Welcome to the Third Charm Event Team blog! Greetings from the frozen snowless tundra that is North Carolina this week! This is my first time blogging, so bear with me.
My name is Jennifer Holder and I own and operate Third Charm Training Center in Midland, NC with my husband Dwayne Holder. I am an ARICP certified instructor and when I can get all the considerable paperwork in order I'm going to go through the USEA ICP process. I am also a certified Journeyman farrier. Dwayne is a Master farrier, and I started shoeing my own horses under his supervision, then I started helping him a couple days each week, then he broke his collarbone and the rest is history.... I took over his approximately 300-horses-every-five-weeks route for a couple of months until he could get back to it, and with that experience behind me I went ahead and got certified! I do a few clients of my own, but mainly I shoe and trim all the horses at the barn (varies from 13-20), and still work with him a couple days per week.
As far as riding goes, I trained my first horse, a scruffy Morgan/Welsh tragically misnamed Beauty, to jump when I was a teenager by reading books and trial and error. We are talking extremely backyard, pieces of lumber propped up on sawhorses and barrels and tires out in the field. Unfortunately my first horse was about twelve years older than the seller claimed and was shortly retired due to arthritis. My second horse was an Off-Track Thoroughbred named Woody's Amni (Woody), who was, ah, difficult. I had her for eight years and learned more about straight-up survival than I can describe. When I bought her she had two gaits: jig, and gallop sideways. I stuck with it and managed to compete her through Novice level in eventing. I wish I had her now, since I suspect that my ignorance contributed greatly to our difficulties! However she certainly lived up to the stereotype of the OTTB.
But, then I got Copper, a TB stallion straight off the track--I rode him at exercise and watched his last race, then bought him! And he blew all the stereotypes to heck. Within three weeks of his last race, he went to his first show and jumped quietly around a Elementary combined test course. Our dressage score wasn't great, mainly because, thanks to Woody, I was waiting for the explosion! Copper was trotting around the ring going "Hey, lady, leggo my mouth I wanna put my head down...."
I've had Copper for fourteen years now and I give all the credit for the fact that I am a professional to him. He took me successfully through Training level eventing, 2nd level dressage and 4'3" Jumpers. Of course it helped that I was finally able to hook up with some good trainers during the time I owned him! I started riding with Denny Emerson during that time, who is great, despite the fact that it is a two hour drive and I can only make it a couple times per month during the winters when he is here in NC. Unfortunately I was not able to get Copper successfully to Preliminary....he was hit by a car in 1998 and developed arthritis in the hock that was injured in the accident. It did eventually fuse, and was manageable to the point that he was able to come back and compete at Training level and in some Jumpers with students, but I didn't feel it was fair to ask him to try for the upper levels. He finally retired at the age of 19 this past year.
Then I bought Bolivia, a Hanoverian mare with a nasty bucking issue. It took two years of chiropractic and accupuncture to straighten her out, but it was worth it! We went Intermediate in 2009, finishing third in dressage, sixth overall with no xc jump penalties and one rail in stadium. Then I turned her over to Ashley Nee, who had been begging to ride her for two years; they ran Training a couple of times in the spring and did very well. Bolivia is now being half-leased by my student Iris, who is a dressage rider and is looking forward to doing her first dressage show with Livi on Saturday!
Meanwhile Ashley had bought a promising 2 year old out of an Intermediate TB mare. Unfortunately the horse, by age four, had only grown to about 15.2h and said student felt she was too large for the horse. With the economy and the difficulty of selling a green, small, chestnut TB mare, vs. the cost of boarding, Ashley gave me the horse in 2008. Dubbed "Vanity's Revenge", she has done very nicely at Novice this year and has recently moved up to Training CTs and schooling HTs. She will run one or two Novice recognized and then move up to Training recognized in the next couple of months. She is very good in the dressage and brave and clever over fences; she seems to have a good bit of scope and confidence, so perhaps she will go to the upper levels.
More later, I have to head out and shoe some horses!
