Looking Back on 2013

2013 has been quite a year.  In fact it’s been such a crazy year that I haven’t had time to even think about keeping up with my blog.  I just logged in for the first time in months and realized that I haven’t posted since May!

As you might have noticed (but I won’t blame you if you didn’t since I haven’t posted anything in months!) the title of the blog has changed.  I’ll probably learn pretty quick not to title my blog with my current horses name in it but I figured that I’ll give it one more chance.  After spending all spring and early summer trying to convince Cowboy that he wanted to be an event horse, I finally admitted to myself that neither of us were happy with the arrangement and put him up for sale.  Happily (for both of us), I didn’t have enough time to change my mind, because he quickly found a great new home as a hunter in Michigan.  Although I hear that he is still a bit quirky, he seems to enjoy this life a lot more. 

One of the biggest reasons that I decided to sell Cowboy was a cute little mare named Ocala.  Ocala has been a part of my life for a couple of years now, although I never thought I’d own her.  She is after all only slightly over 15 hands, and obviously is a mare.  I’ve never owned a mare, I’d never thought about owning a mare, and I certainly didn’t want to own a mare.  But things kept happening and I found myself changing my mind.  When Cowboy got himself hurt in early May, I had an entry out for May Daze.  When he couldn’t go, I subbed in Ocala and she rocked around the Novice course.   We then went to Champagne Run to try Training. After an amazing stadium round, we were sadly eliminated on cross country.  In fairness (to both of us), I should mention that we got rained out of cross country schooling before the show and we hadn’t schooled together since 2011.  However the first 5 jumps, before we got eliminated, were probably the most fun I’d ever had on course.  The little mare can jump and she LOVES it! 

Novice XC at May Daze

After we got home from Champagne Run, she went on a sale trial and about 3 days into the trial, I knew I wanted her.  So I started praying that she would come home.  And it worked!  I don’t know why, but every time I ride her I jump off with a big smile on my face.  I like to think she likes me too, but she may just be faking it.  I am so hopeful that we will get to move up to Prelim together in 2014.  We missed quite a few shows after Champagne Run when she hurt her ankle but we finished the year with a solid event at River Glen, finishing 6^th at Training with another lovely show jumping round and a very confident cross country (we were just a tad slow though).  After not making it past the 5^th jump at Champagne Run, I felt like we made a lot of progress to jump around so confidently at River Glen over a course that was more technical.  

Ocala and I at River Glen

I am currently spending the winter trying to stay motivated enough to ride at least a few times a week and am hoping to move up fairly early in the summer and possibly make the one star in Lexington in October.   Truthfully, I’ll be happy to move up anytime next year but I like to dream big so right now, I have my eyes on the one star!

2013 was also a year for big purchases and me being VERY proud of Romeo and Emily, who not only moved up to Novice this year, but also qualified for AECs, had multiple top 5 finishes in big divisions, bested Romeo’s best ever dressage score at a USEA event (a 33!!) and WON their final event of the year at River Glen by almost 10 points! 

Emily and Romeo at Champagne Run

Getting back to the big purchases, in June Nic surprised me big time and decided that we should buy a horse trailer with living quarters.  Well, that might be a bit of a stretch.  It was more like Nic mentioned that we might possibly buy one and then I spent the next month shopping and showing him pictures of ones I liked until he finally gave in and said yes for real.  We have already gone on several road trips with it and are looking forward to putting it to really good use for the 2014 event season.

 

The new toy!!

As if buying a horse trailer with living quarters wasn’t enough, we also bought (along with my sister and brother-in-law) the farm and the maple syrup business from my mom.  This is the real reason for the lack of blog posts!  It’s not something we expected to do but we are really excited for the opportunity.  While it means I probably won’t get to go to Aiken or Ocala anytime soon over the winter (L), it does fit well with the horses since we make syrup in the winter and I’m highly unmotivated to ride in the cold.  If you are in the area – you’ll have to check out our festival.  You can find our business page on Facebook by looking up LM Sugarbush, LLC! 

The Saga Continues . . . .

