On my left is Charly's vet, Dr. Charles Arensburg. "Chuck" has been a huge part of Charly's success this year. Charly has been lucky to have a vet that is so interested in his success!

On my right is Bryce Kinnamon, one of Charly's shareholders and my fantastic boyfriend. Bryce has been a huge help before, during and after each of my competitions this year.... I am a lucky lucky girl! :)

Sunday at the Fair Hill International

I will remember this day forever. Charly and I have now completed our first CCI ** together; we did it at one of the best and toughest events in the world. This event is truly spectacular, I had a moment this morning (in between my 5 times of walking the show jumping course) to stop and look around at the beauty of this grand event.

Charly was light on his feet and very handsome for his final jog and the excitement kept rising for our ride to come. The course was one of the toughest tracks I have seen, big, long, and very well presented. Charly was at the very end of the two star, Boyd and I went over the "game plan" and then had some time to watch the earlier riders. Boyd's coach, Phillip Dutton, was also kind enough to discuss with me the way the course was riding and go over some course strategies. I felt very well prepared and knew that Charly was up for the challenge.

When Charly and I entered the arena the entire crowd was silent, the announcer started saying a bunch of stuff but I didn't hear any of it, I think I was seriously in my own world.... slightly focused! The rest is history, and I'm trying hard to leave it at that. Charly jumped great and we had one slightly off fence, a light rub of a pole and our CCI ** win vanished. It was really very heartbreaking. I think the world of this horse and was so excited to help get him this win. Charly still got to go in and accept a few ribbons, so I think he still feels like a winner; people might think I'm crazy, but I know that Charly understands he has done well when he gets to do the victory gallop. Charly received a blue for the best conditioned horse, a blue for the best dressage score and a white (4th) for the over-all placing in the CCI **.

I'd like to thank all of you that have been following us through this exciting weekend; Also a huge thanks to Silva, Boyd and Phillip for all of their great advice and endless support; and last but not least my support crew ..... you guys are the best!!!!

FH Pic's

Thursday at the Dansko Fair Hill International

I'm speechless! Today was everything I could've hoped for, well except for the microphone/loudspeaker problem that happened as I started my first shoulder in, but besides that... perfect! Charly and I scored a 46.2(roughly a 70%) which after the first day of dressage is good enough for first place. Fair Hill has done a lovely job creating this big time festival, the horses even have 24 hour security. At the end of the day I was involved in a "press release", so stay tuned to the USEA webite :)

Wednesday at the Dansko Fair Hill International

Charly and I got set-up today at the Fair Hill International Three Day Event; Charly had "In-Barn" inspections first thing this morning, then a light ride to get used to the atmosphere around his dressage court, and last but not least had his "Trot-Up".

This is by far the most impressive "scene" that Charly and I have ever been part of, everything is top-notch. We are competing amongst 80+ of the best horses and riders at this level in the entire country. After the trot-ups I had some time to walk around the cross country course for the first time, it was absolutely magnificent. The course has been built by Derek DiGrazia, who has presented us with a fair yet very challenging course. 9 minutes of galloping and jumping. Needless to say when Charly sprung to life today in his trot ups, I was very happy and not the least bit up-set! Thursday at 2:21 is our dressage test.

Willing and Able

Thatch aka "Willing and Able" completed his first Novice horse trial this weekend finishing in 2nd place! Thatch was in the Novice horse division at the Radnor Hunt Horse Trials; It was a beautiful weekend and Thatch did a great job over the big course he was presented with. I'm a proud trainer/rider :)

Excited, anxious and a little bit nervous....

It's Wednesday night, exactly one week away from the trot up's at Fair Hill. Charly has an exact schedule lined up to "hopefully" have the two of us at our peak for the Fair Hill CCI **. There are so many of you that I wish could be here to share in next week's big event with us. Charly will have my mom, Bryce and myself at his beck and call (ok and maybe a few other east coast groupies Charly has attracted) but I know that he wishes he could get treats from each one of you! No matter what happens next week, this has been a thrilling four years of riding and training with the Minyan Syndicates fantastic horse, I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

Charly wins Plantation Fields CIC**

What can I say about the weekend... it has taken me 24 hours to begin to absorb all of the excitement and take my first brief look back... Working backwards, we'll start with the results... Havarah's Charly Won the first Plantation Fields CIC** ever!!! To all of those who have helped out, what wonderful joyous news to share with you. The down and dirty backwards in time... double clear show jumping round to take first place, perfect through Sunday's jog-up, a wonderful competitor's party at the Walker's (the competition's landowner), 2.4 time faults on Saturday's beautiful course designed by organizer Dennis Glaccum, a brilliant dressage test, and great coaching by Boyd Martin!

BIG weekend ahead...

