This has been as great week!  We have done group dressage work, another jump school over gymnastics, and had an overall excellent time.  I have spent a lot of time this week thinking about how to make riding fun. So often competitive riders get into a rut, and drill the horses until everyone is practically drooling from boredom.  So keep it fresh- vary your routine, ride out, do dressage, jump gymnastics, ride bareback, and ignore the sleet in Vermont!  Here are the new videos from this week:

Sharing the sandbox:
http://youtu.be/bVnBdiC_ku4

and
Building Confidence Jumping:
http://youtu.be/PFVlr-nKg9k

Lost, but making good time.

We've been talking about training and learning, but the question is, what are we training our horses to do, and what are our learning objectives?  I have asked my guinea pigs what their goals are, and the responses have been mixed... from, "well, I'd like to go to the Olympics", to "uh, I don't know, what should they be?"  I have looked up some guidelines for goal setting, from business websites, like:

http://www.all-about-leadership.com/setting-performance-goals.html 

 I've borrowed this, because it's better than anything I could have come up with on my own.  

Goals should be:

• Written
• Harmonious
• Yours - be sure they are your goals!
• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Realistically High and Results Oriented
• Time Bound

Here is a cheesy joke to go with the goal setting theme:

Italian Pilot Joke:

Folks I have a some a good a news and some a bad a news. The bad a news is we are a lost. The good a news is that we are a making a good time!

I love this joke, because it doesn't matter if you are making good time, when you are lost.  So, in the spirit of becoming a little less lost, here are my goals for myself:

 Short Term:

1. Aggie and I should have a good show season (64% average at Second Level), get into the jumper ring at 3'3", and gain a fair amount of mileage at that height.  I want her to feel very confident about all the questions that will be asked of her, and for both of us to get comfortable in the jumper ring.  I would like to qualify for Championships at Second level.  Mostly, my goal is to set Aggie up for a career where she is pretty sure she can do anything.  She is only 6, and it would be a shame to push her now, and ruin her wonderful brain.

2. Letterman will have his first season at Training Level Dressage and get confident in the ring.  I would hope for a 70% average on him, as he has very natural gaits and the work at Training Level should be easy for him (if his little pea-brain functions at full capacity).  I would like Letterman to qualify for Regional Championships at Training level.

3. Alyce needs to get out and see the world. Once I'm sure she can do that, I think she will progress quickly and should should be able to do some Beginner Novice events.  This will be my first time Eventing, so mostly I'd just like to learn the ropes safely.

Long Term:

1.  Develop one of my young horses all the way to Grand Prix.  The realistic time frame for this is probably four years (give or take one!) because my oldest horse is seven now.  It would be a great achievement to get my USDF gold medal on a horse that I started myself.  Aggie is well on her way as a good lower level horse, and we'll have to see how she progresses. I don't have sponsors (yet!), or huge personal financial backing, so my USDF gold medal will have to be earned with sweat!

2.  My goals for jumping are not as clear yet- It might remain something that I do for cross-training for my horses, but if the horses are doing great, and I am enjoying it, I think I will pursue it with the same eagerness that I had for dressage as a Young Rider bringing a horse all the way to the Prix St. Georges.  I guess the horses are going to have to lead the way here!

I hope everyone who checks out our project is inspired to set some goals... some big ones, some small ones! 

We won't get far if we are, "Lost, but making good time."

Longeing demo video!

Great day at the barn today, with thirty mile an hour winds, we all decided it was a perfect day to pull manes and get our tack spotless.
I posted our first longeing video last night and I'll put a link up on this page... Pretty happy to have completed a voiceover without it going too terribly. I had two concerns: That I might not have anything to say, or that I might say something really stupid and have to redo the thing a bunch of times. The video moved really fast, so I will work on the pace of the video for our next topic, which will be a jumping video showing two exercises, one for horses that hurry, and one for horses that are half-asleep when they get to a jump...also, this week I should be posting rider and horse videos on my website so that people who are following our progress can get and idea of where all the horses and riders are at the moment.

Here's the link to my website:
Green Mountain Sport Horse

And the link to the first longeing demo video:
Longeing Demo 1

Aaaaaannnnddddd GO!!!!

So the documentary of our training project has begun.  We have done our first longeing video, and no one got dirty, although Hannah and I both had moments that looked like it could happen.  I was doing a  fairly complicated exercise and almost slid off the side, then ended up on the neck, and Hannah got stuck sitting sideways on her horse at the trot.  Anna, Alice, and Emily all had less eventful sessions, but give it time, and they will have to do a version of "around the world" at the trot and we'll have great outtakes of them too!!  The video should be posted Sunday or Monday, and every few weeks there will be a "Big Fail Video"  which might be the most fun of all!