Where to Start? Where to Start?

I feel like Dieter deserves his own blog, so here goes. The beginning of our story can be found on Coco's blog. Dieter and I started our relationship in November of 2015 when I rode him in a Morey Nicholson clinic because Coco was lame.

We did the winter series at West End Farm in KC, Kansas, and we ended up doing pretty well. With a 2nd, a 5th, and two 1sts, we ended up the reserve champion in the starter combined test division by .2 points. It was a close one!

Since then, we've done a lot more dressage schooling shows and started our eventing careers. We've been taking it slowly, not because of his incompetence, but because of my nerves. For some reason, when I'm on a horse I'm not as familiar with, 2 foot starter cross country jumps look like advanced jumps.

Dieter was trained in dressage, but seems to be picking up jumping well and really enjoying it! We've been going higher and higher and he really seems to like cross country schooling.

We failed miserably at the Mill Creek Horse Trials at Longview Horse Park in KCMO where I fell off between the start box and the 1st XC jump (I had no idea where to begin with showing a green horse and didn't take it nearly as seriously as I should have), but we made up for our mistakes at the Queeny Park Horse Trials in STL with a 5th place finish in the starter division.

Dieter got most of the month of July and August off because of hot weather around KC and my focus on Coco while we got ready for Catalpa Corners Horse Trials in the beginning of August.

At the first MVPC XC schooling at Longview of the fall (the weekend of 8/14), we started out jumping starter jumps and finished doing BN combinations with ease. Dieter attacked the jumps. He absolutely loved it.

Dieter decided to go and scare the crap out of me and choke last Tuesday (8/16). He had to be tubed and I opted to let him stay the night at the vet so he could be in a controlled environment. It took some work to rehab him, but he was ready to go for the MACTA horse trial the next weekend.

We did the starter division HT at a MACTA schooling show (8/21) and got 2nd place!

The Heritage Park Horse Trial is coming up at the beginning of October, and I've signed Dieter up for the beginner novice division. We're planning on schooling the beginner novice XC jumps next weekend and seeing how he does. Worst comes to worst, we can always drop down to starter. Then hopefully we can do the BN division at Windmere Horse Trials at Longview at the end of October.

We'll see what the future brings, but Dieter and I are slowly learning more and more about each other and building a stronger relationship. We'll get there. He's a pretty cool dude.