My Boys, Dressage By The Bay and Keeneland Sales - Oh My!

My life is so crazy right now. I'm doing very little riding while I live between two homes, try to move my world to Kentucky and work on getting things organized as best I can before my next big business trip.

Matt and I spent a few days up in Michigan and we shot some cool photos while I played around with my boys and we went to the Dressage Region 2 Finals.


Both my horses looked pretty good and we had to up the grain for Toby who seemed to lose too much weight when we cut him back initially.

I talked to my vet about giving Tums to Ollie before I ride and she said that was great. It's only a temporary fix and won't cure him but it's good that it makes him more comfortable. I purchased a different probiotic/prebiotic called SmartDigest Ultra from SmartPak. We'll see how that works for him. I am also putting him on SmartPak's SmartCalm Ultra pellets so he can get some vitamin B. My vet said to give it a try since it seems that Ollie is a worrier and vitamin B has been shown to help with that problem.

All I know is that I want my horse to poop better and relax more!

So I'm in Kentucky right now, Ollie is ridden by Betsy on Tuesdays and I haven't gotten a report. Hopefully he was better behaved than the week before when there were 50 mph wind gusts.

Over the past weekend, the people who organize Horse Shows By The Bay hosted the Region 2 USDF Championships. Matt and I were still in Michigan at the time and we thought it was a good opportunity to shoot some photos.

Betsy competed and I got these shots of her using a 500mm lens





I love how she is looking to her next move and I got the whites of her eyes. Tanner had a sore back and he was not at his best but he gave Betsy the best that he had. She was so thrilled with him!


Then Matt took one of his wide angle lens and got these shots because it was such a spectacular day in Traverse City.



Matt and I left on Sunday morning, packed up my truck and we looked like the Beverly Hillbillies as we headed to Lexington. We needed to get back in time for the Keeneland Yearling Sales which started that evening.

I hadn't been to the sales before. That was something to see. The top sales price for a yearling was for a colt by A.P. Indy out of Balance, a half-sister to Zenyatta. He sold for $4.2 million! Ironically, Matt has a picture of this guy when he was a small foal in the paddock with his Mom!




The sale is a big spectacle. Matt needed to get back because Shadwell Farm likes to get conformation photographs of their purchases. On the first night, Shadwell purchased 6 horses. So far Shadwell has been the biggest purchaser of horses at the sales and the Sheik was there himself! At the time of writing this blog he had purchased 17 horses.

Keeneland has a really great website for following the sales. You can see all the sales results here and sort the information by sire, dam, consignor, and buyer.

That is all for now in my busy life. I hope I can soon blog about my horses and their dressage training again!