Tag Archives: eventer

The growing pains of eventing or How not to event – Jessica R.

Stone Gate Farm August Mini Trial Schooling Day – Tackling the growing pains of eventing
or “How not to event”.

How Not To Event
Employee and Team Big Dee’s Member Jess R demonstrating “How not to event” during cross country schooling at Stone Gate Farm in August

For those of you who have been following along with the progress of my 5 year old gelding Paladin – Despite a few growing pains we’ve had an enjoyable summer of eventing with lots of growth for both of us. The spring started out with placing 8th in the starter 2’ division at the Winona Horse Trials in May. After a brief tendon scare that put us a bit behind in June we moved up to the Beginner Novice division at the Hackamore Farm mini trial in July and scored a 4th place finish. Unfortunately due to the excessive rain the cross country course was shortened significantly and I was not able to get a good feel of his overall fitness to be able to go a full cross country course at our new level, but continued on with conditioning and entered the Stone Gate Farm mini trial which was held on August 2nd. Despite Paladins bravery at Winona, I chose to school Hackamore since we were moving up a level and in doing so I learned that my young guy still needs more miles and more exposure to the various obstacles that are found out on cross country at the 2’6” level. For this reason I also chose to school Stone Gate on the Saturday before the event.

Schooling day was a pleasant and sunny 82 degrees and as always Stone Gate Farm offered an enjoyable mix of people, horses and dogs to greet us. I had a couple close friends who were going to be competing in the starter division along to school their horses and we had a pup and two husbands to serve as our ground people. I flipped on the mycoursewalk app and we all Continue reading The growing pains of eventing or How not to event – Jessica R.