Hi Everyone,

It's been a while since I last wrote, and a lot has happened since then, so I will try to remember all of it! Toddy [Livewire] is doing great! He has had many good training sessions since the last time I wrote. We had an excellent jump school the other day. He was absolutely foot perfect—he is so much fun to ride!!! We had a good dressage school the next day with many clean flying changes!

Yesterday was our final gallop, and it went great. We did a cross-country school to start, jumping into the water, through the coffin and over the trakenher. The organizing committee built a small cross-country course in the infield of the race track. It has beautifully built jumps and is a great place to give the horses one last little confident practice. After we jumped a few jumps, we went out to the gallop. We cantered down the gallop slowly and then came back up it at about advanced level speed. The gallop is right next to the river ( literally about 20 feet away), and the first time we came around the turn to the bottom part of the gallop Toddy was amazed by all the boats out on the water. It was pretty cute. We were going pretty slowly, and he just kept looking over at the river with astonishment that there were all these kayaks and crew boats out there! It was pretty funny! When we came back up with a bit of speed he was all business though!

Toddy and I had a great dressage school this morning. There is a tropical storm coming through tonight, and we had arenas booked for 6:15 pm to 7:30 pm. Luckily we have an amazing chef d'equipe, Graeme Thom, and he organized for us to get a ring steward to come watch us ride starting at 12:30pm this afternoon. Not only did we get to ride earlier, but we got the best ring at the venue, the final warm-up ring before going into the main arena during competition.

Pierre arrived a few days ago, and it is so great to have him here! He is thrilled to see Toddy going so well. I am thrilled to have him here for support. My family gets here on August 7th, and it will be great to have them here as well.

On Thursday, we get to go over and check out the cross-country course. I am excited to see it. From the sounds of things, the course sounds great!

Everything else here is good. All of my teammates' horses are going well and happy. We get to jump in the main arena tomorrow night and do dressage in it the following night. The jog is on Friday afternoon at 4pm, and then we start dressage bright and early Saturday morning. Sunday is also dressage and then cross-country Monday and show jumping Tuesday. They have managed the schedule so that if we get a bad storm, things can be postponed a day. We might have a typhoon on Saturday, but we may get lucky and have it skip us. Luckily, Toddy is from British Columbia, and he learned at a young age how to ride in the rain, so I am sure he will be fine with whatever Mother Nature sends our way!

Thank you again to everyone for all of your support and keep on cheering GO CANADA!!!!!!!!!!

Samantha