Hello there!
I'd like to start this post off with a little story...
Once upon a time at the end of July, I was spending a rare day off hanging out by the pool and scrolling through Facebook when an ad on an "Event Horses for Sale" page caught my eye. There was nothing to this ad but a few lines of text and a link to a YouTube video. Something about this ad struck me in such a way that a few days later I had purchased a five year old pony sight unseen from Florida.
Fast forward to a nightmarish experience of dealing with a shipper that kept pushing his pickup date further and further back and I was stuck waiting an entire month from the time I purchased him to his arrival. Finally, about three weeks ago, my new purchase arrived.
I'd like to introduce everybody to Donovan:
Donovan has done a handful of events, including a Training level, and he is everything I hoped he would be. Buying a horse online sight unseen is definitely one of the craziest things I've ever done but so far everything has worked out wonderfully!
We went to a hunter pace as a makeshift cross country school before going to our first event together and my trainer and I ended up winning which was fun. He was great and had a great time!
This past Saturday we made our eventing debut together in the Novice at the Stoneleigh-Burnham Horse Trials and I couldn't have asked for him to be any better. He scored a 31.8 in dressage (I will admit that the scoring was rather generous...), jumped an exuberant but clean stadium round (which included putting one stride in the two stride combination...oops!), and jumped a perfect double clear cross country round.
I can't even begin to express how amazing it felt to be on a horse that loves cross country as much as this one and to be finishing on my dressage score again.
Videos:
Helmet Cam:
I cannot wait to see what the future has in store for this pony. I plan on doing a couple more events with him to finish off the season.
Ben is doing very well as well, he seemed relieved with the news that he has a new little brother to take his place as my event horse... Ben has actually transitioned wonderfully into his new duties as a babysitter for my young students, he is the ultimate lunge line walk/trot horse and one of my seven year old students actually rode him walk/trot all on her own last week. In addition, I'm going to continue showing him straight dressage and we jump at home for fun.
I was definitely getting turned off from eventing after continued failures with Ben, but now that I have a horse that wants to do this as badly as I do again, the eventing bug is back with a vengeance and I can't wait to maximize our potential together.
