Well as usual I have a lot to fill you in on and not a lot of time

Well as usual I have a lot to fill you in on and not a lot of time as we are busy preparing for our recognized event in two weeks. I suppose the first local event, NWEC Mothers Day Classic is a good place to begin. Aspen Farms had a great showing with everyone coming home happy with their performances and most with a ribbon to show for it. Working students Lexy Funk, Laramie Maxwell, and Char Paasche placed 6th, 5th, and 6th in their respective divisions. Aspen Farms assistant trainer Chelsey Sevigny rode Alison Uttings Aerolite to yet another win in the Novice and also rode Cindi Carrols Stormont to a 4th place finish in training in their first event together.

I was lucky to ride 3 very nice horses; my own Chauncy did his first OI at the age of 7 and was super. Bridgette Sales lovely young horse Dane the Great was very fun to ride around the novice and finished 8th. Tiger Time did his first training and was green but wonderful to finish 1st! I am so very excited to share the news that I have been given the permanent ride on Tiger by my good friend and mentor Dale Irwin. Tiger is a very talented horse and I am honored to have this opportunity given to me and excited to see how far we can go with it. Thank you Dale!

Lauren Benge rode Obsession to an 8th place finish in the training while Whitney Weston finished 6th and 4th on her two training horses.

After recovering from NW, we hit the road and headed down to CA yet again, this time to Woodside, to contest the Preliminary Challenge. The Challenge is a wonderful new idea of Robert Kellerhouses and I would encourage anyone who qualifies to go down and do it next year. There was 30,000 dollars worth of cash and prizes up for grabs, a super course to jump and show jumping in the evening in front of hundreds of rowdy spectators and sponsors. It was a great atmosphere and a very fun competition to be a part of. I competed Ogopogo in the horse portion of the challenge and finished 3rd , so shockingly came home with a check that paid for my trip! I also brought Chauncy and did his second OI. It was a much more challenging course than NW and he handled it very well other than one steering mishap early on! He had a lovely clean SJ round the next day to finish 7th. Lexy and Laramie made the trip with me and both rode their personal best dressage tests on their current horses. Lexy sat in 1st place after dressage with a 28! Both had super xc rides, other than Laramies horse deciding to amuse the crowd with an impressive bucking display in warm up! Laramie had a clear SJ to finish 5th in training and Lexy also had a very nice round with one rail to finished 2nd in training.

Then it was back home to deal with the mound of entries, unanswered phone calls, and ignored emails waiting for me! We are full and have a waiting list which is great, thank you to everyone for entering and supporting our show. We are excited to see everyone in a few short weeks. If anyone wants to be a part of the action but is not quite ready to ride, we are always looking for volunteers to help things run smoothly…there’s even a free T-shirt involved to sweeten the deal! Be sure to stick around for the competitors party Saturday and watch the games portion of the team competition, it was highly entertaining last year and I think I can safely say a good time was had by all!

Bye for now,

Suzy