August!

Well....other than being a complete blogging slacker, there has been a lot going on this past month! August flew by!!

My friend Eliza, of www.elizasydnordressage.com came to visit in the beginning of August! We met up with another good friend of ours and went to Verden for the World Young Horse Championships! There were some incredible horses. I was completely blown away by the 5 and 6 year old classes! The breeding of some of the horses combined with world class training made it a complete pleasure to be an auditor! We also watched the Grand Prix, and the Special. For the first time I was able to Sune Hansen, the rider from Blue Hors ride. He was an absolute delight. He is a tall slender (not to mention gorgeous looking) man with a flawless position. He and his horses moved with such grace. His aids were nearly invisible. Although he has a few mistakes in each test, costing him the win, his rides were breathtaking. He is now the new picture in my head of what I want to look like on a horse and how I gracefully I want to ride. I am really excited to see how well he does at the WEG in Kentucky!

The weekend after Verden, my friend Pia and I drove to Munster to see the final class of the German Championships which served as the final selection trail for the WEG team. Isabell Werth was the clear winner, but the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th, spots were really close. I was most impressed by Matthias Rath's freestyle. His horse is known for having serious issues in the final piaffe, but he made a point to do 2 sets of piaffe in the final moments of the freestyle to show the judges that he has what it takes to make the team. He proceed to do almost 18 perfect steps of piaffe right in front of the judge at B while petting his horse. It was awesome!!! The competition arena is set right in the middle of the city with a beautiful historic castle as the backdrop. Wish I could figure out the picture situation!!!!!

After watching the Germans fight it out for their WEG team we raced home and quickly tuned into useflive.com (which had incredible live coverage of the US National Championships) and watched the Americans fight it out for our WEG team! It was an awesome weekend filled with some exceptional Dressage!! Not to mention got me super excited for the WEG.

Always more to come….

Meaghan