Has confirmed 2008 Olympian, Debbie McDonald, as the celebrity guest speaker for Saturday evenings Dancing Horse Gala at the PVDA Ride for Life - June 27-28, 2009.

www.pvdarideforlife.org for ticket information and donations.

We had our second meeting of the Sugarloaf Book Club at Ginger Dietsch's house. Many thank to Ginger (and Judi Rosenfeld) for hosting the meetings!

We are currently reading Principles of Riding by the German National Federation. So far, we are through Chapter 2 and have covered everything from the type of tack to the various aids (non-yielding, yielding rein, etc.).

Of note have been the variations between what the book suggests and how we do things in Maryland. For example, it is strongly encouraged to lunge a LOT to develop your seat. We all agreed that not everyone has access to horses that lunge safely, so it can sometimes be impossible to lunge every week. However, this has led the club to sign up for VAULTING! If your horse can't lunge, go to the professionals.

Photos to follow!

I passed! 2 down, 1 more workshop to go. Christine Rivlin taught a great clinic and I am coming home with a new bag of tricks, as well as a greater appreciation for the correct and safe use of lungeing equipment.

A key element of the workshop, which was also important in the Riding Workshop, was the focus on a systematic plan. We were asked to do a safety check of our equipment, then lunge the horse for no more than 10 minutes to assess their strengths/weaknesses and hollow/stiff sides. We were then asked to take a quick break and identify what we planned on working on for the rest of the session to improve these issues. At the end of the session, we discussed our successes and identified what we would do with the horse if we had them in the future.

The same "system" of using the warmup time to identify a plan of 2-3 things to work on with various exercises and then executing them was also applied to lungeing the rider on the second day.