#teamstb

A rider, horse and border working as a team to move a herd of cows.

Jonathan Field!

No sleeping allowed in this trailer, human or equine. You will get get injured and you will die! (#meangirls anyone?)

This trailer had a surprisingly large closet in the bathroom. Large enough to fit at least one Kelly! ______________________________________

Saturday brought another set of confusing warm up situations. For dressage our warmup was more or less limited to a round pen (with 6 other horses), with a couple laps around the exterior of the arena immediately prior to your test. Not great for a sport horse coming from a cold barn. Despite this, Leo brought his A-game a pulled off a 59% basically going into the ring cold, and earned a solid 4th place.  Even though Leo elected to add a levade to the beginning of his test (“I appreciate he was on his hind end, but seriously.” - Charlene), Leo and Char rode their patterns very accurately, and dealt well with having their test in a ring 20 meters shorter than expected. (Those were some STEEP leg yields!)  Good boy Leo!

Charlene would like to send a big shout out to the lovely ladies who make up Leo’s fan club, she really appreciates your support! Although Leo’s ego was almost too big to fit in the trailer on the way home - the fangirls totally went to his head. <3 Leo sends his love and adoration.

Kelly and Charlene arrived at the barn just before eight, planning to ride as nothing was scheduled until 9:15am in the arena, but found out the arena actually was closing at 8:30. So the boys got to go for a quick walk instead.

Later this morning we took the boys into the round pen to give their brains something too do, Scooter learned how to pedestal! And Leo learned to bow while being ridden. One of the arena events ended, and Jose ended up doing a little show for the spectators as they stopped on their way back to the trade show.

After a couple cups of coffee, we got a kick ass surprise and were able to ride for 40 mins, before heading back to the hotel to crash for a quick nap, while Amanda and Judy hung out at the grounds and held down the fort.

Following another visit to Tim’s (Seriously, we should seek out sponsorship) we zipped back to the barn to get Kelly and Prime Time Scooter ready for the Barrels phase of Battle of the Breeds.

Team Standardbred is so proud of our Kelly Stasiuk and Prime Time Scooter! Following a bit of a confusing warm up situation (12 horses in a round pen just wasn’t working) they were 6th in out of 7 teams to go. The audience was great and WONDERFULLY supportive, the stands were LOUD and it was a very intimidating arena. Scooter went in and took his first 2 barrels well but got a little overwhelmed when being sent down to the far side for the last barrel. He backed up and unfortunately backed over the start line. Kelly handled him beautifully though and got him straightened down and around the final barrel before given ‘er back home.  Good kids!

Tomorrow afternoon Charlene Barry and Leo will be in compulsory test and tomorrow evening Kelly and Scooter are back in for jumping.