Welcome Everyone!

Spring has come to most parts of our region and hopefully, it puts the 'spring' back into your horses' stride as you get ready for our upcoming season.

This time of year can present challenges to conditioning your horses in areas where the trails are still recovering from the winter snows; in parts of New England riders deal with "mud season" and conscientious riders try to stay to the dirt roads instead of damaging sensitive trail. In the southern areas of our region, folks may be fortunate to have access to well drained trails and some hardy riders choose to ride throughout the winter months. So we have a variety of anxious riders and maybe even a few anxious horses, but whatever group you fall into, proper and safe conditioning is important.

Take a look at the website calendar and list of scheduled sanctioned rides and you will find many ride distances, and types of rides, to accommodate the start of your competition year.  If you're new to the sport, returning to the sport, or just want a 'little something' to get you going, look to one of the 10 or 15-Mile CDR's and or Clinics offered.

We'd like to express our thanks to all our outgoing board members for the terrific job they did to help further the ECTRA  mission and offer a very big welcome to our new board members, Linda Glock (Vermont) and Linda LeVitre (Massachusetts).  We are looking forward to another great year.

The board has been thinking about ways to recognize our volunteers and the selfless way they continually devote time and effort to ECTRA.   Please read the Who’s Who and see who is actually doing what tasks.

Our long time Educational Committee Chair Elaine Larson has indicated that she needs to step down from that position. We are deeply grateful for her dedication and years of service to ECTRA, but that leaves a position we need to fill. If you are interested, please contact someone on the board. Elaine says she will remain on the committee to advise. Thank you in advance.

We hope you all get your season going in the best way possible.

Regards!

The ECTRA Board of Directors