Over the course of 48 hours I managed to drive to Houston, work two full days at the Luxe EQ trailer, take two lessons on my horse, watch a hunter derby, catch snippets of the Carolina live feed on my phone, and attend a course design clinic. Now it’s 6:30am on Monday and I’d like a nap, please, instead of a regular work day.

After work on Friday I stopped at home to load up the corgi (aka tack shop dog extraordinaire) then swung by the barn to get Henry. Originally I was not planning on bringing Henry with me for the weekend, but my at-home jump schools have been a jumbo sized shit sandwich, deep fried on a shit stick. I was starting to panic about Texas Rose this upcoming weekend. Megan, the owner of Luxe EQ, is married to Mark, who I used to ride with when they lived in the Austin area. He has this way of simplifying things that has always worked really well for me, so I thought if anyone could quickly fix my situation, it was probably him.

I dropped Henry at his barn, did a quick 10 minute hack, and then jetted into Katy to get to the show. I pretty much just made it in time to help close up for the day, then take advantage of the free catering out by the hunter derby ring. I will give h/j shows some credit in that regard… they have some great food. I wanted to sit in on a course design clinic with Eric Hasbrouck so we went up to the clubhouse for a while before coming back down to watch the handy round of the hunter derby.

Then I passed out, because I’m an old lady and it was way past my bedtime.

On Saturday I was up early (well… late for me…) to go set up everything at the shop.

We stayed pretty busy all day, then had a wine and cheese party plus a raffle in the afternoon. There was some nice stuff in the raffle, and some good cheese. Winning combination. Word on the street is that it’s happening again this week, so if you’re at Pin Oak, don’t miss it.

I tried to catch snippets of the Carolina live feed throughout the day on my phone, but it had a hard time streaming. I don’t know if it was the wifi at the show grounds or a problem on their end, but it would play for a few minutes at a time and then freeze or drop and I’d have to reload and log in again. I gave up after a while, so I mostly just saw a few horses in the 2* and parts of a couple in the 3*. Not worth the $5 I paid for live stream access.

I ducked out of the wine and cheese party a little early to head out to Mark’s barn for a lesson. He pretty much nailed my problem right off the bat and gave me a simple solution, which worked 100% of the time when I actually executed it. Sometimes I reverted to Floundering Moron mode, but things definitely improved a whole lot overall. Less is more. Simpler is better. Stop trying to over-ride the horse, it doesn’t work.

By the time I got back to the RV it was almost 9, and I took a shower and pretty much immediately passed out. I was gonna head up to the Grand Prix ring to catch the jumpoff, but I was pretty spent by that point. I fell asleep so hard that I don’t think I even moved a muscle until I woke up the next morning.

Sunday was pretty much a repeat – up early, open shop, set up, work, then cut out in the late afternoon for another lesson. This one was shorter, no point in drilling the horse, and we did some gymnasticy (that’s a word) courses to drive home the points from the day before and work on technique. Basically my instructions are leg-maintain-jump-breathe-repeat. Let’s see if I can actually execute that on my own. I feel a lot better now than I did last week though. I knew I was overcomplicating things, I just couldn’t figure out how to stop it.

After my lesson I loaded everything up and we were on the road back home. By the time I dropped Henry off and unpacked, I was driving home in the dark, so it turned into yet another shower-and-flop-into-bed type of evening. Today it’s back to the grind.

Luckily it’s a short work week, we leave for Texas Rose on Thursday. And THEN, on our way home, we get to stop and pick up Presto! I think both horses will be considerably less thrilled about this than I am.