Dressage Schooling Show

Mary Grace from "Practical Dressage and Eventing" had a dressage schooling show at her place in Cochranville, PA today. I took Andy and Kristen Sparks' young event horse Rose and my four-year-old mare Rosa Cha W for their first time out and I am so proud of the two baby girls! Both horses handled the day very, very well. We had no dramas whatsoever and both went on the trailer like they had been doing it for years.

I was a little worried about the arena because it is a Coverall arena and it was a very windy and rainy day. The arena side were flapping and it was very loud inside because the rain, but both horses did not care at all!


Rose did two beautiful tests which puts the pressure on Boyd now since he is going to ride her in her first event at Plantation next month!



Rosa also did great. She is still a real baby and needs to grow into herself but I am very excited about her.

I also took Denise Rothko's Wie vom anderen Stern, or "Willie", for our first show together. Willie is a very good horse but gets nervous at shows. I am going to take him to a lot of places in the next few months to get him used to going out and about. I rode him in the second level and he did pretty good considering the spooky arena.

-Silva

Sea Lord Schooling Piaffe

Sea Lord finally is figuring out his piaffe. We still have a lot of work to do but I am so happy that he is starting to get the right idea. He is an amazing horse who learns very, very fast and he is so talented, especially in the trot and the passage. Everything that is big and forward he finds very easy and enjoys a lot.

He has a little trouble collecting for piaffe, which is quite normal for a Thoroughbred since they are built to push out behind for speed and not like a warmblood to push under for collection. He also really struggled with the coordination of his legs in the piaffe: for the longest time he could not work out where to put his legs. You can still see it in some of the piaffe steps but I can feel that he is so close to doing it perfectly! I am so exited, this is a big step in our career together!

-Silva

Ecogold Photo Tour of Boyd's Winter Facilities in Aiken

Check out sponsor Ecogold's website
for a photo tour of
Boyd's winter facilities at
Bridle Creek in Aiken, South Carolina!

Summer Breeze's Eventing Debut

It was a glorious weekend for both myself and Anne Hennessey to see her new eventing sensation, Summer Breeze, experience her first eventing competition at Sporting Days Farm in the open novice division. Anne, who is also the owner of Benwald, imported this mare from Australia late last year and I worked with her for about six weeks in November and then Anne gave her a holiday in Southern Pines over Christmas and the New Year. I've been gently working away with her in Aiken teaching her dressage and jumping and Sporting Days was her first official competition: she did not disappoint.


Her character was similar to an angel from the heavens! She was quite enjoying all the other horses hanging around and she looked like she was heading to the dressage at Rolex wearing her fancy Devoucoux competition bridle and Ecogold dressage pad. She was foot perfect in her dressage test and was clear show jumping and cross-country to finish with a top result of sixth place. I must admit she was pretty green in the jumping phases, coming back to trot in front of a few fences and traveled something like an eel, going left and right, but never felt like she didn't want to go. I also think Summer Breeze broke the all time record for eating the most carrots in a 24-hour period thanks to Anne!

I rode seven other horses at Sporting Days with great successes on all of them, many of them moving up to training level for the first time. There are photos of these horses at www.Hoofclix.com. For complete results click here.

-Boyd