CDS Dressage Letters Jan 2021

January 2021 ~ Dressage Letters ~ Page 3 California Dressage Society www.california-dressage.org CDS Central Office Paula Langan • manager/editor [email protected] P. O. Box 417 Carmel Valley, CA 93924 (831) 659-5696 • fax (831) 659-2383 Tue, Wed, 2-7pm • Thur, Fri, 1-5pm DressageLetters:January2021,Vol27,Issue1 Publishedmonthlyby theCaliforniaDressageSociety, . Periodicals#5940atCarmelValley,CA andadditionalmailingoffices. POSTMASTER:Pleasesend addresschanges to POBox417,CarmelValley,CA93924-0417 PrintedbyAPi-Marketing President Joan Williams (408) 512-2890 Vice President Pat Hart (714) 299-6507 Scholarship Committee Chair Nancy Szakacs (408) 476-4743 Treasurer Diana Muravez • (760) 728-6325 [email protected] Insurance Equine Insurance Donna Parker 800/321-5723 [email protected] Junior Rider Sara Mosqueda • (909) 203-9290 Mari Naten • (916) 798-5844 President’s Column by Joan Williams USDF Convention - This year’s USDF convention was completely virtual! The annual meeting and convention took place online this year, held Nov. 30-Dec. 5, with a higher participation rate than usual! Convention Highlights from Chronicle of the Horse: “USDF officials are exploring ways to do things virtually. For now, in-person events will likely be limited to licensed officials education and training programs, “L” judge participants who need to complete the second half of their program, and junior/young rider clinics. Technical delegate clinics, dressage seat equitation, training for judges and sport horse education will take place virtually. The Trainer’s Conference will be tabled for 2021. Eight regional championships took place this year. Region 5 couldn’t hold theirs due to difficulty finding a facility and a state with appropriate COVID-19 regulatory plans. There’s a new and improved membership dashboard on USDF.org. In the first year of the USDF Regional Schooling Show awards program, 308 shows signed up, and 161 horse/rider combinations nominated to participate. This program offers awards to riders who are members of a GMO and are competing in non-U.S. Equestrian Federation-sanctioned/non USDF-recognized competitions. In the USDF Finals open meeting, organizers spoke about the plan for next year’s finals, to be held at the Kentucky Horse Park. The KHP has a seven-year contract to host the finals through 2022. I attended many of the meetings. The highlight for me was the Q andAwith Janet Foy. She took training questions from the viewers and answered them beautifully. I also really enjoyed hearing all the new rule changes and the upcoming ones. There will be a new division for the 4 year olds. The pictures of the snaffles and descriptions (without leverage) was added...except for the Boucher which is still allowed as a snaffle. There is discussion about changing the allowed colors of breeches and going away from the old color chart we use now. We still would not be allowed bold patterns and are looking at language to help describe just what bold patterns might be. CDS Annual Meeting CDS will be taking a page from the playbook for our 2021 Annual Meeting. We had a meeting last night to finalize the plans for keeping our meeting virtual this coming year February 12-14, 2021. The host hotel we had planned to use as well as LAEC are either closed or have too many restrictions to make a fun informative event. We will try to have a fun game as well as awards, chapter baskets and the “state of the union”. We will do our usual chapter chair roundtable discussion where chapter representatives talk about what types of events and meeting they are doing for education, fundraising and just plain fun events. We will hold a couple educational sessions that should be fun and informative. With the meetings going over three days members should be able to watch from home. Some specific meeting and education events will be sent to our CDS members page as well as our CDS open page on Facebook for later viewing. If you have never been to a CDS annual meeting before, this is the perfect opportunity. No travel or expense, just getting to learn and network with fellow CDS folks. We have an agenda, and Paula is working on setting up a registration page where people can sign up for the events they would like to attend. We will be doing some “dry runs” to make sure we have no technical difficulties the days of the meetings. I am excited to see how this all unfolds, it will not be our usual Annual Meeting for obvious reasons but we want it still to be fun, informative and interactive. I sure hope you can join us. The CDS Calendar is a big success. If you have not received yours yet it should be in the mail. There are many really fun and beautiful photos of the horses of CDS. There has been such a great response that Paula and Kathie are already working on plans for next year’s calendar. Our group had a really fun time making a “socially distanced” photo with being “Miss July” in mind. We wore red white and blue. Some of the horses had small flags on the side of their bridles. It was a really fun day for us all to participate in the photo shoot. Start planning your Costumes, Fun photos, and great award pictures like Miss September for next year’s calendar. CONTENTS Articles JRYR Clinics........................................................page 13 USDF Virtual Convention...................................pages 1, 4-5 USDF Delegates for Region 7.............................pages 6-7 Year End Awards..................................................page 15 Monthly Departments Activities Calendar .............................................page 14 Bulletin.................................................................page 10 CDS Pylons..........................................................page 20 Classifieds............................................................pages 18-19 Membership Renewal Form ...............................page 20 Monthly Clinics ..................................................page 11 President’s Column..............................................page 3 Show Calendar ....................................................page 12-13 USEF, USDF, FEI ...............................................pages 8-9