And we are bronze medalists!

We did it! With out first ride at NODA, Gadget and I earned our last score needed for the USDF bronze medal. Hani and I were thrilled and we toasted with our mimosas to a once far away goal accomplished. Although Hani is not a horse person, he has been my person during my entire ownership of Gadget. He has seen the many ups and downs, and he truly knew that this was once a very unlikely accomplishment. The rest of my rides were anticlimactic to the big achievement. Gadget is becoming such a steady eddy, and we are figuring out third level. One thing is for certain after this show -- no more second level. It's time to put that miserable level to bed.

Here's a video of the ride that got us the last score:

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When old becomes new - update to my old Pikeur Diana!

Here is the finished product! It was a plain black jacket so I added white and light blue trim with RHINESTONES! It's very sparkly! Here's a closeup of the collar, which looks better than the pocket. Now I am going to try to add coordinating trim (minus the rhinestones) to the saddle pad.

2014 - New Year, New Goals

This past year was a great year for me and Gadget. Although we had our ups and downs, I've learned a lot this year. We made our third level debut, earned our bronze medal in only two shows, improved the flying changes dramatically, and earned Champion for Adult Amateurs at third level in my GMO. For 2014, I have several goals: Keep Gadget's back feeling good. I think I have found a good combo of chiro, shoeing, saddle fit, and vet maintenance to prevent him from getting sore rather than waiting until he's in pain. Hopefully it works this year. Continue improving Third Leve l. Last year was a great intro to third level, but I am finally learning to ride Gadget more uphill, which is improving everything. This year I want to try 3-2 and 3-3. The canter-halfpass is still tough for us, but it's looking better. I am going to work to fix things that are easy points -- halts, turn on the haunches, transitions, and good centerlines. I am going to focus on the quality o...

Michael Bragdell Clinic

So I have been having an amazing summer of lessons with Ryan Yap. He really helped me feel how to collect and energize the canter, which has been the biggest challenge. He also made huge improvements in my halfpasses and helped develop more suspension in Gadget's trot. Writing these things make it sound easy, but it has taken years to get to a point where Ryan could work on these things with us. As he said, we were finally ready. So when Ryan's clinic date changed to one that conflicted with the Michael Bragdell clinic, I was so disappointed. It would have been awesome to have back-to-back weekends of clinics with those two. But I will have to wait until the spring to work with Ryan again. As for the Michael Bragdell clinic, it was really quite amazing. I typically don't have the highest hopes for lessons when someone is seeing me and Gadget for the first time. We have lots of little issues going on and it sometimes takes a little time figure out the right way to a...

Dressage Day by Day

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