Lynx Update

The photos from the professional photographers from Nationals have arrived!

These first ones are from Creek Dreams Photography.  These were my favorites, I love Lynx competing as a real sporthorse!

The guy can sure jump! He cleared his crossrails with plenty of room to spare, knees to his nose, happy expression on his face. He had similar incredible form in his over fences class, those pics can be seen here, they're from video Chris took on his phone.

This trotting photo is from Lynx with me in a dressage test.  

Lynx and I spent quite a bit of time hacking around the show grounds, especially on dressage day.  At home we'd do a little ring work, then go hack around a field, do a little more dressage work in another flat area, then take another walk.  He was confused in the beginning at the show about all the time in the ring, so I tried to make it more similar to home by walking all over between dressage warmup and tests.  The photographer got this great shot of us out in the grassy areas.

This one makes me smile, with Lynx and Chris having a talk about horseshows and dressage.

This last photo was from Vicki Wright and she shared it on Facebook.  Lynx and I are in front of the group of stalls for MMXX Standardbreds, the aftercare organization that Lynx was from.  I love the display of so many of the ribbons won by both us and the other team members. 

Lynx headed to his new home in Kansas about a week after we got home from the show, and I'm happy to report that he's doing really well!  He hauled nicely as expected, and seems to be settling in at his new place.  He has a horse friend with whom he shares turnout, and has gone for a couple casual rides with his new human. 

She's having a great time getting to know Lynx, and he's been the same gentleman there as he was here at Bit of Honey! 

She was also kind enough to write a list of the fun things I taught Lynx that she's now enjoying.  It's a lovely review of Lynx and my training with him, which I appreciate very much!

As always, I do my best to keep in touch and help with the transition into a new home for any horse that comes through my program.  Thankfully so far this pair is working out to be a very nice match, and I fully expect they have many fun trail rides ahead!

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!