Thanks to Ulrike we washed and roaches all the horses manes and are in the process to update their pictures.

Here is Pan Tau

And Leucosia

Edeelin Jady is growing up nicely, he's sweet and easy going. Just turned 1 this summer!

Nothing like coming home from a road trip to "your hay is ready to be picked up"!
Happend to be 4th of July, and most kids not wanting to work...
So I entertained myself inventing new lyrics to old songs.like " my hay bale lies next to the road side"...
Truth is I only lost one bale and it was on our drive way...
There's nothing like knowing the winter feed is in!

Kuwwat was imported by Erin Heatherstone from Estonia, and is a half brother by sire to Kambarbay to whom I have 2 mares in foal.
I was very excited to see him and his partbred offspring! He is a golden buckskin with the metallic sheen.
He is super sweet and easy going! The pictures don't do his coat justice...
He is standing at stud

Pat and Kevin are wonderful hosts!And it is so nice to see how much they love their horses!
Ehir Atlas, or better known as little star is not so little...and a handsome boy. Ulduz and Tina are shiny and happy.
We went for a trail ride in the adjoining horse park...so beautiful! And rivers to cross and drink from!

Then Erin Heatherstone who owns Kuwwat who she imported from Estonia visited and we followed her to her farm to see her horses.

This was my first time competing here. Getting to Oregon was a bit of a "chore", first Seattle traffic, then Tacoma and Olympia, but Portland was the worst! Finally got to our destination close to Corvallis Oregon at Inavale farm.
Dressage was on the grass, and we had a mediocre score...
Then I did my course walk with Jessica Heideman, a god send if not for her invaluable information as to where to go!
The course was very challenging! At all levels! First time I have seen a trackhener even for Beginner Novice!

We had trouble on XC at the jump into the water...we had 2 stops, then at the trackhener 1 stop and the next fence we stopped and were eliminated! I was so dissapointed! Thinking I should go back to Training level, or have Paktaly in better shape..or...that's how I am...beating myself to see what went wrong,  Paktaly  definitely lost his confidence...
I decided not to ask if we could jump stadium and give him the day off, because on Monday I had a clinic here with Nick Holmes-Smith for 2 hours, meaning we need to be fit to get the most out of it, and at this point riding with Nick is more productive!
Watching stadium was event full, again the course was though! Even at BN level rails were flying!
It drizzled or rained Friday and Saturday, but Sunday got nicer and Monday was hot!
Riding with Nick was as usual terrific...we started out jumping Novice jumps, and Paktaly got his nerves back and we jumped all the training jumps and other exercises  and I had my steady mount back!
After icing his legs I drove down to S Eugene to visit Pat who bought Ulduze, Pallas Athena and her foal Ehi

Sarah was kind enough to accompany Desert Prophet and me on our first trail ride!
Sarah is riding Paelka, DP's half brother and leading us just in case... We started out in the arena, and went on for a half hour ride in the woods and even did some trotting! So proud of DP, he is such a good boy!!!

Zoe came in the morning to help clean put the trailer and our show things.

Then we went to see the new filly who was born while we where gone!

We moved Shirin and Leucosia to a new pasture, soon they will be bred.

The boys are quite excited to see them!

Then we moved the geldings to a fresh pasture, and the ponies got moved.

We are on the 8.30pm ferry on our way home as I type this!

Aspen is an amazing beautiful facility and we feel honored to ride there!

Zoe rode Puding, his show name Jumping Jack. His first recognized event. I rode Paktaly.

It rained on Friday and the warm up was quite slippery and Paktaly slipped and did not want to pick up canter anymore...

Then when it was our time to do our dressage test the arena was even wetter and he wasn't very found of the canter...

We did our test, but our score was 44.3

To be barefoot or not...I walked the XC course and it was clear to me I needed more traction...

Zoe and pudding had some trouble settling down, his first show and he was quite excited at first but they had a good test.

After taking care of the horses I made an appointment with the farrier on sight and paktaly got shoes all around and studs in the rear.

We had stadium on Saturday and warm up Watson the grass, freshly rained on so I tried the studs and I must say Paktaly jumped better!

We had a clear jump round, except that I made him trot to change canter lead and we got 3 time faults.

Zoe had a double clear round! She did have to work for it! Pudding took a good look at one of the color ful fillings..

Sunday cross country! I rode first again, and we had quite a few jumps either on a down hill slope or simply down hill...

We had a great warm up and we had a good run, I should have slowed Paktaly down to a trot coming up to the log TM front of the water...we had a refusal there, we had another refusal for the barrel of the army tank,...

After that was about of a gallop to a maximum vertical fence with brush on top I measured the brush where I have my "markers" on my body and it seemed 4foot tall, horses are supposed to brush through, ha ha,...my Paktaly would never do that...so I had my concerns about it, but he jumped it with room to spare.

Next was the jump down hill and by then he was getting used to his new traction and jumped it well.

Then the pirateship, a jump he would prefer to take a look at since it is big, canons stilling out and all, it is wide and the landing down hill, over the speaker I had heard horses had refused it but we went clear! Off to the next water where my next concern was, the up bank to a sharp left turn to a big sushi looking coop going down hill, I had debated circling right if we had a bad landing out of the water but we did well so I did the turn and we cleared it.

We weren't done yet with my concerns on course...the log over the ditch, the ditch to the coop, and the corner and 2 strides to the silver painted wood saw,...but he was such a good boy!!!

We finished 13th.

Zoe had agreat warm up, people were all commenting how cute her pony is!!!

For his first XC competition it is hard to know what to expect, and he did not expect to see jump judges all over the place!!!

Zoe did a fabulous job getting him around the course! Keeping him balanced.

She did get a refusal by the barrels, he spooked at the jump judge! Then she got a refusal at the 2nd water...it is down hill, if she would have trotted...but he's been so good with water...

She got him right in and finished without time faults!!!

We are both happy and learned and will do better next time!

We got picked up at the airport by students and taken into a car to our hotel.

We were a day early and around the block from our hotel was a market with delicious sea horses on a stick and life scorpions ready to be deapfried.

Our hotel was perfectly centered near Tiananmen Square and the "forbidden city", also one of a large wking street with stores like Prada, the alleys with street vendors and a street where nightly vendors sell street food like sheep pense is and testicles, fried spiders and so on.

Besides al these temptations we usually ate at our hotel.