2025 Reservations

I heard the idea of reservations instead of resolutions recently on Tim Ferris' podcast. He recommended this as a way to ensure that you are spending time with the 5 or 10 people in the world who mean the most to you and with whom you have the most fulfilling relationships. Funny enough, my two childhood best friends and I have been doing an annual trip for the past four years and have plans to continue it. We're headed to Roanoke, Virginia this summer. 

But this is a horse blog. How do reservations fit in here? Well, for the first time in a long time, Butterball makes me feel like I can plan some things in the future and chances are pretty good that we'll get there. 

Our Winter/Spring:

January: This month (this week actually) we're trying out a new dressage trainer. I'm quite excited about her geographically because she is 20 minutes from my barn. Time well tell if the other pieces are a good fit. A few weeks later the boys get their teeth done. Butterball was due last month, but my lovely dentist has quite a booked schedule so I wasn't able to get her out any sooner. 

February 1st: Three Lakes Horse Trials at novice. I've never been to this venue in spite of it being 1.5 hours away on maps, just like Rocking Horse (where we go a lot). Partially because it just never lined up with my work schedule, but I think we also were basking in the comfort of Rocking Horse. Three Lakes HT is divided into two one day shows with Prelim, Modified, and Novice running on Saturday and Training, Beginner Novice, and Starter running on Sunday. I actually love this. I will have to drive down Friday to walk courses and sort out where to park, where the office is etc etc, so it will end up being just as much driving as Rocking Horse over two days, but the first day I get to take the little car and Butterball gets to chill at home. 

Image from threelakesht.com

February 18/19: Majestic Oaks is hosting another weekday schooling show. We may head there for a quick pop around because the Rocking Horse on the 15/16th that everyone else is headed to conflicts with a trip Ryan and I have planned. I LOVE these weekday schooling shows since my weekends are at such a premium. It would be good to do another show though because next up is...

March 14-16: Carolina International HT. This is another new venue for us and would be our big "away" show for this half of the year. It will give us a chance to compete somewhere with LOTS of atmosphere at novice. 

Image from Eventing Nation

March 27-30: Terranova. I'm not sure on this one. Being gone two LOOOONG weekends in the same month is a bit much. So we'll see how I'm feeling around this time. 

April 5-6: Rocking Horse. If we don't do Terranova, we'll probably head to Rocking Horse for their spring HT. Because next month...

May 10: Training move up at Majestic HT! This is assuming all the wheels are on the bus and things have been going along swimmingly. 

Moving on to summer and fall...

May 31-June 1: Ocala Summer HT to start solidifying out training level feels.

Then we'll probably spend June and July avoiding the heat but continuing to truck along. Because the tentative goal for the fall is the classic series training three day at KHP in October to cap off our season before Butterball gets a nice 4-6 week break with some hacks and relaxation in the last part of October and all of November. 

August 23-24: Bouckaert Equestrian International. This is a tentative plan because this fall is going to involve a lot of travelling. But because the venue sold (formerly Chatt Hills) and I haven't made it up there yet, I 100% want to get up there if they're going to stop hosting events. 

September 26-28: Stable View Oktoberfest. If we didn't make it to Chatt, this would be a good final prep before the Hagyard Classic Series Three Day in October. 

Alright, now I've thrown it all out there, cue lameness, backwards movement in training, etc etc. But I'm feeling pretty optimistic with this pony of mine.