The first full day of the EDAP clinic began at a bright and
early 5:30 am! Genay and I are staying
together at Jen Baumert’s house. It was
so fun to go to bed giggling over silly things and wake up full of
expectations. Neither of us had a horse
to ride yet so we were both anxious about what the day would bring.
Genay’s horse
arrived first. Wilson is a lovely I-1
competitor with the sweetest owner around.
She stayed most of the day to help us, watch the riding and take lots of
photos. There was a bit of mix up with
the horse sent for me and he came missing tack and with the wrong bridle so my
anxiety went up a few notches. He was a
lovely chestnut and I joked about him being the first redhead I had ever
ridden. I discovered years ago when
looking back at my horse selection that I favor bays! Strange how that works isn’t it. I always imagined I would have a big black
horse like Black Beauty or the Black Stallion.
Anyway I was
riding for Tina Konyot at noon. At 10am
Brandi Roenick was riding with her, at 11am Genay Vaughn was riding for her
also, so I was coming after that illustrious grouping. Well things didn’t go well; as they sometimes
do and I learned a valuable lesson. Tina
gave me some amazing encouragement and told Lendon that she needed to find me
another horse or she would let me ride Collect V instead. Fortunately, Rick Silva came to the rescue
and brought me Renoir, a lovely horse that rode in the Young Rider European
Championship last year. He was ridden by
a young Italian guy. When I told the
girls this they were more interested to know if he was coming to watch than
about the horse!
After a great
lecture (as usual) by Dr. Susser on visualization, focus, practicing and
setting goals we were off to dinner. I
spotted Eleni in the parking lot at the restaurant and Genay and I rounded up a
few more EDAP strays (including Emily Smith) and we had a great dinner at
Backstreet. The homemade chicken noodle
soup was fab.
Off to bed to
dream of my ride with Robert Dover in the morning.
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