Arianna Barzman-Grennan was all smiles as she modeled her new team jacket emblazoned with a bright championship logo.

“I’ve always wanted one of these,” she beamed.

Barzman-Grennan, 20, of San Jose, was one of many winners who traveled as many as eight hours from up and down the West Coast to participate in this year’s California Dressage Society Junior and Young Rider Championships. Held in two locations representing the Northern and Southern regions, the competitions were held July 31–Aug. 2 in Elk Grove, and Aug. 14–16 in Temecula.

Riders ranged in age from as young as nine years old aboard trusted mounts of all breeds, shapes and sizes. With classes and divisions offered from Training Level to FEI as well as equitation, freestyles, and quadrilles, there was something for everyone whether a casual Pony Clubber attending a large dressage show for the first time or an accomplished NAJYRC competitor.

Barzman-Grennan has been coming to these Championships since 2010, and now in her final year of eligibility she wasn’t going to miss attending the show one last time before starting her fall semester of college.

POMONA — Cal Poly Pomona administrators decided in August to put future students out to pasture. A crunch for student housing had led school officials to examine 10 sites on which a new phase of student lodging would be built, and despite protests by students and others, 13 of 45 acres of on-campus pasture got the nod.

The property, for decades an iconic emblem with grazing Arabian horses from the school’s venerable program, was not the first choice of ag students and horse enthusiasts who called the designation for housing “short-sighted.” A protest last January caused school officials to pause, but the plan is back on track after a six-month reevaluation.

University spokeswoman Esther Chou Tanaka said new President Soraya M. Coley, who took the reins of the university in January, paused the project in February, mindful of a need for additional student housing.

Karen Stives, who helped lead the U.S. Equestrian Team to a 1984 Olympic gold medal in three-day eventing in Southern California and who just missed an individual gold medal of her own, died Aug. 14 at her home in Dover, Mass., from a rare form of cancer. She was 64.

Stives earned her place in three-day eventing history when she rode her mother’s big grey gelding, Ben Arthur, to win the individual silver at the Los Angeles Olympics. A single rail down in show jumping cost her the individual gold, but the pair’s strong finish helped earn the team gold for the U.S. Karen became the first of two women ever to win an individual Olympic three-day event medal; British rider Virginia Holgate Elliott won the individual bronze at Los Angeles.

Modesto Milling has spent the last year researching and developing organic horse feeds with its consulting equine nutritionist. Now, it’s proudly introducing California’s first 100 percent certified organic “ration balancer” called the Horse Supplement Pellet. Specifically formulated to have a low recommended feeding rate, when fed with forage it will meet the horse’s needs for protein, vitamins and minerals — but add very few additional calories. It can be an excellent addition to a forage-only diet, and it also combines well with organic oats or barley to make a balanced feed for horses that need more calories than a forage-only diet can supply. Modesto Milling’s Horse Supplement Pellet is organic and contains no GMOs. The organic cultural practice prohibits the use of herbicides, pesticides and commercial fertilizers. The company uses only the highest quality ingredients in its horse feeds, and the Horse Supplement Pellet has organic oats and alfalfa, as well as organic coconut meal that is high in digestible fiber and healthy fats that promote healthy coats. We use organic peas for high quality protein to promote muscular strength, plus flax seed and sunflower seed for omega 3 and omega 6 fat, as well as organic stabilized rice bran for its fat and low starch content. Plus, the product has additional ingredients like natural vitamin E and biotin for healthy coats and hooves, as well as diatomaceous earth, zeolite, yeast, sea kelp and other essential nutrients.

HUNTINGTON BEACH — This is early text. If you see this in production environment, be sure to alert Warren or Evan so we can resolve it.

International FEI course designer Anderson Lima of Mexico set a precise course that tested both the horses and riders. With three double combinations instead of a triple, the time proved possible, but rails continued to drop for many of the competitors, veterans and up-and-coming riders alike. “It’s a challenge for them,” Lima said of the course. “In every little place… it’s a Grand Prix.”

There were 35 entries for the class, and the first in the ring, Felipo Godinho aboard Sergio Nieto’s Google, posted the first clear of the class. All of the combinations, two one-strides and one two-stride, proved the most problematic. Last week’s Markel Insurance Grand Prix winner, Lane Clarke and Brooklane Farms’ Semira de Saulieu, Ashlee Bond and her second mount of the class, veteran partner Agro Star (owned by Little Valley Farms), and successful pair Josephina Nor Lantzman and her own Chello Z, each ended the first round with faults.

BURBANK — For the first time, the Special Olympic World Games came to the U.S., with the equestrian competition held at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center. This is early text. If you see it, be sure to alert Evan or Warren that the final text is missing from this editorial page.

This is early text. If you see it, be sure to alert Evan or Warren that the final text is missing from this editorial page. This is early text. If you see it, be sure to alert Evan or Warren that the final text is missing from this editorial page.

In the “good ol’ days,” horses, mules and donkeys were the original beasts of burden. Now, we have commercial truck freighting companies. In the past, there were big stables in towns and cities that supplied contract horses for everything from transportation to freighting.

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SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO — Folks have been expecting Nathalie Manning to record her first grand prix victory for some time, perhaps none longer than Nathalie herself.

At age 2 (“before I was walking”, she says), her legendary horseman grandfather, Morton “Cappy” Smith, would lead her around his Middleburg, Va., farm. By age 7, she was riding almost any horse on the property, and as an 8-year-old, she conceived her future barn name: Acorn Farm, “where every little acorn turns into a great oak.”

“My grandfather would put me on just about anything,” she smiles. “He had a lot of sale horses, and I was fearless.”

ELK GROVE — The West Coast Reining Horse Association celebrated Independence Day in patriotic style with their Star Spangled Slide show, the fifth and last NRHA Affiliate show of 2015. Red, white, and blue decorations were all over Bill Madden’s Brookside Show Park in Elk Grove, California. Winning exhibitors happily packed home red, white, and blue flip flops, backpacks, spur straps, and other patriotic themed awards.

The weather was quite accommodating this year with temperatures in the low 90s, thankfully disputing the local weatherman’s predictions of 105+ degrees. If that was too warm, exhibitors put on their swimsuits and cooled off in the Brookside pool.