July has been a whorl wind month here at HORSE ACADEMY. The key features being the new colt out of Kelvin Melody. His sire is Pooma Raba, a lovely 16.1hh chestnut, and the new colt, named BRANDYWINE HALIM, is going to be a carbon copy of "dad". Congratulations to Applegate Farms on his purchase too! They will be displaying him at the Crabbet Classic at the end of July.
        The Region 17 Championships (Canada) were on the west coast this year instead of the interior of Alberta. We were just east of the city of Vancouver in the lovely province of British Columbia. It was hot and windy, the afternoon classes were stifling most of the time. Our horse and rider had suffered an accident at a previous show so they were jittery and chose to "ride through" the Regionals, not to try to go Top 5 like they had won the previous two years in a row. They worked through their woes and had a really spectacular ride. The Hunter class had been split and they made the finals, it was extremly tough competition with the classes being the largest at the show. There was a very small showing in saddle seat competition, yet Western did well coming in second as to the class size and competition. Then at the tail end of the show a big storm blew in and the rain came down in buckets. Our horse was in one of the outside stalls which quickly filled with several inches of water so we packed it up in a hurry and headed for higher ground.
        There were several real bright spots of the show, one was Shellie Hurtubise from Prince George met us on site to help out and have some fun, the other was a horse that was winning a lions share of the top 5 awards. His name is Magnificent Venture, a truely marvelous horse who deserved his wins. I would recommend everyone keep an eye out for this large grey, when he enters the arena he will give you goose bumps.
        We have had several visitors drop by, one being Ann Blount from California. She took rolls of film and video of the horses for days. We all had a wonderful time visiting and talking horses. She is making a gift of lovely reference books on breeding to HORSE ACADEMY as our bloodlines are CMK, her favorites. Before she left she rode MAJESTIC DELIGHT, our 23 year old matriach here on the ranch. Ann and Delight really hit it off and had a wonderful time. Sadly the time passed all to fast and Ann had to go back south, but not without a promise to come back again. Then a few weeks later she called and requested we breed two of her mares to our old black Azraff grandson, Azanzabar. Also that she lease one of our favorite mares, Charismajestic for 2004. We in turn will be leasing "Gracie" for 2004. It looks like we will have plenty of time for more rides and visits in the upcoming years.
        We drove home the other day and saw a truck sitting in the driveway. It turned out one of the leading breeders of saddleseat horses north of us, the McKays dropped by to visit. They have been in the Region for quite some time and this was the first time they popped by to say Hi and talk horses, we had a wonderful chat and hope to see them again, and not just at shows.