Sunday at Camp Canada by Stephanie Rhodes-Bosch

Today was a bit of a jump day for the Canadian Squad. We have access to a fairly large all weather arena at the top of the property, and David had us set a few exercises in there the other day… All of us were very much looking forward to NOT doing dressage ever since setting the jumps up!! My lesson was at 7am, and to be honest, at 6:50am it was still dark!! Its surprising how much darker it is in the mornings these days… so, as the sun came up we hacked through the fields and eventually up the hill to the jump ring, where we were actually sitting well above the level of the heavy fog/mist that was lifting off the grass. It was very pretty in those few minutes before it was actually daylight.

Yesterday afternoon David spent a fair bit of time at his little workshop building things… We just assumed that he was pissed from a day at the dressage show, and needed to use power tools as an outlet for his emotions, but this morning he unloaded the fruits of his labor. We had two corners set up in the ring, and he made stands for the corner piece, as well as a top for one of the corners to make it feel a little more like a cross country style corner. Quite a handy guy, that DOC.

Every lesson that I saw today started out with a fair bit of flat work, and with my horse I let him go a little lower in his poll and do a lot of work around his hind end. I feel like in the last couple of weeks before a big three day, he kind of loses that Steady Eddie mentality that I’m used to, and starts to get a little stressed out by the dressage. It was a nice change for him today to go lower and I think he got a lot out of the stretchy work… He certainly jumped well!! We just had a few exercises, like a short one stride of verticals, and a little longer one stride of oxers, with bending lines on either side, to practice different types of rides through lines. At the end we did each of the corners and that was that! He was super. I really need more technical practice, but when you only have one upper level horse to jump….. that’s kind of limiting. Especially one that you want to last for several more years! But, we do alright, and he won’t be my only practice pony forever (hopefully).

Tonight is a team outing to a great little place in Ocala called Tony’s. They have sushi and hibachi grills (the ones where they cook right in front of you and do cool things like onion volcanoes… we get a kick out of those kinds of things here at Camp Canada!





Stephanie