I feel terrible that things almost went terribly south for a couple of my favorites on American Idol last night!  What was I thinking?

We have now gotten to the place in the show where we can’t just think others will call in enough to make the correct outcome happen (and we all know what that is, right?). No, we owe it to the competitors, the show, and the countless hours we’ve obcessed again this year over who deserves to win the title, to pick up our phones or go on-line and vote, vote, vote!

I’m more positive than ever that, just as the judges said last night, these finalists are all so fantastic that they will inevitably become successful artists and have great careers. Still, I’ve invested way too much to see my champion get thrown off the show just because of my laziness - or yours!

So let’s not let down ourselves or each other. I promise to vote the next weeks until I’m cut off. What about you?

Cheers!

RD

3 Words. “Oh My God!”

I couldn’t go to bed without saying that I am just blown away by how fantastic the top 5 on American Idol are!
Each of them could have won the title in former years, but together they make this show the best it’s ever been.
I love Chris way more than I thought I would at the beginning of the season. Allison rocks like no just turned 17 year old I’ve heard before. She’s Kelly Clarkson meets Mellissa Ethridge meets Janice Joplin!
Matt has his ups and downs but I love it when he plays piano and jazzes it up.
Danny has a great tone to his voice and I loved him tonight.
And then there is Adam. I almost don’t know what to say about him other than he’s the Marriah Carrey of male singers. I have never heard anyone who could sing with a range of so many octaves with such command of his instrument. He is just plain Genius!
And I love that, like Ellen, Adam has jumped all barriers of gay/ straight to, for America, just being a singing phenomenon!
I Love It!

RD

Here it is almost May and I haven’t rearranged my closet bringing the summer clothes forward and putting the winter ones in the back!
In the days we were just vacationers, we always arrived with our summer things and were surprised to find our friends wearing their winter duds.

Now I get it! We who live here in all the seasons get sick and tired of dressing in cottons. We long for September and until the end of April to dress in corduroy, or leather with sweaters and jackets that hang all summer long.

It is always a big problem deciding what to save and what to give away even if it is beautiful and hasn’t been worn this season.
When the girls were younger and at home they liked to borrow my clothes. Now they are taller and more well endowed then me. Our granddaughters are even taller. I know this is hard to believe but my feet are bigger then theirs. Yes, I wear an eight and a half, slim!

Next week they are finally going to begin the repair of our Villa removing the mold and mildew. That, my dear readers solves my problem. I will just throw a sheet over the clothes to keep the dust away and forget the rearranging. How do you like my problem solving?

Love,
Robert’s Mom

I love it!

For sure I am not a TV critic nor am I a person who loves sitcoms or soap operas. I usually watch a movie if one appeals to me. No killing, no psychopaths no blood and nothing gory. I enjoyed Monk for a while but them that became boring as each show was pretty much the same with his hypochondria being the most important theme.

I found a show by coincidence and I am hooked after seeing it twice… it is called The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and is set in Botswana. There is no acting! Each character seems real in every way. The lady detective is recently divorced and trying to decide how to support herself. She notices a lot of strange things going on and decides this town needs a good detective so why not her? She finds a cheap 2 room store on the main street and rents it. The first person to walk in is a very prim, thin, uptight woman who says that she is a secretary. “I graduated 1st in my class with 79% I want to be your secretary.” The detective answers, “I have no money to pay you.” “Don’t worry,” she answers, “I work for nothing until you make money. You can pay me then.” With that she walks into the other room and puts paper into the typewriter.

One of there first clients is a tearful woman who fears her husband, who is known to stray, has gone missing. She is crying and says “I just gave him a Rolex watch and now he leaves me for another women.” After much checking on where he can be and so forth she decides to go check around the woman’s house. There lying on the bank is a huge crocodile. Off she goes to get her rifle to try a few practice rounds with her secretary watching. Her father taught her to shoot and she proves herself a crack shot with the gun when she kills the crock with the first bullet. The secretary says “how can you tell if he is dead?” The detective responds “He is not moving is he?” Next she slits him open with her knife and puts her arm into his insides taking out all kind of funny things like a hammer a shoe etc. All of a sudden she reaches way in and takes out a Rolex watch. She calls the lady who comes to the office in tears. Oh you have found my husband she says. “No but I found the Rolex watch.” “Wonderful,” says the lady cheering up, “at least I have that.”