Saga:  A long story of heroic achievement; A long, involved story, account or series of incidents

A quick Google search reveals the definition of “saga”.  Perhaps I should have named my blog something else.  At this point I’m thinking “The Straight and Narrow Path of the Brown Dirt Cowboy” might have been a better choice. 

I always knew that owning horses had its ups and downs, however looking back now I realize that Romeo spoiled me, a lot.  We didn’t always win, but we always got to go and do.  With him I was spoiled to the point that entering horse trials felt like a right and not a privilege.

After a really positive schooling at Flying Cross and some great schools at home, we loaded up and headed out to our prep for May Daze, the Flying Cross mini.  After a slight detour due to the exit being closed, we made it to the farm with sufficient, if not plenty of time to warm up for dressage.  We even managed to pull it together when I realized one ride out that my ring was riding Beginner Novice Test B and not Test A which is what I remembered.  Thankfully, smart phones saved the day once again and we were on our way.  We have focused on jumping quite a bit over the past month at home, however Cowboy’s dressage keeps on getting better.  A few lessons ago we introduced shoulder in and it has made a world of difference both over fences and on the flat.  Our canter transitions now actually look like canter transitions instead of a mad scramble.  Without bragging too much, he put in one of those tests where after our ride I wanted to tell everyone “I trained this horse!!”.  The best part was that it wasn't perfect, we can still do better.  I’ve never been a great dressage rider but I think Cowboy makes me look good. 

A little preface to the rest of the show (and this story) is to say that Cowboy has had a small (old) curb on his left hind leg since I bought him off the track.  He has always had a slightly different step on that leg which has gotten more pronounced over the past few months.   After two trips to the vet for x-rays and ultrasounds, we determined that he would need a small amount of time off at some point this summer.  That being said, he was still schooling fantastically at home and even jumped some scary new fences on the track at the barn so I felt confident that he was feeling ok to do the mini trial and May Daze this month before we gave him some time off. 

After walking the show jumping course, I was feeling really confident.  The scariest part of the course was the jump poles that were stored on the edges of the arena.  Since he didn’t pay a bit of attention to them last year when we showed, I wasn’t worried.  The gate steward was kind enough to let us take a tour of the arena first to look around and then we were on our way.  With one small problem, Cowboy didn’t want to go near the jumps.  We had an issue with the first three fences, making it over on our second attempt each time.  The steward was then very nice and allowed us to keep going.  After a nice line at 4 and 5 and a decent jump at 6, we had another melt down at jump 7.  We Were Not Going Near It.  It Was Scary.  We left the ring a bit dejectedly.  However, the positive was that we got to keep going and Cowboy ended up doing it, so I feel like he learned something. 

Cross country was more of the same.  We had great jumps; he jumped up and down a bank VERY confidently and had no trouble with some of the bigger jumps on course.  However there were quite a few fences where he was very reluctant to go near them.  I won’t say he truly refused any of the fences except for the bench the second time we tried it, he just wasn’t sure about going near them.  I have to admit, I was more than a little frustrated at this point since he had just schooled the exact same jumps two weeks ago with no problems.  What I am proud of is that I didn’t lose my temper and he finished the course really confidently.  Of course, we should have been eliminated twice over on course but the show organizers where very accommodating and allowed us to work out our issues. 

After such a disaster jumping at the show, we (Leigh helped me with this one!) decided to pull him from May Daze and start his time off now.  Since he was jumping so well last fall and earlier this year, we are really hoping that our current issues will be resolved when his leg is all patched up.  While I’m scared to death that he doesn’t like jumping and won’t be brave enough to be an upper level event horse, it’s really unfair to him to judge him when he might not be feeling 100%.  He is currently living it up on rest with Leigh taking amazing care of him; yes my trainer spoils me and my horse!

