GRS Goes to Brightwater

Yes you read that right... At student's request we branched out from the eventing world for one day to visit hunterland!

Went to Brightwater, which from a social point of view was fairly entertaining -- I was pleasantly surprised at the number of people I knew there! hahaha and that's important of course :) The weather was also perfect which makes for a much more pleasant day.

As far as riding goes, Maureen took Jazz in the beginner division and did an amazing job!!!! She kept Jazzy (who can be a *little* strong - read "tank" - at times :) perfectly under control. Rode her nicely around the flat classes and put in very accurate over-fences rounds. Awesome job! Esp for the first outting of the season.

In the open division were Alison w/ Steve and Amie with Spyder -- both of whom did an amazing job. It's not easy to take jumper horses and convince them to be hunters, but they did it! Amie got Spyder going nice and forward on exactly the required 12' stride despite the fact that he'd really rather collect and jump like a cat! AND she managed to mimic hunter-position while she was at it leading to multiple ribbons! Woohoo! Mr. Steven was being his usual athletic self, providing the drama of the day in warmup (being *not* a fan of having other horses jumping w/ him) hahaha. One comment from the sidelines was "is he *always* like that or is he just excited today?" ummm no, that's just Steve. And for reasons nobody entirely understands Alison loves him anyways :) Each round she rode got progressively better until in the end he was, while still a touch faster than the traditional hunter round, rhythmical and on stride and going well enough to collect a ribbon! Woohoo.

So overall a great day was had! Congrats to all and thanks to Robert for the horse-taxi service! :)

Pics next weekend!