“Excited and overwhelmed,” were how Gallop in the Glen co-chair Kim Burnett Mitchell described the opening week. "I feel the show was a success due to the GREAT exhibitors, GREAT parties every night, GREAT music each night, a GREAT staff, and GREAT officials!” an exuberant Mitchell said. Even Saturday’s downpour of rain didn’t dampen spirits or good times. “Everyone still kept telling me how thrilled with the show they were. Actually this facility can handle an unbelievable amount of rain, and...

The Showplace Fall Classic Championship Horse Show came to a close on Sunday at the Lamplight Equestrian Center in Wayne, IL. Saturday morning began with an exciting victory going to Maggie Jayne and Thomas Edison in the $25,000 Tapestry Farm Leading Rider Series Final Grand Prix. The top three open jumper riders in the 2009 Showplace Leading Rider Series battled against the clock as the only entries to qualify for the jump-off, and Jayne was the fastest by almost four seconds to take the top...

Kassandra Barteau and GP Raymeister at 2009 NAJYRC (Flashpoint Photography) Lexington, KY – Three-time USEF National Champion and NAJYRC Gold Medalist Kassandra Barteau has topped the United States rankings for the FEI World Cup™ Dressage Final for Young Riders and has earned an invitation to Frankfurt, Germany for the Final, to be held December 17-20. Twenty-one year-old Barteau of Maple Park, Illinois and her mount GP Raymeister (a 10-year-old bay Holsteiner stallion owned by...

As every breeder has experienced, the process of breeding mares and raising foals has many highs and lows. So when those moments of success arrive, it is important to savor them. Anne Sparks, owner of Horses Unlimited, had 48 hours to remember when four of her young stallions earned prestigious accolades. Homebred Pikko del Cerro HU won the 2009 Markel/USEF National Young Horse Dressage Championship-Six-Year-Old. Two days later at the Rheinland Pfalz-Saar International (RPSI) inspection,...

Three regional qualifying competitions were recently held for the 2009 ASPCA Maclay National Championships. They were the last Regionals held, and the final list of qualifiers is now available (please see below). The 2009 ASPCA Maclay National Championship will be held at the Syracuse Invitational Sporthorse Tournament on October 28-November 1, 2009. Zazou Hoffman was the winner of the Region 1 qualifier at the Grand Fall Classic in Westbrook, CT. Hoffman finished second at Regionals last year...

I have said good-bye to Kentucky and am making my way home to sunny California. I'm looking forward to being dry for an entire day! During the first leg of my journey, I thought about the past week and the memories I will be taking home with me. I thought about the Lexington area and the Horse Park, about not only how beautiful it is, but how there is so much to see there and I didn't see a fraction-I will have to go back when I can spend several days and see everything. I thought about...

Today at Arabian Sport Horse Nationals (SHN), my fellow Arabian horse lovers and I were treated to a preview of the new Arabian Horse Galleries at the Kentucky Horse Park's International Museum of the Horse. The Purebred Arabian Trust funded a 9,000 square foot building to be added on to the existing museum, although they are still requesting donations to finish the exhibit. Those of us at SHN were invited to a special presentation (with a sales pitch artfully thrown in) to see what the...

Besides delighting my readers with scintillating stories (we writers like to use words like "scintillating" because we think it makes us sound writerly), my main purpose for being at Sport Horse Nationals here in beautiful, damp Kentucky is to help out (in other words, provide slave labor for) my good friend and mentor, Patience Prine-Carr. This means that I get a lot of mane pulling and braiding practice every day. While it's good for me to get the practice, it's frustrating because...

The premiere event of the American Endurance Ride Conference (AERC), the annual National Championship ride, proved to be a weekend of celebration in Northern California on September 11 and 13. At the site of the annual Patriot’s Day ride in Greenville, CA, competitors arrived from all over the western U.S. and Canada to compete for AERC’s top prizes. The 100-mile championship ride, held Friday, was won handily by Lindsay Graham, a fourth-year veterinary student at the University of California...

Perfect Qredit Claims Young Horse Championship on Day One Dressage at Devon, one of the most prestigious dressage and sport horse breeding shows in North America, kicked off its opening day with an impressive roster of some of the continent's best sport horses. Topping the select group of youngsters was Perfect Qredit, a yearling stallion by Quaterback, who claimed the Young Horse Championship and the Colt Championship, as well as the Yearling Colts and Geldings class. The trip to Dressage at...