A Great Weekend at Jersey Fresh!

Bucky has arrived home safe and very sound after an exciting weekend at the Jersey Fresh CCI***.  I am so pleased with his performance throughout the weekend, and I am ecstatic that we have together completed our first CCI***!  

We started off the competition with a great dressage test on Thursday afternoon.  I have been working hard with Silva to put together the parts of the test, and I felt like it all came together in the arena.  Bucky felt very focused and worked hard through each movement of the test.  Since we are both green at this level there is still much room for improvement, but the performance we had on Thursday was a great place to start.  

I could not have asked for a better ride from Bucky on the cross-country Saturday.  The course designed by John Williams proved to be tougher than we expected when the first few horses set out.  Boyd helped me make a plan for the course, as it was most important to me to have a clean and safe ride around our first CCI***.  Bucky was focused and bold through every minute of the course, and despite a few mistakes here and there on my part he jump a very clean round.  I was so thankful to be greeted at the finish by Team Lily to help me in the cooling box!  It was great to have so many of my girls there to support me and cheer me on.  Now that they have a taste of the CCI competition scene, I am looking forward to helping them through their first training three-day in August!

As all of you can imagine I would have hoped for a better show-jumping round on Sunday.  Bucky was jumping really well in the warm-up, and I think I lost our rhythm once we got into the arena.  The course was very winding with a few tricky lines, and I felt that we had a very green ride.  Both Bucky and I are very inexperienced at this level of show-jumping, and I will look to improve our skills in the next few months.  I think some lessons with a show-jumper are in order!

Now that we have our first CCI*** successfully completed, I am excited to announce that I will be training for the next year to compete in the Rolex Kentucky CCI**** next spring!  This has been a lifetime goal of mine and it is finally coming into fruition.  I have been so thankful for all of the support and help all of my clients, students and friends have given me this spring in order to get to the Jersey CCI, and I hope you will continue on with us in our quest to Kentucky!