Freestyle Test

Here is the Freestyle for you all to see!

Home Sweet Home

Oslo and I arrived safely last night, August 4th. We are both glad to be home and it was especially nice to sleep in our own beds!

Thank you so much to everyone again who made our trip possible. It was a great experience and I learned so much! I also met so many new people and expanded on relationships with past friends.

Once again, I will be making a slideshow presentation with pictures and information regarding our trip. I will likely be making presentations to the Alberta Dressage Associations, but if anyone else is interested in seeing all the pictures and hearing more about the trip, I am more than willing to make additional presentations.

Also, I received an email from a person, Jeff, who met us on our trip down to Kentucky. His daugther Maddux got a chance to pet Oslo and he asked if we had gotten any pictures. Therefore, I am posting a picture of Maddux with Oslo since it was definitely a moment to remember from the trip!

Maddux and Oslo!

Thanks everyone so much for all your encouragement and contributions!

Homeward Bound!

We left the Kentucky Horse park last night (Sunday) just after closing ceremonies around 6:30 pm. We only travelled for just over three hours to Indianapolis to get the horses warmed up for the trip back and get Oslo into a pen for the night. As soon as Oslo saw his pen last night he went straight to the dirt and rolled until his heart was content. He then proceed to jump straight up in the air after getting up from his most amazing roll, and took off bucking across the pen! It was nice to see him so happy and free again.

I forgot to mention in my last post that I had the wonderful priviledge of meeting Willy Arts before I rode my Freestyle. I was even more lucky to have dinner with him and a bunch of other Canadians Saturday night after the freestyles. He told me that I have a pretty darn nice horse and I couldn't agree with him more! And for those of you who don't know who Willy Arts is, he is one of, or perhaps, THE best Warmblood breeder in North America. He is also a fan of Contangos!!! It was very exciting to meet him!

At closing ceremonies we got to hear how the rest of the Canadians faired in the different disciplines. Perhaps the most proud moment for us Canadians was when they presented the Individual medals to the reining competitors - Bronze, Silver, and Gold went to ALL CANADIANS!!! Go reiners! It was pretty exciting to see that all three flags being raised were red and white. We also won show jumping Junior Individual Gold medal and Jaimie Holland won Gold in the Freestyle. Megan Lane won Bronze, and Esmee Ingham also won Bronze.

We have stopped for the night now on the west side of Minneapolis and will proceed back to good old Canada tomorrow!!! Yippee! We are all very excited to get away from the classic "y'all" talk of the Americans and the humidity! The humidity really adds a different element to the heat and makes everything sticky! We will then stop in southern Saskatchewan for the night and make the final leg of the trip home on Wednesday.

Here are a few more pictures from the trip:

The view of the stadium from the south - where we had to walk by to get to the warm-up ring

The stadium

Santana and I warming up in our "team practice time" in the ring on Tuesday before the competition started. Tom Dvorak is the coach standing at the gate and my mother and Albrecht are in the background. Our time in the ring was at 2:00pm, so mom spent most of her time in the judges tent so she didn't "melt"!

Oslo and I with "Walt" from Lube-X on our saddle pad on our warm-up day

Once we get home we will also post my Freestyle up on the blog so everyone can view it.

Goodnight for now!

Freestyle Day

Saturday evening at 6:36 pm I rode my Young Rider Freestyle. Oslo was the most calm he had ever been on the walk over to the warm-up ring and as nothing changed as we rode down to the show ring. This was the first day that Oslo felt completely rideable and listening to me since we have arrived. Consequently, we had an amazing freestyle and ended up with  a score of 69.600%! I was soooooo happy with Oslo. Since we were the fifth ride in, we retained the lead until the last 5 riders went. Unfortunately, the last five riders were the top five riders from the Individual test (where I should have been, but I am not even going to start that again!) and in the end we finished in Fifth place. I am still uuber happy with that and I am still very thrilled with how Oslo felt. Both him and I were feeling very comfortable and confident in that show ring and we had a very great ride! The awards ceremony was a different story and I am not sure if Oslo was just not happy with his pink ribbon or what, but it was a bit caotic!

I also want to tahnk everyone who came up to me afterwards and commented on how good our freestyle was. We had a bunch of comments on how great our music was and that we had the best choreography and timing of everyone. So thank you guys! Comments such as those make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside! And for you that were not there, we have it on video - I just hope the quality is ok since papa was saying he starting shaking half way through because he got so nervous since it was going so well! Aww, I love you papa!

I have to go now since the computer is running out of battery..... I will post another soon though!