A Year of Change and Growth

I cannot believe that it's been an entire year since I've blogged. 

After the American Eventing Championships, Chris informed me that she no longer wanted to coach so that she could get her amateur status back. Totally fair considering I was her only student and she is still working full time. She should be able to compete as an amateur. I decided to reach out to Cassie Stiles to see if she was taking new students. She has a pretty cool draft cross mare, Chala, that competes and wins regularly at novice and was planning to move up to training. I started taking lessons with her, going to schoolings with her, and it was nice to have a crew again!

In October 2023, I won the novice open division at the Windermere Run Horse Trials. We had a 31.7 score in dressage, double clear XC, and a pesky 4 penalties in stadium. We got a really cool belt buckle to commemorate our win!

On the winning high, I decided to enter last minute (a late entry) to go to Texas Rose Horse Trials in November. Dezi got some preemptive hock injections because she was due, but also because I wanted to make sure she was feeling good. Unfortunately, hock injections didn't help our endurance on a hilly cross country course. We had a 33.0 dressage score and then I fell off at the 2nd to last fence on cross country. After giving her a few days off after Windermere and getting hock injections, I didn't get a ton of opportunities to ride between Windermere and Texas. I truly think our fitness suffered. She felt tired after the water and instead of taking the time she needed to relax a bit before the last couple fences and not stressing about time, I decided to push for time thinking we could just get it done and be finished quicker. Wrong choice. Well you live and you learn. She just didn't have the muscle to get over the second to last fence and I fell off over her shoulder. Luckily, we were both safe and healthy with only some new lessons learned and a bruised ego. It definitely wasn't the way we wanted to enter the off-season! But Cassie did put a positive spin on it, though, by reminding me that it's good to enter the off-season with goals instead of entering the off-season on a win and getting lazy. 

It definitely worked. We worked hard in the off-season. Cassie started helping me with Dezi and teaching me how to create actual bend and collection instead of just faking it. I think we have been faking a lot of dressage for a long time and it finally felt like we were doing it correctly. Dressage is not easy, but we're going to figure it out. 

In December, Coco went mysteriously ill on a weekday morning. He didn't come up to the barn to eat and when he finally did, he laid down. And Chris couldn't get him up. I rushed down to Butler and spent the day with him in preparation for his euthanasia that afternoon. It was time. I had even considered doing it in the fall, but he was doing so well that I didn't want to rush it unnecessarily. We had a lot of good years and he lived a really good life with me. I am officially a single horse owner again. 

This spring, we came out strong at Texas Rose in March. I decided to drop down a level just because of our unfortunate ending in Texas in November, so we ran beginner novice. We didn't have a stellar dressage test wth a 38.2 but then managed to go double clear in both cross country and stadium. A double clear stadium had felt elusive for years prior to this, so that was pretty big! We definitely had a bit of a flashback on XC when we had to jump the jump that looked almost the same as the novice jump that took us out in November, but we got over it and prevailed! Starting the season strong with a third place finish!

The barn had a blast at our (not) Rolex field trip in April when we got to see the best of the best compete at the Kentucky Three Day Event. 

We then headed to Mill Creek in June. We were in a tough open novice division where we ended in 6th place despite a decent 33.1 dressage test and double clear cross country and stadium rounds. Not too shabby for a pregnant lady!

Surprise! In March (about 10 days before Texas Rose), Anthony and I found out that I was pregnant. We waited a while to tell people because we didn't want to jinx anything and wanted to make sure that the pregnancy would be healthy before we made it too public. I decided that Mill Creek would be my last official event of the year. We are due in November. 

Then we had a fun clinic with Jennie Brannigan the weekend after Mill Creek, where we realized that all our dressage work has led to pretty solid jumping foundations and that Dezi is a beast at ditches when she did an exercise Jennie said she'd never had anyone do as flawlessly as we did. Pretty cool!

While we were in Texas and upon our return home, there was a girl at the barn, Kaylee, who was going through some serious tragedy with her mare, Marlee. She was getting sicker and sicker and none of the local vets could figure out what was going on. Eventually, after a trip to MU, she was determined to have pneumonia and unfortunately a collapsed lung led to Kaylee unexpectedly losing Marlee. Shortly after Marlee's passing, Kaylee started looking for a new horse. She has always wanted to event, but just never had a partner to help her get there. I offered for Kaylee to lease Dezi so that she could learn the ropes of eventing with a partner who has been there and done that. Plus, she'd be doing me a favor by keeping Dezi fit during a pregnancy that's had me more exhausted than I ever would have expected and visiting doctors frequently (yay for blood clots and a "geriatric" pregnancy 🙄). 

Kaylee has been riding Dezi consistently since June, working really hard to be able to event in the fall season. 

Well this weekend, it came to fruition. Kaylee finally got to go to her first event ever with Dezi as her partner at Heritage Park Horse Trials!

I helped haul Dezi to and from the park and did some basic horse management stuff, but I spent the majority of the weekend volunteering so that I would stay out of the way to let them develop their relationship and let Kaylee figure out the ropes as much as possible. They had a pretty quick dressage test with a 43.4, but then they managed to go double clear on both cross country and stadium. Dezi earned her "packer" status on several occasions when Kaylee didn't do much to help her except for telling her which jump was next, but they got it done and had beautiful warm ups in every phase! Kaylee will just have to figure out how to manage her nerves, as we all do! Unfortunately, that takes time. Lots of time. Despite her 9th place finish (just outside the ribbons) in her open BN division, Kaylee won the Fledgling Award for havng the best score of people showing at their first event ever. 

Next up will be Windermere Run in October and then Texas Rose in November for these two!

I thought I was pretty brilliant to plan a baby shower at the Windermere Run Event! What horse girl wouldn't want her baby shower to be AT a horse show!?! It'll be the perfect way for all my horse friends to be able to celebrate Kansas City's newest equestrian (hopefully eventer) coming in November!