The great thing about Leigh’s barn is that she has plenty of horses I can ride.   I’ve ridden one of her mares on and off over the past couple of years and she is my current project while Cowboy rests.  She is extremely sensitive, especially on the flat but is a jumping machine who loves to GO.  I was able to sub her in at May Daze going Novice and have plans to move her up over the next couple of months.  She is for sale if anyone is looking but I’m hoping that she sticks around long enough to take me to my first Prelim in July or August.  It’s hard to not be able to ride and show Cowboy like I had planned but I am trying to make the most of it and keep learning while he is recovering so that we will be an even better team when he is back to work! 

Aside from Cowboy’s saga, we have had quite a month in Kentucky.  First, we are lucky enough to be less than an hour away from the Kentucky Horse Park and Rolex Kentucky.  Leigh, Braxton, Jeannine, Teri and I braved the cold drizzle for cross country day.  Seeing the course and the rides makes me want to get there so badly!   The next weekend we hosted Oaks and Derby in Louisville.  For a girl who grew up liking Derby Day better than Christmas, I sure am lucky to get to go every year!  It is still my favorite day of the year and this year didn’t disappoint.  Oaks was fabulous and sunny and while Derby was a little (ok a lot) rainy, we had an amazing time.  As usual, I was one horse away from hitting the trifecta, and had the winner boxed with the 3^rd-9^th place finishers for the exacta.  In hindsight, I should have put Orb on top with the rest of the field.  Even though I like to think I’m not old yet, I am old enough to be extremely excited to see such an amazing trainer who has been such a great contributor to the sport for so many years finally win.  While I respect trainers like Baffart and Lukas, I think it speaks volumes to see a trainer come to the Derby only with horses who have a big shot!

Baby Steps

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not very good at being patient.  One of my favorite quotes (that I made up myself) is “patience is a virtue and virtues are optional”.  While I might get away with that most of the time, I’ve had to pay for my sins since getting Cowboy.  When I bought Romeo in 2008 I taught him to jump and trot in a circle and then entered an event.   He was pretty much the same no matter how I rode, except he jumped a lot better when I rode right.  He never ran off, he never reared, he always did what I asked at least the second time we tried it, he wasn’t complicated, he let me skip a lot of steps in his training, and he was almost always the same horse from day to day.  I have to admit, I got a little spoiled by that.  When I decided to sell him and move onto another prospect, I didn’t realize how much I took him for granted!

Meet Cowboy.  When I said I paid for my sins, I literally paid for them more than once by ending up on the ground wondering what happened.  Cowboy is extremely athletic and he knows it.  He loves to try to get his way by rearing and wheeling repeatedly (I’m glad there is no video of the first time we tried to get him in the water!).  He can be a complete dead head one day and a crazy fool the next.  If I come to the barn a little bit off my game or distracted by anything, he knows it immediately.  If I try to skip a step, he makes me pay.  He bolts and leaps if I sit the wrong way or flop (even just a little bit) after a fence.  Basically he is the exact opposite of Romeo, which is what I asked for but didn’t really realize what I was going to end up with.

I bought Cowboy in October of 2011.  My goal was to make our first event in the late spring or early summer of 2012.  We quickly scrapped those plans and made a new goal of late summer.  That got pushed back to fall, which ended up turning into a few schooling shows and a starter mini trial at the end of the season.  While I was disappointed every time I didn’t get to go to an event, I hoped that we were working towards something bigger than just our first show.

This spring started out a little rocky.  Between a lot going on away from the barn and Cowboy’s ever present attitude, it started to seem like we might be pushing back the start of our show season yet again.  After a show jumping melt down at our first combined test and a less than ideal cross country schooling, it started to look like a real possibility.  However, what I lack in patience I make up for in determination. 

After moving to Leigh’s, we started to turn things around pretty quick, being spoiled with two lessons a week can only help!  After building some confidence at home, we went to our second cross country schooling this past Sunday at Flying Cross.  Cowboy has been to Flying Cross several times and did well at the starter mini trial last year so I was hopeful that he would have a positive school.

He started off with a lot of confidence in the starter field, except for a brief rearing fit when he didn’t want to go under the power lines (yes, we rear about that!).   He jumped almost all of the beginner novice fences and did the banks.  We even managed to jump down the bank and then go over a small fence, this wasn’t totally planned but he jumped down really well and kept going, it was absolutely in our way!  The biggest thing I have to work on myself is staying out of his way.  Romeo went better when I got in his way, Cowboy absolutely can’t stand it.