Plantation Field Horse Trials is this weekend; Ginger is doing a Preliminary HT and Charly is in the CIC **. The course at Plantation is known to be quite BIG but said to ride very nicely. Both horses jumped early this morning and are ready to go. Ginger is seeming very willing and interested in all the new exciting questions that are coming with her jumps and Charly just can't get enough...

Thatch, Alyssa Hatai's young horse is sitting this show out (as they only start at Preliminary) yet was a total super star at his cross country school on Tuesday at Fair Hill. Willing and Able is the perfect name for him!

A trailer full of champions!

The weekend of September 6th and 7th will never be forgotten for many people on the east coast and I have to say that I am happy that I am part of that crowd.

Hurricane Hanna made her way over Washington DC just as Charly, Ginger and Thatch were to enjoy a weekend of competing at Seneca Valley. Luckily the organizers did a great job at moving times around to avoid the worst of the storm and MOST luckily I had great ground support from Bryce over the weekend to be able to get the three horses safely and successfully through despite the very offsetting weather.

Charly was the first of the three horses to compete and he did all three phases back to back on Saturday morning in the very beginning of the storm. Charly hands down did a great job considering the trying conditions. He slipped a few times in the dressage court and cost him his normal spectacular test, but he more than came through for the show jumping and cross country. Jumping clean in both phases he only incurred time penalties which were due to me wanting to have a sound and brave horse for Plantations CIC ** and Fair Hill's CCI ** both coming up very soon :)

Ginger was next in the line up and being slightly young and much less traveled she was rightfully concerned with the horrendous weather that she was put in for her dressage test. After having a few moments of "un-happiness" in the dressage test we got through, loaded into the trailer as quickly as possible and headed to safety to their covered stabling. I then proceeded to fill up water buckets with the amount of water that came out of my boots! The horses all seemed to really enjoy their early day (in stalls by noon!) The rest of their Saturday was filled with eating, drinking and I'm sure some good stories told by each.

The weather made a huge turn Saturday evening and Sunday was an absolutely stellar day. Ginger had her first Preliminary completion jumping clean in both phases and finishing second! GOOOOO GInger! This is a great horse and I'm sure we will see her for years to come in the winners circle. Lots of jealous people on the east coast all said that she is happily owned by a young rider in California.

Last but not least was Thatch aka "Willing and Able", Alyssa Hatai's new young horse. I took Thatch in his first BN on Sunday and he was a total gentleman through the entire event. Dressage warm up made him slightly nervous, and the slippery conditions in the dressage court had him a bit confused as to how he was supposed to canter on such small circles but he was willing to do whatever I asked of him. Thatch jumped clean in Show Jumping and absolutely loved the cross country. This horse was so ambitious jumping into the water I nearly fell off...Alyssa I advise holding on ! :) This is going to be a cross country machine.

Thank you and congratulations!

There are two of my students that I would like to give a bit of a spotlight to. These girls recognized the need for a more intense learning period and went way out of their way to receive this. I hope that each of them realizes how much this has affected their lives and realize how much they can now give back.

The first is Jestine Burch-Butts. Jestine trekked to the east coast in the summer of 2007. That summer she worked day in and day out for a great horseman and very tough boss! :) Jestine learned how to meticulously care for a barn of horses and how to help horses acheive a second career after the race track. I know that there is a lot more to her summer than the above, but I, as a very far away coach, am very excited about her having this intense training program. Since the summer of 2007 Jestine has returned to Sanger, Ca where she has been taking on training projects and sale horse. I am very proud of you girl, keep up the good work!

The second is Lauren Billys. Lauren has just returned to California after a very full-filling summer of work on the east coast. She had some great opportunities presented to her and has already expressed how excited she is to share this with others back in California. While she was back east she learned how horses are correctly kept in shape for the upper levels of eventing and also how to deal with many different types of "problem" horses. I think more than anything Lauren is excited to work with her students back in California on how to prevent problems both under saddle and on the ground. Good luck in your endeavors Lo!

Thank you Jestine for taking what you have learned and applying it to all of your new mounts and Lauren I can't wait to see how sharp you'll get our crew at home!

New Havarah horse!

Congratulations Alyssa Hatai on her new horse Thackery!!!!!

PICS from Stuart

Stuart CIC **

Last week we made the trek to the Stuart Horse Trials which is near Rochester, NY. Charly and Ginger were trailer mates while Alyssa Hatai, Lauren Billys, Bryce and myself accompanied Quigley up in the truck. The trip to the horse show was absolutely gorgeous as it followed the Susquehanna river for a large portion of the trip. Luckily it was un-eventful and a mear six hours later we reached our destination and were met up by Alyssa Billys and Betsy McCarley. It was almost feeling like a Havarah horse trials back in California!