Her friends are a gay hairdresser who gives her many leads as he listens to the women getting their hair done. You know how we women are, we all tell our whole life stories to our hair dressers! The other is her auto mechanic who has a crush on her. A client comes in with a swollen face and says “I go to the dentist and everything is okay. The next time I go and he makes this big mess of my teeth.” So our #1 lady detective starts out to solve this case. She goes to the dentist and when he says he is going to pull a tooth she says no I just want a cleaning. The second time she goes he doesn’t recognize her and that gets her thinking. She finds he has a twin. One with a diploma the other without. The one without lives in the next town. She follows him home with her two friends dressed us as macho undercover detectives and has them lean against the car looking tough. When he answers the door he starts to turn her way and she says, “See those two men, they are detectives and if I call them you go to jail.” He is a drug dealer. He runs to his car and they chase him into another town where he is picked up by the police. They say “but we didn’t catch him.” She says “who cares let them deal with him.”

I may not have all the facts right but you get the idea. Please watch or TIVO and let me know what you think. Whoops, I forgot to mention the show is on HBO 2 on Friday nights at 9.
Enjoy, Robert’s Mom

I went over to see Courtney King-Dye’s young horses the other day,
and was thrilled by one of them - a 5 year old big, black gelding.
He has wonderful gaits with great expression and action which shows equally beautiful front and hind legs.
This, plus his very uphill build makes him a perfect candidate to be an international dressage horse.
Putting it more simply, he has that “X Factor” which makes him stand out from the crowd!

And so it is with riders as well as horses, and just about everything else in nature. We can see thousands of pictures and listen to just as many singers until one comes along and we immediately know we are in the presence of genius. A gift from God!

But talent alone is not enough to make it in this world, and that is obvious to me when I’m around so many of my unbelievably gifted friends and family members, many of whom can sing, dance and act amazingly but never became famous doing so and ended up finding other fields of work to earn a living from. This is why, when I am conducting my symposia, I remark that I always tell young people and their parents that kids should get their college degree, find a great job, and have horses in their lives if they are able, but that ours is a very hard life and since most professionals truly lead a hand-to-mouth existence, it is probably not the best path for the vast majority of people.

And then comes the response - almost always - that this particular young person is determined to make riding their life’s work. To which I reply, ” Fine. Then you had best be prepared to give 100% every single day,  make the enormous sacrifices that every great rider I have ever known has made, usually entailing leaving their homes and loved ones for very long periods of time to go to learn and compete among the very best in the world, both in the U.S. and abroad. Work ethic is just as important as God given talent and then one still has to hope to have some luck, meaning the right horse at the right time. One can be extremely gifted but, when we go down that center-line or gallop to the first fence on course, we are only as good as the horse we are riding!”

Which brings me back to Courtney. As a young rider she showed Lendon Gray she had the talent, drive, and work ethic which made her worth everyone’s effort to make her into a flagship rider for America. This was also the case with Steffen, Guenter, Lisa, myself and others like us who worked so hard and have dedicated our lives to each and every tiny detail which sets true professionals apart from the rest. These people do not sit around complaining that life has been unfair to them when things aren’t going their way. anyone worth anything in horse sports has lived through the huge ups and downs which come with the territory of dealing with these beautiful, powerful, but just as fragile beasts. They get up every day, dot their I’s and cross their T’s, see their goals but love every minute of the road they know is long and full of curves and hazards, and always put the best interest of their horses first ahead of all other things!

Because, at the end of the day, that is what riding is about - DETAILS.

Cheers!

RD

Yesterday, I posted some of my final thoughts about Las Vegas and the World Cup. I feel terrible because I completely forgot the most important item which will be forever ingrained in my memory. Steffen and Ravel being crowned the 2009 FEI Dressage World Cup Champions!
They were brilliant and Steffen made me just as proud from how he carried himself outside the arena as in. He knows that we are only as good as the horse we ride in on and spoke with grace and humility, never forgetting everyone who helped him rise to the top, especially Ravel.
This pair are now in a beautiful position for next year’s World Equestrian Games-even to contend for the highest podium. I wish Steffen, Ravel, and his owners my warmest congratulations and continued good health and success for the future!