He still isn’t sure about getting his feet wet, or the splash that the water makes.  He is VERY interested in the water but he can’t figure out if he wants to drink it or if it is going to eat him.  After trotting around in the water for a few minutes, he was agreeable to jumping up the little bank out of the water.  After a little more time in the water, he was happy to jump down the training level bank into the water, now we are getting somewhere!

Our last goal of the day was to introduce him to a ditch since I really want to go to May Daze and he had never seen one.  I was expecting some fireworks but it turned out to be a non-issue.  He hopped over the small one and then moved up to do the Novice ditch and the half coffin.  He then proceeded to jump around some Novice fences and a few small Training fences.  I knew we were getting somewhere when I thought (for just a second) that I might want to try the stone wall, but I think we need to leave a few firsts for next time!  Best of all, he seemed like he was enjoying himself and looking forward to the next fence instead of being scared to death.  We still have a long way to go but I was so happy with him!

As a reward, I filled out our first USEA entry form today!  I can’t wait till May Daze!  Maybe I have learned a thing or two about patience but it sure feels good to take a few steps forward. 

Catching Up and Amish Horses

You don't know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have.  – Unknown

Cowboy and I are officially plotting our course to our first event of the year, May Daze in late May.  We packed up and moved to Leigh’s barn in late March and have had an amazing first few weeks there!  You can’t beat boarding at your trainer’s barn.  No more hauling for lessons!!  We had two solid dressage tests at the Stone Place CT in early March, our Novice dressage test was not only his first at that level, but a personal best for both of us!  Sadly it was not our day in show jumping.  Mom had just a few too many emotions going on to relax and ride.  However, it showed us where we needed to focus for the next month or so and we are well on our way!  We have a cross country schooling at Flying Cross and then the Mini-Trial there in May to get a little more experience before we make the jump into recognized competition.

Speaking of recognized competition, Emily and Romeo did their first event of the season at Pine Top in March (yes, I know I’m REALLY behind on my blog already!) and brought home a 3^rd place ribbon!  They are moving up to Novice at River Glen. Sadly I won’t be able to go and support since that is Thunder weekend but I can’t wait to see the whole family at May Daze.  It’s so much fun to see a horse you brought along being successful with another rider! 

Thunder can only mean one thing, my favorite day of the year, DERBY, is almost here!  While I haven’t taken the plunge and purchased a hat yet (I can take TWO or even THREE lessons for the cost of one hat!), I have been rather unsuccessfully handicapping the prep races.  Hopefully this weekend will go better than last weekend did.  We did manage to win a little money on Animal Kingdom in the World Cup so that cut into my losses.  I am one happy girl that he is going to be shuttling to Kentucky after he retires from racing.  I won on him in the Derby and his Breeders Cup race last year was one of my all-time favorite racing moments. 

Before I get too off topic, I’ve wanted to post this for a while now.  Let me preface this by saying that this is only my opinion based on my own experiences.  I realize that many people have a different opinion, which is likely based on their own experiences.  However, I thought I’d share this with everyone.

I’ve read several times over the past few months that many people in the equine industry have an issue with the Amish who want to buy ex-racehorses to use as carriage horses.  I grew up in a small town where the Amish have a large community.  It was an everyday occurrence to see an Amish buggy drive down the road.  They were, and still are, our neighbors, our business partners and our friends.  I doubt I would have the love for horses that I have if I hadn’t been exposed to them so often at an early age.  While there are certainly some Amish who do not care for their horses properly, you will find this with all types of people.  Our Amish neighbors use their horses as work animals first and foremost but they take excellent care of them.  It is not uncommon to see an Amish horse standing with a rug on or to see a young person riding their fat pony down the road.  They are good farriers who treat their horses like we treat the cars that drive us to work every day, they take care of them.  Below are a few pictures, both from the past and this year of Amish horses in our community.  A big thanks to Wendy Gordon for helping me by taking the pictures!

