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IdleHour McHenry (PB 3854),
an 11 year old gelding by Rambler’s Renown out of Kee (TB),
started his new
career as a Mounted Patrol horse/ event horse in the fall of 2005 after
a very
successful career as a Fourth Level dressage horse.
I had decided to bring Hen home because I
wanted to start to work with him and do some other activities that a
full-time
dressage show horse wasn’t allowed to do.
It was my intention to start his new job with
the Lake Metroparks
Volunteer Mounted Posse with lots of park patrols and add in other
training
sessions over the winter (nuisance training, crowd control, Drill work
and
Musical Ride). With
the help of barn
owner and friend Mary McKeon, we started to teach him how to jump and
it was my
ultimate goal to compete in some unrecognized events in the summer of
2006
while Mary would do a few recognized Beginner Novice events as well as
some
Hunter/Jumper shows over the winter.
A
bad fall resulting in surgery changed my summer plans, but worked out
well for
Mary and Hen.
Hen is a
quick learner and
quite athletic over fences. During
the
winter months Mary and Hen took jumping lessons from local professional
Jeff
Taylor and even worked on her dressage with Charlotte Bayley. We gave Hen the mileage we
could with local
Hunter shows and finally in April started him in a few Jumper classes. He did well and
always came home with
ribbons.
When
eventing season started
in May, Hen still hadn’t seen a cross country fence and it
was at his first
event in Kentucky
where he learned how to gallop and jump at the same time. His first outing
wasn’t great, but he had a
super dressage test and went clean show jumping.
He didn’t understand the water, but
a loophole
in the rules allowed us to give him the confidence and experience he
needed to
go clean. By his
third event he was
winning consistently- often with dressage scores in the low
20’s and more often
then not having the lowest dressage score of the entire event.
Hen and
Mary qualified for
the American Eventing Championships in Raedford, NC
in the fall of 2006 and we
went. It proved to
be a worthwhile trip
as they came home the Beginner Novice Champions, finishing on their
dressage
score of 24.8 out of 52 horses.
Hen’s
plans for next summer
are to teach me how to event again and do some unrecognized events,
move up to
Novice and participate at the AEC’s at Lamplight in Chicago
(he’s already qualified from a win in
August at Novice) and continue with his mounted posse training with
myself. Mary also
wants to get her
Bronze Medal from USDF and if I can I would like to finish my Bronze
Medal as
well next fall.
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