Horses of the outside world. Misdee Miller rode sidesaddle in Hunter Country Pleasure at Ocala International. Photos, Doug Shiflet > 2026 Ocala > Wednesday AM > #31 HC Pleasure Adult & Saturday PM > #148 Sat AM HC Pls Championship, blue habit. Saddlebred sidesaddle, it’s a thing.
~~~
AHJA Year End Show
Rosewood Farm
Leeds, AL USA
Thursday 5 & Friday 6 November 2026
All classes with Golden Star 29, aka Goldy.
601. Red/Blue Warm Up Jumper Ring, 4 faults, no ribbons awarded, 17 entries.
1. 0.65 Jumper I (stay in for jump off), clear with time faults, no jump off, unplaced out of 16 entries.
22. 0.65 Jumper II (power & speed), clear, didn’t pay attention to time, 7th out of 17 entries.
23. 0.65 Jumper III (time first round), clear with time faults (I assume), unplaced out of 18 entries
Many thanks to Goldy’s owner, Coach Deana, & the folks at Rosewood Farm.
Previous Show [The Ride, AHJA Kick Off Show 2026]
Short version. As with the spring show, I did not plan to go for time. The ribbon was a pleasant surprise. I had a problem in one class but corrected it quickly and neatly. One thing I liked. I had a plan for each trip but was able to adjust in real time. Why don’t we switch to the long route here and get a good look at the next jump. Alternatively, planning to go long, land, yup, the inside turn is there. Let’s do it.
As with last time, Coach Deana kept me organized. I rode. She dealt with the secretary and the gate.
Goldy of course was his usual wonderful self.
I guess that wasn’t so short. Horse show! Horse show!
Thursday
Warm-up. Goldy looked at things in the ring, for example, the timers before fence one. Dunno why, he’s seen those before. Coach Deana thought he was looking at the people sitting outside the ring. The footing had been well-irrigated before the show. At fence three, he was deeply concerned about the pond (puddle) over thataway. We stopped. I circled and told him he didn’t have to go into the pond (puddle) just jump the fence. Oh, okay.
First class. Having had a good look at everything, Godly was a different horse when we went back in. We flew around the ring. Nice turns. Good jumps. Or, it felt like we flew around the ring. IRL, it was probably closer to a nice hunter class pace. Pfft. We cantered all the fences and jumped well. Our best class.
Friday
Second class. Power and speed, supposedly. You can’t build a power phase in a class that doesn’t allow oxers. For the speed phase, they wanted us to keep jumping, regardless of how we did in the power phase. So, basically a course of nine jumps. This is where we got our ribbon. No idea what the ones behind me were up to.
Third class. Same course, different rules. Since I had no intention of running about, it was a repeat of the previous class.
Second & third classes. Downshifted to trot in a few places. I’m good with that. We simply trotted the next jump. I’ve trotted into 3’6″. I can do trot. One jump where I got left badly enough that I felt the need to apologize to Goldy, which I probably did out loud. Better than swearing? Which I’ve also done in the past. We ended on a series of nice, big spots, which I always take to mean I’m riding well enough that Goldly is willing to sail over the jumps.
And finally, the jumps were bigger than anything we had jumped all summer. So there’s that.
Onwards!
Katherine