A very happy little girl (me) getting to sit on a pony!

The picture doesn't do this mare justice, she is absolutely beautfiul!

Enjoying the sunshine on a warm spring day

This guy was really friendly and happily posed for his picture

What Sisters Are For - Guest Post by Emily

Spring is almost here!  I think, except for this coming week when it is hiding.  Boo!  On a brighter note, Cowboy is entered in the CT at Stone Place on March 10th in both Beginner Novice and Novice!  This could be quite interesting since I haven't been on him much lately but we have put in a lot of work over the winter so I'm ready to see how it will pay off.  Last weekend was full time work at the Maple Syrup Festival and this weekend brings more of the same.  However, once it is over and time changes, Cowboy and I will be getting into serious show shape, this will probably be harder for me than it is for him!  

The count down is officially on for our "big move" to Leigh's barn!  Cowboy will be relocating on either March 24th or 29th, I can't wait!!  

Now onto the important post.  I don't read blogs often enough to know that you should have guest bloggers but Emily wrote this and it says nice things about me so she is my first guest!  While she spent the majority of the post talking about horses and saying good things about her sister, I thought I'd show you the special little monkey that keeps her from jumping the big jumps at the moment, I think most people will understand why! 

I think this litle guy will need a pony soon!  Emily's son Mason

Emily's Guest Post

“Riding a horse is not a gentle hobby, to be picked up and laid down like a game of

solitaire. It is a grand passion. It seizes a person whole and once it has done so, he will have to accept that his life will be radically changed”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’m sure you have read this quote before. It is plastered all over social media, key chains, and wall hangings. It is usually accompanied by a cute picture of a girl and a pony or a fiercely competitive horse and rider.  You might even have something similar hanging in your tack room at the barn or in the living room of your home. 

Jenny was born with a fervent love for horses. Our childhood was filled with plastic toy horses, countless hours playing “Jim and Jessica” on our bouncy horses, and making show jumping courses in the front yard out of two five gallon buckets and a mop so we could practice jumping. We wore out a VHS copy of National Geographic’s Irish Horses. We would pretend we were famous race horses and race each other. I think she always won.

We had a matching pair

When we were a little older, we started out riding in the local 4-H club as true green beans. After a few years of trial and error, we improved…. a lot.  We started winning…a lot. Jenny bought a thoroughbred off the track and set her sights on the world of eventing. We spent many hours building indestructible Rolex quality cross country jumps around the farm.

Most of them probably looked like this 

  They always needed to be bigger. She always wanted to go faster. Looking back, I’m not sure how we made it to adulthood without some type of permanent, disfiguring injury.

After college degrees and a master’s program, boyfriends, jobs, marriage, and the whole nine yards in-between, horses are still a grand passion for Jenny. She rides in the rain, heat and snow.  She rode with a semi-healed broken leg to make sure Romeo was prepared for the T3D in 2011. She has shed tears of frustration, pain and joy in pursuit of her passion.

I have been two steps behind, going a little slower and not jumping quite as high. I’m in my element grooming, braiding, auditing clinics and making sure she remembers to put her number on. I’ll be at the end of the cross country course with a water bottle and a water bucket. I’ll lend her my boots because I wear a size larger and they fit over a cast. After all, what are sisters for?



The First Time

Does anyone remember the Wendy’s commercial from a few years back where the two guys go somewhere freezing cold and after eating some chicken sandwich they get warm enough to strip down to their underwear?  I don’t eat fast food very often but at this point I’d be willing to give it a try!  Its back to acting like the dead of winter so I’m stuck inside writing another post sadly unrelated to Cowboy.  Ugh!

I’ve had a request to write about former horses (before Romeo).  That post will take time and work to put together since there are so many pictures I want to include, and right now I don’t have time for either so instead I narrowed it down to two options:  The saga of my first event with Romeo and the night we got incredibly lucky at the race track (I promise it’s a cleaner story than it sounds!).  The saga of my event with Romeo won so let’s see how good my memory is!

