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

Video and Update about Windsong and Silva

Caitlin, Silva and Windy in the snow

Caitlin and I are sooooooo ready for the sun to come out!! We are thinking we could have not picked a worse winter to stay home in PA. It is cold, cold and cold every day and it does not look like the snow is ever going to melt. But we are tough girls and what doesn't kill us makes us stronger!

The other thing is that we are getting lonely at True Prospect Farm. When everybody is at home in the summer we complain about the craziness of that place but we have to say, we are missing our crazy eventers a lot.

That said, we are having a great time training the wonderful horses that we have here at home. We are very lucky to have such a good group of horses - they are fantastic!

I am particularly exited about a new four-year old mare who's name is Windsong. Windy is owned by Phoebe and Chuck Devove and is a beautiful and very talented young mare.

I am very lucky that Phoebe and Chuck decided that I would be a good match for Windy; she is the sweetest little mare with the best temperament. Phoebe had Windy broken in a few weeks before she sent her to me for training and showing, so when she arrived she was all business from day one. With her great personality and ridebility she really is such a joy to have in our barn.

I am excited to have Windy, Phoebe and Chuck in my team for this season! Windy and I are going to our first show this April at Morven Park.

Here is a video of Windy after only a few weeks of training :

Videos of Boyd Jumping Rose and Eddie

Boyd checks in following a couple of days in Pennsylvania:

The Sunday night after Pine Top I jumped on a flight straight up to PA not only to see my loving wife and two pet cats but also to inspect my two exciting young horses that Silva and Caitlin have been working with.

Ambassador’s Rose, known around the barn as Rose has improved considerably with her jumping and the dressage since we parted company a couple of months ago. Kristin and Andy Sparks bred Rose and she’s a new competition horse for me to ride.The mare is showing good signs of promise and she’ll make her debut at the Plantation Horse Trials next month at the novice level.



I also got on Steady Eddie for his first jumping school on American soil and he did not disappoint. Right from the first fence he gave me a great feel on top and he’s showing good signs of promise. I still think he’s probably a couple months off starting eventing because he hasn’t seen any cross-country style fences like banks or water in his life. He looks like he’s gained about 400 pounds since I last saw him in Australia. We’ve got him on Nutrena Legacy feed three times a day and he’s starting to shine and really look good.

Update on Upper Level Horses from Aiken

Silva schooling Neville Bardos in Aiken, SC

Boyd is preparing three horses for the Rolex Kentucky CCI**** in Lexington at the end of April, and staying busy riding everything else he has the chance to sit on as well as teaching lessons and clinics. Here's an update on his top tier horses:

The three advanced horses that are heading to Rolex after enjoying their winter vacation in Wellington: Neville Bardos, Remington XXV and Rock on Rose, had to come back to reality and move to Aiken in three inches of snow. It was their biggest snow in 30 years! But it was good to bring the rock stars back to reality after living the good life in Wellington.

All three horses have been on track with Kentucky as their main goal for the spring and have been sound and had no hiccups. I started off Nev and Remi with a nice Intermediate at Pine Top and then went back a couple weeks later and hit them a little harder; Remington ran fantastic in the advanced, finishing third, while Neville ran a bit slow in the intermediate. I opted not to run him cross-country at the first one since he’s an experienced horse and kept him at intermediate the second time around just to play it safe.

I took Rock on Rose to Rocking Horse down in Florida under the watchful eye of Bruce Davidson for her first event of the year. She had very good dressage test and show jumped a beautiful round but unfortunately I got a bit close to a fence on cross-country and I flew off the top of her and gave my fancy new air vest a trial. I bounced like a beach ball and then we walked home. After that Bruce and I agreed to back her down to intermediate at Pine Top last weekend and she had a great dressage and clear show jump and was spot-on on cross-country to finish a creditable sixth place.

The two prelim horses I’ve been competing this year were Amy Lindgren’s Minotaure du Passoir and Phantom Pursuit who is owned by Abbey Golden, a Young Rider from Texas that’s training with me. I’m competing her horse and keeping it fit until she can get away from college to compete him herself. Both of these horses have had two fantastic prelims this year at Pine Top and Paradise.

Oded Shimoni and Mark Phillips have been flying up to Aiken every ten days to do some US team training sessions. I’ve been taking Neville to the sessions and the main focus has been improving his trot, which I think is paying off. Oded has been working on almost making him passage in the trot to improve his action. Rock on Rose and Remington I’ve been training with Silva because she knows both of these horses and she’s made huge improvements working on some of the movements that will be in the test at Kentucky.

The three advanced horses are all on a very planned training and competition schedule to prepare for Kentucky. All three horses are jogging the hills in Bridle Creek for 35 minutes once a week and we’ve just started taking them to the racetrack to start some quicker, sharper work.

At Pine Top I got a phone call on Thursday evening that my good friend Holly Hepp fell off a ladder and sprained her wrist, so I rode two of her horses this past weekend, at advanced and intermediate ,and they both had successful results.

Pine Top is one of my favorite events: it’s a good course with a long, open cross-country course that encourages forward riding. Unfortunately in the advanced there was a fair bit of trouble with many riders coming to grief at a number of fences. In my round on Remington I actually got held twice on course: it was one of the longest rides of my career, taking over 30 minutes. Jan Byyny and Rebecca Howard were both injured at Pine Top and we are keeping them both in our thoughts.

I was really thrilled with my apprentice Lillian Heard and my student Erin Sylvester, who had their first advanced horse trials and managed to cruise around the course without any incidents despite all the ambulances coming and going!

I’m taking all of the young horses and moving them up to training at Sporting Days this coming weekend and Summer’s having her first start at beginner novice. Then the higher level horses go to the advanced at Southern Pines. If the snow’s gone off the mountain I’ll head back to Pennsylvania and start galloping up the hills before The Fork, but it depends a bit on the weather.

Lillian Heard

-Boyd


Official Results:

Pine Top Spring Advanced

Pine Top Winter II Horse Trials