Cheers!

RD

So, I’ve finally recuperated from my Vegas trip followed by 2 nights and days of straight work with the FEI Dressage Task Force, but I didn’t want to forget a few World Cup related items.

First, I would never have gone to Las Vegas to do the Live TV for Universal Sports had it not been for Karin Offield who, at the very last minute as she seems to always do, stepped up to the plate when no one else would, and came up with the added funding to make it all happen. Karin has been and continues to be a wonderful supporter of Dressage in the U.S., even while her riding career has taken a back seat to her latest business interests. Among those is her breeding business, the star for which still has to be the great stallion, Lingh, who is now standing in Sweden. I couldn’t help think of him while I was commenting on the Freestyle, since he did win the ‘05 Grand Prix and placed 2nd in the Kur at my final event of my own personal career in the same arena. Many thanks to Karin!

I also have to say how much I enjoyed working with Bob Hughes, Jim Carr, Andrew Catilan, and the whole gang working for Universal Sports. They are consummate professionals in every way and made me feel extremely comfortable in my role as expert commentator for the show. And even better, they are just great guys who love horses and horse sport!

Marty Bowman is another wonderful friend who masterfully directs the press and media at this and most of the biggest competitions in America and nobody does it better than he!  Thanks, Marty!

Finally, we’ve all come to expect a fabulous show every two years when the World Cup comes back to Vegas. The reason for that is their amazing staff, from the organizers and managers, to the secretaries and all the gang behind the scenes without whom the show just couldn’t go on. This is a perfectly well oiled machine and frankly, I never in a million years would have thought there might be an end in sight to its coming back, but that’s exactly what is happening.   The World Cup was not given back to Las Vegas, and instead will remain in Europe at least through 2013 and probably longer. And what happens when a huge show like this is not brought back on a frequent and regular basis is simple - the sponsorship dries up. Sponsors don’t want to commit their dollars to an event so far away, especially in this kind of an economy, and so the wonderful folks in Vegas just can’t hold on to this great tradition. Certainly, we can always say this or that could have been better, but overall Las Vegas put on a record breaking and history making show, again and again. I am very sorry to see it end and I applaud everyone who made it so amazing!

Cheers!

RD

I love my readers but I just have one thing to say. Get with the program!
Don’t get me wrong; I’m very happy that you all come to read what’s up in my life and those of my friends and family. But what will it take to get more of you to actually sit down and write in? Like today I was told by an extremely reliable source that many on the staff at the USET headquarters in Gladstone discuss the “Ask Rhonda …. Anything” as well as my “Mom’s Corner” columns every day. Now, as thrilled as I am to hear that, I just want to know how come they don’t send in weekly questions to either of them. Come on folks, I know it’s called Dover’s World, but I need a little (or a lot) of help here!
So now to the bri - I mean the “incentive”. If you write in a question for Rhonda and she deems it worth answering in her column, I’ll send you a special Dover’s World GIFT! Now if you think you can get a response sending her any cheesy tidbit, I just have to tell you that even I only get replies to a fraction of my calls and e-mails to her.
Still, no effort = no prize so give it your best shot.

And while we’re at it, I might as well complain about the fact that not one person so far has commented on the amazing video I put up of the two Divas singing “I Aint Goin”. Are you people not getting to the Everything Else page of my site? I want to hear from you because I just watched it again for the umpteenth time and it just gets more unf*#&^ingbelievable every time!
And what about Beyonce? Come on girls and boys - I need some reassurance that you all are still out there and that you care about the important things in life. DIVAS!  If you truly don’t care about them I understand, but just like I was trained by my mother, I expect that if you care about me you will lie and write in anyway.

So this week I want a veritable traffic jam goin on at Dover’s World! I know you’re all up for the challenge.
And don’t forget ….PRIZES!

Cheers!

RD