I’m sure a lot of people have a grand story about how they decided to become an eventer.  I decided that I wanted to be an eventer when I stumbled upon the Omnibus listing for Jump Start on a web site.  I knew what eventing was for the most part from my year in Pony Club but that was about the extent of my experience.  I did what any reasonable person would do when they decided to try something for the first time, I bought a truck, determined that my parent’s old blue stock trailer would stay in one piece for at least the next year, and registered with the USEA.  I also did one mini trial and one cross country schooling with Romeo and then signed us up for our first event:  Novice at Spring Bay 2008.

I had never been to Masterson Station and no one told me that Spring Bay is notorious for interesting weather.  In “no one’s” defense I didn’t ask and at that point, I probably wouldn’t have cared.  I knew that Romeo and I were going to be rock stars.  Emily and I loaded up the trailer, reserved the cheapest hotel in the area and headed down to the Horse Park.  Included in my packing were outfits for a potential jog up, yea I should have done more homework!

I wish I had a video of our first dressage test.  I thought it felt pretty good at the time, but I’m sure the judge wondered when they started allowing gray giraffes to compete.  Romeo’s head was in the clouds the whole time and I’m not sure I even knew what bending was.  We did manage to stay in the arena and I managed to remember my test, so there was a small victory.  Before the event I was hoping for a top 3 finish, however the score board quickly gave me a reality check, we scored a 49.  I think Romeo got brownie points for being pretty.  He is good at that.

Cross country was right after dressage so we quickly walked my course and I decided that the jumps were fairly small so I didn’t have anything to worry about.  Memorizing where I was going would have been nice but since the jumps were small, everything else was going to be easy too right?  Wrong!  The first two jumps went pretty well but jump #3 was a big hedge where a horse eating monster lived.  Romeo took one look at that hedge and slammed on the breaks.  There was a picture of what happened next, I looked for it today but it’s been removed from the photographer’s web site.  There is probably a good reason for that.   I will try to give you a mental picture.  Romeo’s neck was stretched over the hedge, I was on Romeo’s neck and you couldn’t see the rest of him.  Yea, that pretty much sums it up.  I have a crazy “OMG” look on my face and he is looking at the hedge while trying to figure out what rock just fell on his head.  Somehow I managed to regroup and we cleared it easily on the second attempt.   It was only after about 15 strides had passed that I realized that I had no idea where jump #4 was.  I remember at this moment it crossed my mind that maybe we were not going to place in the top 3 and that maybe eventing was harder than I thought.  We finally found the jump and then managed to finish the rest of the course without any more memorable moments, there was only one problem.  Turns out the time limit wasn’t the point at which you started collecting time faults, the optimal time was.  Huh, that’s odd; I had thought that we had 11 minutes to finish the course.  Add on about 20 more time faults. 

Surprisingly, since it became our nemesis later on, show jumping was VERY uneventful.  Looking back on it now, I am really glad it was, I’m not sure I would have gone home and signed up for another event had it been a total disaster.  We pulled one rail but otherwise put in a nice enough round.  The good news, event #1 was behind us.  The bad news?  We finished next to last on a score of 92.  At least it was a number and not a letter! 

That Ribbon Cost WHAT??

Since the weather isn't my friend right now, I have very little interesting Cowboy news.  I am planning to send in an entry for the CT at Stone Place on March 10th.  Right now we are planning on entering both Beginner Novice AND Novice (gulp!).  While we work towards that, I thought I would post what made me decide to start blogging in the first place.  Hope you enjoy!

