Always the best part, let’s be honest.

XC day was… long. The 1* was the lowest level running that day (4*, 3*, 2* were the other divisions) so we got the crappy end of the weather stick and got to run at 3pm when it was 90 degrees. This was the first truly hot weather of the season so I was a little worried how Presto might handle galloping for 6 minutes in it.

To the event’s immense credit, they did a lot to help mitigate the heat risk. They had vet box in the covered, so the horses could get into the shade immediately after they finished, and there were troughs of water constantly refilling that you could dip your cool-down buckets into, along with lots of ice and fans and plenty of people available to help cool horses down. Short of being able to control the weather, that’s about all you can do.

I had walked the course twice the day before, once with Megan and once with Hillary. They had also run a Modified one-day the day before, and they shared a couple combos with the 1*, so I went out and watched how they were riding and which routes seemed to be working best. I went early in the order for the 1*, so I wouldn’t really have the opportunity to watch anyone go in my division.

My initial impression of the course was that I thought it was pretty friendly. I mean, it’s a solid and fair 1*, but the questions are all things we’ve seen before. Granted… we’ve been running Modified for almost a year now, so… one would freakin hope.

Presto was a scene in warmup. By this point in the week his quarter had completely run out. He’d been in a stall for 3 days, he was pretty sure his neighbor was his BFF, and he was having meltdowns every time that horse left (or didn’t actually leave but Presto just thought he left). Like earlier that morning I had to bolt across the show grounds because someone called me and told me he was alternating between double-barreling the wall and sticking his front feet over the top of the wall. He just… really really really didn’t handle the stabling aspect of this adventure, and it rapidly fell apart throughout the day on Saturday as we waited to go. We hit his limit.

And even with giving him Ulcergard every morning, I could tell in warmup that his stomach was bothering him. He is often a scene in XC warmup, but in a jovial yeehaw “let’s have fun” kind of way. This time he was a scene scene. Like rearing and spinning and screaming and he definitely considered trying to run back to the barn a couple times to be with his new BFF (who gave zero fucks about him in return). It was far beyond his normal antics, and with a different tone. I thought he might actually try some of his old napping habit (that we haven’t seen in quite a while from him) out of the start box. He had that feeling to him, if you know what I mean. I have learned now that he gets like that when he’s anxious… I think it’s a tummy thing.

As soon as we left the box I really sent him in front of my leg, trying to get him to focus on his job. I could feel him thinking about going back to warmup, but luckily the first one came up fast and we were over it before he had a chance to think too hard. We landed from that one and I opened him up to a good gallop. That usually gets him clicked in. The beginning of the course was pretty open and flowy, so it gave you a good opportunity to get going, and fence 2 was a big wide gallopy ramp, so it worked out well. He absolutely flew over that, ears perked. Now we were in business.

Fence 3 was the MIM oxer off a pretty short turn approach, but the turn works as the half halt, so you could pretty much just keep coming. He pinged over that great. As we got close to 4, the trakehner in the treeline, I could see the poor girl who had left the box ahead of me off to the side, no longer attached to her horse. I didn’t have any time to process it in the moment, but turns out the horse had fallen. Luckily Presto was too busy jumping the trakehner to give that horse much thought in the moment.

From there we went to the log wagon, which was good, and then to the first real question – a jump in the water, then a left turn to a bending line. I noticed while watching the day before that if you had a horse that tended to step into the very edge of the water, it was a perfect 3 forward strides to the rolltop. I happen to have a horse like that, so I knew once we got to the edge I could just close my leg and the 3 would come up well, and it did. The line to the next one seemed to ride best in a 6, then you could ride forward and the skinny was there in 3. Some people hung out/slowed down and did 7 and 4, but it definitely looked more awkward that way. Megan wanted me to take the bolder route, so we did. Presto was delighted, he’s a fan of taking bold and forward routes.

From there we had another decent gallop stretch to a table, which came up pretty well out of a forward stride, and then we looped back (and balanced up a whole whole lot) for the coffin. We jumped the MIM rail that Prelim usually has, bigger than any of the ones we’ve had before, and with the bigger ditch. Otherwise thought it was a pretty straightforward line… two strides to the ditch, four straight strides to the corner. It was bigger than usual but I feel like we’ve seen more technical questions at that coffin before. Presto was super through there.

