree weather we were enjoying last week.  Not sure if it was the cooler weather, the excitement of having Dylan here riding with us, or whatever might have been trouncing around in the woods by my fields, but both horses were a little on edge.

Neither horse misbehaved, but Dylan was keen to do some trotting when he'd usually happily just walk, and both horses kept giving severe side-eye to the woods by which we rode.  We did narrowly miss a big black snake as Lynx and I were riding through some taller grass, but I was able to stop Lynx early enough and redirect so as not to bother the creature.

Mostly Pascal the border collie took care of the monsters in the woods, running through the edges of the trees while we were at the edge of the fields.  I put bells on the dogs for these exact circumstances.  The dogs can investigate anything suspicious and the horses don't worry because they can hear the bells and know the dogs are on top of it.

Lynx was a little wound up too, even when we went to do a little gymnastic work.  He's been asking during the last several rides if we can jump, but I prefer not to unless someone is with us for safety reasons.  Since Kathy was here, we started with walking over the poles, then trotting through them.  Lynx was rushing a bit (probably anticipating a bigger jump and cantering), so I set up the line in a way that would slow him down and make him think.  

Five trot poles, a raised pole, then five more trot poles.  This gave him the little jump he was looking for, but also enough footwork to slow him down.  

It worked well, so we next changed it to be 5 trot poles, a raised pole, then 2 canter strides to a crossrail oxer.  The first time through Lynx LAUNCHED over the little oxer, he'd been waiting for this!  Subsequent trips through the gymnastic slowed him down and yielded more conservative jumping efforts.  All part of figuring out what's required to get through the line!

 

Sadly, the pivo once again decided it would rather video Dylan setting fences with Kathy instead of us jumping them, so my video is limited.  We got some cute shots of Dylan, though!