New Season and Exciting Prospects

Redbud Farm is beginning its spring and summer competition seasons with a lot of excitement!

We are very excited about Claire' new baby Earnest who was born on April 19. He is a very healthy baby boy with his mother's big beautiful blaze.

We are so excited about our students who are starting their season in the next couple weeks!

Watch for USEA junior novice high point rider Megill Imes this weekend at Poplar Place. After their great success last season, Ollie and Megill are moving up to training level. She is also taking her exciting new young horse Zoey to her eventing debut.

The following weekend at Jubilee HT in Arkansas we are looking forward to see RBF working Sara Petty Sandifer aboard Tucker take on her first training level, and also very proud of Sarah Sage and her new horse Heath for doing their very first event together!

Good luck to everyone!

Redbud's 2011 Recap

We have been a delinquent in our website duties this winter. Everyone at Redbud Farm, equine and human alike, has been enjoying a well deserved vacation. However, it is now well into February and unfortunately, vacations cannot last forever!

2011 was an exciting year for us all. We had some high highs and some very low lows. We are hoping that we have expended all our low moments so we will not dwell on them here. Instead, let's focus on all the wonderful things that happened at Redbud in 2011 because they were many!








We got rid of our old crumby trailer with tire and axel problems and got a big, fancy ride!

We got siding on the hay barn, at least the front which according to Bill is all that matters.

The barn apartment was finally finished.



We got two great sponsors: Rocking WH Ranch and Equine Lite Mat!



Claire had her first baby on April 15.

Elliot ran his first Preliminary.

Stephanie Aanstoos was our first student to complete a CIC*, and we are so proud of her for moving up from Novice to the one star in a single year!

And last but certainly not least, after a long hard fought season, Megill Imes won the USEA's Junior Novice division or year end points!

Lets hope 2012 brings as many milestones and excitement, of the good kind of course. We can do without the sad parts!

Please Don't Litter

We had a pretty nasty incident at a neighbor's house this morning. Tess lives down the street from the farm, and she keeps rescue dogs. Mostly these are abused or stray dogs that others won't take in. This morning, two stray dogs (one a rottweiler) wandered up to her house to eat her chickens. Before she knew what was happening three of her dogs were out the door to protect their territory.

It wasn't the strays fault or Tess's dogs fault. They were all just acting on instinct, but the outcome was predictable and terrible. Tess's dogs were pretty badly injured and needed to be rushed to the vet. The stray was also torn up, and because of this as well as the displayed aggression, it was shot.

Strays are truly a problem all over the country, but especially here. It is one thing if you do not wanted to spay or neuter your pet, but then it is your responsibility to keep track it and not allow unwanted pregnancies. This is a responsibility many pet owners neglect. It is not your right to allow your unfixed dog or cat run wild, procreating as it feels fit.

So while I do not blame the dogs involved in this fight, I do blame all those who do not spay or neuter and then allow their animals to roam.

all images on this post from http://www.squidoo.com/free_animal_clipart

Baby's First Blanket

Today was an exciting day out at Redbud Farm! Baby's First Blankets! Many thanks to Reagan Bugg and Sara Pettey Sandifer for the extra hands!

I know to many people this is a boring, known entity, but to the babies at Redbud, this was one heck of a day! To all the other professional horse owners out there, you know what I'm talking about...our horses get the back burner on education. They're the last to be ridden, last to be worked with, and first to be put off to another day. Client's horses...different story.

Just last week, it was 70 degrees...suddenly the low is 25...all I'm saying is "What the heck!!??" Okay, so time to learn to blanket...

Thankfully, I had good help (props to Reagan and SP) and good babies! Harrison (seen at right) and Collins were both quite well behaved.

Working with the young horses is always exciting- I think of my hopes for them-my dreams for them. I want them to be good, useful horses. I want them to be loved. I am thankful to have nice horses and good people in my life and look forward to the future!

The Party Never Ends!

I've been thinking of ways to sum up our season, and I think this photo pretty much tells the story!

This season we've run 16 events in five months. We've had our first student compete in a CIC* and our first student campaigning for a national title. Kudos go out to Stephanie Aanstoos for finishing 5th in the Poplar Place CIC* aboard West Point, and also to Megill Imes for her many wins this season with her horses Claggan Imp and Coker Springs.

We're also so proud of our hunter transplant, Reagan Bugg, and her former short stirrup pony, Bulletproof, for joining the Redbud Farm Event Team. They finished 7th at Poplar Place Farm Horse Trials and are sure to continue on this Spring!

So, to the man with the trailer, you're right: The road goes on forever and the party never ends! I can't wait to see where the spring season takes us! Bon voyage!

Soccer of the Heart

Betsy said this morning that 'doing horses' professionally is like playing soccer with your heart. It is so true. It gets ripped out of your chest and then kicked around for a while. The highs are very high, but the lows are particularly low.

This year Redbud Farm has been unlucky. We have had fat legs, ulcers, bad feet, swollen eyes, tendon injuries, punctured joint capsules, unexplained neurological conditions, and finally colic.

Yesterday afternoon Elliot had a very painful, rapid onset colic which brought us into the Mississippi State University vet school. It became clear fairly quickly that we were not going to be able to treat it medically, and so he was sent to surgery. He was under anesthesia for nearly three and a half hours during which time the team of vets and students had to untangle a huge knot involving his colon, small intestine, and cecum. He recovered well from the anesthesia and is resting for the next few days in the school. His prognosis is good ('knock-on-wood'). The gut did not have to be re-sectioned, and it looked healthy and had good motility throughout the surgery. This morning, he was alert and happy to go for a walk outside to munch some grass.

Although it may sound weird, we feel very, very lucky today. We are lucky that we live so close to the vet school. We are lucky we were at the farm when the colic started so we caught it very quickly. We are lucky that Dr. Cate Mochal and her team were so efficient and persistent during the surgery. And most of all we are lucky to have such wonderful friends, family, and clients in our life. Everyone has been very supportive and kind to us. We want to thank you all for the good wished and kind words.

And though we enjoy a good soccer match, we are very eager for the off season!

Eventing PhD

We are very proud of Megill Imes for being ranked on the USEA junior Novice leader board. This is no easy feat. It is one of the largest competition groups in the USEA and there is a lot of tough competition.

Betsy and Megill (and her family) have been working very hard to reach the top spot. It means a very long, hard couple months of competing all over Area 3. As of last week, Megill was only 4 points behind the leader. Unfortunately, it was a rough weekend at River Glen Horse Trials in New Market, TN.

Neither of the horses were very relaxed in the dressage, and then Megill grabbed a rail on Ollie in the show jumping while Kipling pulled a shoe in the mud. That wasn't even the worst of it. On Sunday, Ollie left the box with a mission, which was great news since he can sometimes be a tricky ride across the country. However, on the back side of the course he peeked at something and hopped sideways, a move Megill wasn't expecting. As a result, she popped off, and though no harm done, got the Big E. Kipling, who is usually the XC machine, was very wound and had an uncharacteristic stop in the middle of the course. Whether it was the crisp air or just being tired from the hard competition schedule is unclear, but the result was the same: no points this weekend. Just a few more weeks boys then you can have a very well deserved and long awaited vacation!

Everyone was a little disappointed on the long ride home, but that is the way of the game. As Betsy said, 'Some weekends are for winning, and some weekends are for learning. This weekend we all got our PhDs in eventing'. And she's right. Now we got home and in the next week we practice balance. Lunge lessons without stirrups or reins. For all of us!

We are very lucky that Megill is such a good sport. We know she will learn from this and come away a better rider and horse person.