This event is known for it's terrain and very difficult (yet well built) cross country courses. As soon as we got a walk around we realized that "challenging" was definitely the adjective of the weekend!

Charly put in a lovely dressage test finishing 3rd out of a large group of highly experienced horses and riders. It was his (our) first time doing a dressage test in front of a large crowd and I think he handled it quite well. In fact, if I had to guess, I think that Charly was plenty happy to show off his fancy tail to all his new "friends". It seems like Charly feels like these horse shows are like parties and he pretty much acts like he is the birthday boy and everyone is there to hang out with him. In fact, Charly even learned how to drink out of a gatorade bottle, just like a person! (ok pretty close to it!!)

Our cross country ride wasn't until late afternoon and Charly's anticipation was growing minute by minute. At one point I just shut his stall door just to try to get him to take a moment and relax a little bit. Our cross country course was full of extreme accuracy questions as well as ride-ability exercises on top of the demand for scope and fitness. Charly was VERY honest at all of the accuracy questions and proved to be fit enough for the challenge at hand. His scope was never in question and in fact that our largest piece of homework... I now have to learn how to contain his scope. We had two "20 penalties" on course that were just due to the fact that Charly jumps so impressively that it makes some turns after fences a bit difficult. Being very focused on my year with Charly we have already begun our work on this area by changing some of my riding tactics and practicing a few more turning questions at home!

Stuart's show jumping course is on a grass ring with a few more hills to negotiate. The course was beautiful and very well designed. Charly came out Sunday morning fresh and ready to go, in fact I think I might have appreciated a more tired horse in warm up! However, once in the show jumping ring Charly was all business and put in a fabulous round. It was such a pleasure to be sitting aboard this amazing jumper, I felt very fortunate. I really feel like Charly and I have formed a great bond. I truly love the big guy! :)

CIC **

Stuart Horse Trials is this weekend! Charly will be competing in the CIC ** class and Lauren and Ginger will be competing Preliminary.

Charly and I have been focusing towards this event for a LONG time and I'm super excited! We have one more jump school on Tuesday and then Wednesday morning we are off to New York.

We have a fantastic fan club coming; The Billys/McCarthy family is being represented with Alyssa and her mother Betsy, we also have Alyssa Hatai representing the California Havarah group and last but not least Bryce will be crutching along to give his best gimpy support from the sidelines!

Intermediate XC

Better late than never....
Waredaca Intermediate XC June 2008

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4kORMMiTik

The Perfect Saturday!

I pretty much do a daily check on accuweather in hopes of seeing thunderstorms and showers so that the ground will stay good and the grass will stay green...all last week the weather forecasters were wrong and daily got my hopes up only to be let down. FINALLY on Friday night we had a lovely storm. Saturday morning I took Charly over to the Fair Hill "park" and had a fantastic gallop. He feels so much stronger and way more mature than when he was doing this same gallop last year. Bryce and I have been watching the Stuart Horse Trials on U Tube and realizing just how fit the horses need to be to get around that course. My class list is also posted now on the Stuart cite and Charly and I have some VERY difficult company!

Charly's gallop was just the start of my perfect Saturday because I then was invited out to the North East River with Luke and Sara Allen a few of their good friends, my roomate (Jane) and my boyfriend (Bryce). It was a perfect crowd, a lovely boat and we got to play on some very cool toys. I now can wake board decently on a straight line, turning right and some times can even stay on for a turn to the left... I'm glad that I can be happy with small progress! Luke and Sara are both excellent at the water sports and provided us great entertainment with all their athletic endeavors.

Go team!

Since my last post many exciting horsey adventures have occured. Charly competed in his first Intermediate of 2008 and was a total champ, it was wonderful to feel how much more connected we have become since our Intermediate runs last year. Services Rendered has now completed his first two horse trials and is showing much talent as an event horse. HIghest Offer just finished second in a training level event at the Seneca Horse Trials, becoming one of my all time favorite cross country mounts. AND last but not least our summer addition to the east coast, Lauren Billys, finished second and third at her first two east coast events. Lauren is working towards moving up to Preliminary in a few weeks at the Maryland Horse Trials.

Charly's next event is the CIC ** at Stuart which is known as a great event but really requires a fit horse. So in addition to his normal fitness regime Charly has added on swim practice into his schedule. :) It's pretty cool, I'll try to get some pictures of him treading away posted.

Fair Hill Horse Trials

May 18th was a fantastic day in Elkton, Md. Charly and I competed for the first time in 2008 and were lucky enough to have a fan club including, my mother (Judy), my boyfriend (Bryce), Charly's vet and my good friend (Dr. Charles Arensburg), as well as some very good friends.... Sara, Luke, Traci and Caroline. I believe this group brought us great luck as Charly received a 24.5 on his dressage test and had fantastic jumping rounds that helped us secure the win at this horse trials.