I love coming home from an event with a ribbon.  I wait patiently for the 30 minutes to be up so I can pick it up, or I get excited like a 10 year old waiting to go into the ring.  I take a picture of it on my horse, with me holding it and of it hanging from the rear view mirror so I can post it on Facebook.  I plot where I’m going to put my latest treasure when I get home, sometimes for several hours on the long drive.  I walk in the door and my husband (who really is supportive of all my crazy horse adventures) asks “exactly how much did that ribbon cost”?  I can see his point of view.  Anyone could buy a ribbon like that, heck for the cost of one lesson I could buy a MUCH nicer, much bigger, much more colorful ribbon than the now slightly wrinkled 5^th place pink and white thing that looks to me like an amazing treasure.  Since I’m really not a 10 year old anymore, and since I happen to teach Econ at our local college for extra horse money, I started thinking this winter (yes it’s been a LONG winter with way too much time to think!) about what each ribbon really cost.  I quickly decided that adding up the dollars of what they ACTUALLY cost was insanely depressing.  Thankfully Econ took me down a different road.  There it was in bold on the first page of the text, “don’t think in accounting cost (dollars and cents), think in opportunity cost (what you gave up to get what you have).  That really made me think, was the opportunity cost of that pretty pink ribbon anymore appealing that the hundreds (ok thousands, lets be honest) of dollars I spent to get it? 

My first ribbon came at Training level in 2010.  Yea, I skipped a few levels I probably shouldn’t have but the big jumps looked a lot more fun.  I’ll call that my “a little more grown up ribbon”.  When I first started eventing, I didn’t have a trainer or a clue.  I don’t think it was mere coincidence that I got that first ribbon about six months after I started taking lessons.   Lessons meant less time and money for my favorite college past time, bar hopping.  Maybe that first ribbon should have been called “giving up the bar scene”, oh well both titles are probably equally appropriate.

My second ribbon came again at Training level in the spring of 2011.  I had broken my leg in February of that year and we had to run one more clean event to qualify for the T3D in June at IEA.  If I had paid attention to the lesson ribbon #1 taught me I probably would have been in better shape but I regress, I’m still young enough to have a little fun!  My doctor told me not to ride until mid-May and the qualifying event (Greater Dayton) was in mid-May.  Not only did we run around it clean, we also trained with my cast on for 8 weeks and did a schooling show 10 days after I got it off.  Getting ribbon number two meant I gave up the excuse to feel sorry for myself and it meant that for the first time in a long time, I wanted something so badly that I was willing to do anything to get it.  Yea ok, so the real opportunity cost was that I could have injured myself pretty badly but I’m sure all you fellow eventers know that it was a very small price to pay!

My third (and most treasured) ribbon came at the T3D (just two months after I got my cast off!) when we finished on our dressage score to be the highest placed amateur in the event.  I can’t even describe the feeling when our number was called.  Yea it’s a fairly small white (4^th place overall) ribbon.  And yea, I spent thousands of dollars on it.  But I can honestly say I’ve never been more proud of myself, my horse, or my family who supported me to get there.  What did this ribbon “cost” me?  A whole heck of a lot actually.  I realized at that event that I didn’t want to be an amateur forever, I wanted to do this and I wanted to be really good at it.  What did I get in return?  A brown Dirt Cowboy who has taught me so many things I'm most likely too stubborn to have learned any other way.

My fourth ribbon didn’t come at an event.  It came in the mail.  I was down in the dumps.  My beautiful Romeo who helped me earn above ribbons was injured and in the stall.  I had realized that he was a stepping stone to where I wanted to be and that after he got better, I would be moving on.  The ribbon that came in the mail was a (HUGE) 3^rd place ribbon for Training Amateur Rider in Area 8 (yea you get a lot of points for a T3D!).  That ribbon taught me to appreciate what you have and not to be afraid to dream big.  It was the end of a great chapter with my gray guy.

My next ribbon is still out there.  I spent last show season trying to learn how to ride Cowboy.  However, I already know what my next ribbon cost me.  When we get the ribbon it will mean that I’m a heck of a lot better rider than I was when I won my last one.  See Romeo was pretty easy and straight forward; my bay baby is anything but.  I’ve given up making the same mistake twice (ok five times), I’ve given up just getting by with my right rein half halts; I’ve given up being happy with being a decent rider.   

There are some things in life that money can’t buy, we all know that.  And while money could buy me a truck load (literally a truck load at this point I’m sure) of ribbons, they would be very little in comparison to the small collection I have going now.