Okay... Well THIS is exciting!

Saturday, December 1, 2007

So...Fleck and I went to our first Training three phase...it was a schooling show at Jumping Branch. Definately a wise move on our part. It was the perfect place to move up and...went fantastic!! so here's the play by play...ala hollystyle! We stabled down the street and are running a bit behind, so when we get to the showgrounds saturday am, i have less than an hour before i rode dressage. Panic!!! but it was fine. i had just enough time and a few minutes to spare. so we go in and do our dressage. it.... is just a hard test. and i know it's not an excuse cause everyone else rode the same test, but it all comes up quick. it's like you don't have enough time to settle in anyone thing before you are changing to another. so i got alot of 5's, but...oh well. it felt pretty decent considering i hadn't ridden the whole thing through but two or three times in the pasture and in pieces otherwise and we just started working on the lengthens on the circle. The judge basically said i needed to show more.. of everything. but she did say something to the effect of...ride the working trot like your lengthen...there's more there!! great pair. or something like that :) so whoo hoo. i was sorta disappointed with the 41.5, but... we were 5th out of 10 and first place had a 37 something i think. so not too shabby. The whole group of ten in my division was sorta clustered together. i figured we wouldn't be super high up cause there were some nice horses and a really nice horse just before me. but... i was happy with it. So i didn't check my score at all, but karen did and told me to just ride for time :) so i knew that we were all clustered...didn't know if i was dead last though or not. so we rode stadium and then went straight to XC. so.... stadium warm up was rushed by the time i watched the others, walked my course, and got tacked up. forgot it takes longer to put on the XC gear! but we did five jumps, took a minute breather, and went in. It was fine... he cross and counter cantered to a few (karen was irritated ;)) and those jumps were icky, but he saved my butt and then...the last few jumps were great. The last was a triple..two to a one, and fleck was GORGEOUS through them. some girl riding was watching i guess and told me that the triple was just beautiful to watch!!! how nice is that!! so anyways, no rails, no refusals... i don't even think any rubs. but they weren't that substantial jumps. not maxed out by any means. i didn't think anyways. so then we rode over to XC. i thought i was gonna vomit. hadn't eaten anything but a bowl of cereal and banana, slept like crap, and...hadn't even had anything to drink, which was stupid. it was warm (t-shirt weather with a slight chill with the breeze) but not bad. So anyways... i jumped two jumps in warm up (stadium jumps too, not even XC jumps) and went out. He was great over the first jump, sailed over the ramp (which i don't like), GALLOPED cause i let him after, cleared a roll top, some tiger trap thing. then we jumped the log drop on an angle, galloped through the lane, over a big roll top, angled to a skinny coop drop, down the hill and over the trakenher, up to the water...where we had our only bobble. it wasn't bad. and it wasn't a refusal. but to get in to the water, the entry has two poles spaced apart at the drop off... and fleck couldn't figure out if he should jump them or step onto them, or between them, so he broke to the trot and kinda went sideways a step or two before jumping. just figuring it out i think, then trotted through the water, three strides over a table thing, easy canter and a breather through to a PERFECT coop jump, then we trotted down the slanted hill pasture and then cantered through the bank combo, up a huge steep hill and jumped the faux corner...on the widest part! then over a bench, and over an oxer... and done! 17 efforts and we finished at 4:56, which optimum was 5:10 and speeding faults were 4:11, so just about perfect :) i was sooooo freakin' proud i almost cried on the walk back. it was just fantastic!!! so after dressage we were 5th, moved up to 3rd after stadium, and then up to 1st after XC :) how cool is that!??!!! we won a scarf with the farm name embroidered on it :) anyways... it was highly exciting. Really a very inviting move up course. The hard technical stuff was not maxed out and the maxed out stuff was big open gallopy fences. super great place to move up. so whoo hooo. ponyboy gets the day off tomorrow! here's a few pics of the ribbons! he's such a goober. But honestly..THIS is why i love my horse... not the fact that he's a rockstar and jumped the training course like he'd been doing it his whole life....because i wanted one good picture and this is what i had to go through to get it. THAT'S why i LOVE him. and finally.....