Romulus is now 4 years old. He is 17.2 HH, very handsome young horse, all legs! :D Our relationship has been fostered for almost 4 years. Since November 2021 when he came to me as a scared 5-month-old weanling. Now he is happy, confident, brave and incredibly smart. The feeling I get is awe. I feel enormous responsibility to do the right thing by him. :)

This summer has been amazing. We did total 5 shows, 3 small 1-day schooling and 2 big EC Gold recognized shows. We started in April and were carefully building our mutual confidence in each other. First show was a huge question mark. Everything was new. How would he react to the showgrounds, other horses, to the arena, lunging, riding and finally the tests themselves. Mentally I was preparing for anything, including him getting completely crazy and I would have to bale out or he bucks me off. Lunging was exciting! :) Romulus was passaging and screaming his lungs out, tail high in the air, trying to pull in all directions. Watching him I was wondering if I really want to get on that thing LOL I was lucky to had time in the indoor arena before my test during judge's break. It was enough to get him going and be ready as much as we could that day. The test went better then I expected. I decided to end on that positive note and scratched him from the second test. We did it!

The second schooling show was at the same barn. Romulus was more confident which actually made him question more and be more distracted. He was not scared, he was a tourist LOL The third show was during a downpour which made warm-up very challenging. Nowhere to lunge, narrow strip of 8 m width along the indoor show ring - all we had. I was so grateful for my extensive work in-hand. I just did that with Romulus including some trot transitions. He was calm, responsive and overall content in that busy environment. He did a great job first test, we did the FEI 4-year-old, right on his 4th birthday! :) Same test second time didn't go as well because Romulus spotted a grey horse in the warm-up strip LOL His buddy Santo is grey. OMG! I lost his focus completely and barely avoided jumping out of the ring! :D

The two recognized shows with staying over at show grounds and having a chance to practice the day before were great confidence builders for both of us. Romulus was a star in the barn, got better and better every day with everything and even rainy Sunday morning didn't derail our ride. Watch it here! FEI 4-year-old test This test emphasizes quality of the gaits, marks general submission and perspective. Comments are extensive and very constructive. Literally, they give you a plan what to work on. The only thing with these tests, our local judges do not have enough opportunity to judge them which makes it harder to have a consistency across different judges like in normal tests. I loved riding it, though! And, I inspired one of my students to do it on her will be 4 year old next year!

Now, the show season for big shows is over. There will be one more schooling show where I am planning to ride First Level tests 1 and 2. These tests help me create a bridge between our current level and FEI 5-year-old next year. I created a plan for developing Romulus to be ready to show 5-year-old test. It helps to put structure in our work and allows me to have a reference to check where we are in our development. It is very easy to get sidelined, caught up in details and forget about big picture. Wish me luck! :)

See more pictures on Romulus photo page

Happy riding...