United States Eventing Association

When the USEA kindly asked me to write a blog about my trip to the Land Rover/USEA American Eventing Championships, I had to figure out where exactly they are this year. For the sake of my fellow ignorant eventers, the AEC are September 9-12 at Chattahoochee Hills on Bouckaert Farm, in Fairburn, Georgia. While looking this up it struck me that, in order to blog about the AEC, I actually have to go!

The fact that I’m qualified with my horse Olando at Training cracks me up. “Ollie” and I started our relationship a little under a year ago, and the beginning was a little appalling to put it lightly. I was a Prelim-level rider on a fancy, young, Training horse, and we could barely scrape by at Novice. Nearly every one of our competitions in Fall 2009 ended with a letter. My Dad coined the term “Alphabet soup” to describe Ollie and me collecting all the different letters. I’m all for a little humility, but Eventing was doling it out in gobs.

I like numbers better than letters, even if the numbers are of the three-digit variety. So my goal for 2010 was to end on numbers, not letters! I didn’t care about ribbons: I only wanted to complete. Ollie and I spent the winter in boot camp and went out to earn some completions. One day we got a ribbon (Granted it was brown, but collecting ugly colors is better than collecting letters.), and it occurred to me that maybe we should try to get some more. So I knocked the dust off my goal of “ taking names and kicking bedonkadonk” and taught Ollie that ribbons = carrots. And now we are on our way to the AECs!

I hope you enjoy reading Ollie’s and my journey. After all, as my fifth-grade teacher used to say, “ It’s the cream filling!” which is really a Twinkie analogy for “It’s the journey, not the destination, that’s important.” The next stop is Cosequin Stuart Horse Trials. Stay tuned!

Katie Hasse is a rising Junior at George Mason University where she is majoring in marketing and photography. You can find out more about her on her website. Ollie is a seven-year old, Holsteiner from Germany who likes carrots, being turned out with his buddies, and spooking in order to avoid any serious dressage work. They live in Upperville, Virginia.