Then we had the log table, which was good, to the next little house thing. Then it was 8 bending strides right to the log stack, with four bending strides left to the skinny. This question rode really well if you picked your line from the beginning and really stuck to it, but I saw it do some gnarly things to people who didn’t make a decision or tried to change their mind. Presto was really good and rideable through that question.

Then we had another gallopy table before we got to the next combo, the crater. Here, his anxiety got the best of him. As soon as I got straight to the A element he spotted the videographer sitting under a big umbrella directly in his line of sight on the other side of the crater, and he spun like an absolute top. Damn near dropped me right off the shoulder. We were still a good 6-7 strides from the jump… I don’t even think he’d seen it yet, but he was NOT having it with that big flappy umbrella.

I got him turned around, he eyeballed the shit out of the umbrella, and then we re-approached. Once he locked on to the jump he was bold as brass, remembered he had a job, and jumped through the combo like easy peasy. Unfortunately the spin happened close enough to the jump for it to count as a 20, even though it had nothing to do with the actual jump itself. Big fucking bummer. BIG FUCKING BUMMER. UGGGGGGH. This is totally the kind of shit he does when he gets anxious though (recall Stable View?), and given the day leading up to that point… I’m not shocked. I wish I’d felt it coming, but he really got me with no warning on that one.

Once that happened I took my foot off the gas a little. No point in going for time anymore, womp womp. But he hopped over the collapsible table great, and up over the mound really super.

Then we got to the second water, which I thought might have been the most interesting question on the course. You had a fairly standard brush fence into the water, and then turned right and jumped a corner. Caveat being, there was a Training jump in the way of what would be the best line to the corner. So you could either cut inside of the Training jump and come into the corner on a bit of an angle, daring yourself a little, or you could go around the Training jump and make a quick 90 degree turn to jump the corner dead-straight.

While we were walking the course Megan told me to take the inside route. When I looked at her a second too long she was like “If you’re gonna move up to Prelim, you need to take that route. Going around is a waste of time. Keep his shoulders straight and ride through the flags. Don’t be a p*ssy.” and then kept walking. Did you know this is apparently a very effective strategy of coaching me? I was like “ah well yes obviously I am not a p*ssy, so clearly I would take the inside route”. And honestly? She was right. It rode really well that way. Presto was genuine as hell, locked on to the corner right away, stayed super straight in his shoulders, and it worked out great. And since this was the water jump directly in front of our stabling, I got to see literally dozens of people jump through that question all weekend long between the various Modified divisions and the 1*. Not very many people took the inside route but it always rode better when they did. The longer route was awkward and required too much micro-managing.

After that we just had a gallop up the hill to the log oxer, then to the skinny table, both of which were great. Then we galloped between the ropes and across the road (ok that was fun) into the big grass arena for the last jump.

After we crossed the finish we pulled up to trot and trotted a circle for the vet and steward at the finish. They gave the thumbs up and off we went to vet box in the covered arena to start his cool down. We pulled his tack off on the way and I had plenty of ground people to help, so honestly I mostly just watched and chugged a bottle of water. They walked him a bit, or tried to. They put water on him, or tried to. They took his boots off and studs out, with some difficulty. I figured he would be naughty for vet box because he HATES baths and hates being wet, especially if the water is cold. I was correct, he was violently opposed to having buckets of cold water thrown on him. He scattered the bucket volunteers pretty quickly.

The good news is that he was barely winded and not that hot. He cooled down really quickly and was very obviously not tired, so we were out of vet box in less than 10 minutes. Granted, they opted not to try to take his temperature for fear of their life. Fair. That’s fair. Either way, he was very clearly not in any kind of distress health-wise. He was completely back to normal respiratory rate by the time he got back to his stall, and seemed fresh as a daisy. All good!

From there it was just normal post XC care stuff. Or normal for him anyway. Magic cushion, handwalking, etc. I tried to wrap him since he was going to be stuck in a stall, but he pulled those off in an hour. I gave up. He very clearly did not need fluids or anything like that, so… it was a pretty simple and easy post-XC.

If we could just erase the stupid umbrella spin, it would be the best XC day we’ve ever had. It was smooth and bold, the jumps came up well, and it felt honestly incredibly easy. He’s fit and even in the hot weather he handled it fantastic. That stupid 20 will bother the shit out of me until the end of my days. We’ll talk more about my thoughts on that and the how/why/what next aspect later. I did learn something about him and his show management from this, at least.

But, either way, we were through the XC and on to the next and (finally) last day – the final jog and show jumping!