Lame!

Rio and Ruby did so great Monday evening! They both jumped 3' and made it look easy. Ruby overjumped once and FLEW 12 feet from take off to landing. She can fly!

She went fine on Tuesday (no jumping Tuesday of course) and had Wednesday off. Unfortunately, Ruby came up lame on Thursday and was no better on Friday. Looks like a stifle problem on the right hind. We'll keep you posted.

Looks like Flair may be doing the Pony Club clinic on Saturday instead of Ruby. Hmmmm.......that could be interesting since we're not really cantering him yet (let alone jumping!!!).

Week Two

This week didn't go quite as planned. On Monday, we meant to have our trainer, Mrs. Jill, watch Flair go for the first time. We each had a lesson on Rio and Ruby, so we saddled Flair and had someone hold him. Turned out not to be such a great idea. For the first 30 minutes or so, he was mostly patient and a good boy. After that, he just couldn't stand still. He was bored and (worse!) the barn staff was bringing feed down the hallways. Flair was overcome with the unfairness of it all (saddled for 30+ minutes with no rider AND food so near yet so far) and he just couldn't stand still.

Immediately after our lesson, just as we were finally ready to hop on Flair and Mrs. Jill watch him go, we found out that she had another lesson at another location. Since Mrs. Jill had to leave, Flair had stood saddled and unfed for all that time for nothing. Poor guy. He tried so hard to be good.

On Thursday, we finally had a chance to ride him again and he was such a good boy. We are not asking him to canter much. We're focusing on trotting and staying on the bit.

Saturday, we're hoping to ride Flair for Mrs. Jill. Let's hope it goes better Saturday than it did Monday.

Week One

What a fun week we've had getting to know Flair. Here is what we've learned so far:

• He has LOTS of training and knows his job.
• He is strong, but way out of shape.
• He is an off-track TB (we knew that when we bought him).
• He is playful and such a sweet boy.

Flair

Hi! We are just two regular girls who go to school and hang out with our friends just like everyone else EXCEPT we happen to love eventing!! We spend every free moment possible at the barn where we board our horses. Together we have four horses:

• Rio, QH (?) palomino gelding purchased in December 2007
• Sparkles, bay Quarab mare purchased in May 2008
• Ruby, chestnut TB mare purchased in December 2009
• Flair, chestnut TB gelding purchased in February 2010

Flair is our most recent horse and he is the inspiration for our blog. We'll "introduce" you to our other horses as we go along, but Flair is our project horse and we'd like to share our fun as we work him back into shape.