I mean, no offense to dressage or showjumping, y’all are great sports in your own right, but literally no eventer in the world is like OMG THAT DRESSAGE TEST WAS THE MOST FUN FIVE MINUTES I’VE EVER HAD. Especially not this eventer. Let’s be clear, we’re here for cross country, these other two phases are formalities.
First of all, I about died on Thursday night before the show even started. It was already dark out, I had parked my truck a little ways from the barn and was almost done setting up my tent. I saw a trailer pull in down at the barn and was so preoccupied by straining to see if it was a friend that I stepped backwards off the tailgate, missed my step, and WHAM slammed into the ground under a bush. My entire spine popped upon landing and all the air went right out of my lungs. Not gonna lie, I laid under that bush for a solid two minutes before I got up. Do not recommend falling backwards off a tailgate. That was worse than falling off a horse.
- probably wishes he could have seen that, he would have enjoyed it
My Friday morning dressage was at 9:18 so I got on around 8:45. Henry was pretty good in the insanity warm up, more relaxed than when we were there in November. I was happy to see that we got ring 4, which was off to the side by itself, instead of ring 2 or 3 like last time which are right to each other in the same arena at the top of a hill. That was a little too much stimulus for Henry. The first person in our division was a no show at her ride time, so we ended up going a little early. Henry was on high alert as soon as he stepped foot in the ring (I dunno why we gotta pretend to be spooky about the judge EVERY TIME), but he was mostly obedient.

A couple times he tried to sneak peeks at the horses that were hacking up the hill (I think he was trying to figure out if they were getting to go XC while he was being tortured) and the canter lengthenings on a circle were, as usual, pretty non-existent. Training Test A has them both directions, so that’s not particularly helpful to us at all. He was still tense, he is a tense horse, tension is what he does best, but overall it was fine. That’s really the best word for it. Not great, not tragic, just fine. Our division was full of pretty nice horses (one of these days I will remember to STOP ENTERING Senior Training Rider, omg it is always the most competitive division), so we certainly didn’t impress anyone, but for Henry it was a decent test. Our score of 37.7 was totally fair. Once again I forgot to pick up my test but I’m confident it looks like pretty much every other test we’ve ever done. Consistently mediocre… that’s our specialty! It was definitely an improvement from last fall’s test at Texas Rose (where I legit could not even touch him with my leg because he kept threatening to turn into a coked out dolphin), so I’m cool with that.

Then we had a few hours to cool our jets before stadium. By this point I had already walked XC and was pretty pumped about the course, so I was like “Ok, for the love of god, let’s just not get eliminated in stadium because I really want to run XC tomorrow”. Priorities, y’all.
The showjumping course was super legit. It was long, it had a lot of good questions, and it was proving to be difficult. I sat there through all of the Intermediate and most of the Prelim and rails were falling left and right. Jump 1 in particular, a single oxer near the middle of the ring, was getting a lot of people. I made a pretty exacting plan for how I wanted to approach that one to give us the best chance to get it right.

We went in, picked up the canter, and I was like “alright self, keep your leg on, keep a rhythm, sit up, and don’t die. Oh and breathe every once in a while.”. All good goals, ya know? We swept around the turn to the first oxer, I saw the distance come up easily, we cantered down to the base right out of stride, and… wham. Henry hit the crap out of that thing. First rail, in the dirt, for no particular reason at all. I was like what the actual F, man. Even Trainer agreed there was zero reason for that to have come down. Considering how often I watched it fall all day, I wonder if there was something the horses just weren’t reading about the fence. Whatever though, we still had 11 more to jump.

The rest of the course was fine. The rhythm was better, but I was having a hard time getting him rebalanced quickly enough in the lines. That made them all ride a little tight, which finally bit us in one line when we just got too deep and flat to the out. That rail I will definitely take as my fault. My horse is not careful, so if I give him a good reason to have a rail down, he certainly will. We really gotta jump more long courses, my 4 fences at home aren’t particularly fair preparation for either of us with a course like this one. I see some jumper shows in our future.
But there were no spectacular crashes or fails… so like… that’s something I guess? Aim high, kids. Mostly I was just happy to be done with those two phases so that we could finally switch to XC mode and focus on that part. Tomorrow, THE FUN STUFF.
looks like it was a GORGEOUS day everything so green and sunny! 🙂 HA I wish i had been there when you fell off your truck. LOL I would have made sure you were okay before laughing, I promise. Ouch. See that is what you get for multitasking (Setting up tent and watching the arrival of people!).
Glad dressage was over with quick and stadium went okay besides the two rails. UGH hate both those phases for sure!!
Great photo of you over the fence in stadium up there and i love the one you posted on IG of Henry CC! His face 😉
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The weather and footing were both amazing, which is like… super rare combination here! My freaking shoulder still hurts from falling out of the truck.
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Well, rails or no, he’s forever the cutest jumper ever.
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If only he could be the cutest jumper ever with like… 6″ more clearance…
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Oh man I winced when reading you fell out of the truck. OUCH. Well, still sounds like it worked out okay. Seeing some of your IG posts I just love Henny’s XC face lol
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He only cares about XC, too
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Leg on, sit up, keep rhythm AND don’t die? Lofty goals for one SJ round.
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Yeah, I really aimed way too high.
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I think Henry is just bored with that height for stadium. He wants to jump higher so he has a reason to pick his feet up 😉
Sorry about falling off your truck, that sounds like it really hurt. I stepped out of mine Sunday and turned my ankle on exit. Of course there was a car driving by to witness that…
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At least no one witnessed mine. Granted, I was all alone in the dark so thank goodness I didn’t actually hurt myself.
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OMG telling the girl with the broken back about your fall onto your back makes me want to die.
Henny so cute per always. Jump 1 he was just showing his displeasure with not being on XC yet?
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Dude, my whole ribcage still feels out of whack, I can’t imagine a broken back. Been a while since I hit the ground that hard! Pathetic that it happened because I fell out of a truck.
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Ugh, if it feels bad after a few days get it checked out. Horse people apparently have too high pain tolerance (according to my ortho surgeon) and walk around with broken things… like broken backs… for 11 days… Not that I know anything about it.
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Luckily its a lot better today, just a little residual soreness. Yesterday my whole body felt like it got hit by a truck (or… the ground…).
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“Coked out dolphin” – best description ever!! HAHAHA!!!
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You know it’s accurate.
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Most of the rails up, one epic story about falling off a tailgate (that is SO something I would do), and one amazing SJ photo to cap it off? I’d say that’s a fairly successful day?
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I mean, no one died, so… yeah!
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To me, any show where all the jumps were jumped (in the right order) and no one fell off- that’s the definition of success!
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“Stay on, stay in” – that’s the motto!
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My back hurts just reading about your fall. Maybe start wearing your helmet for camp set up? 😉
Sounds like a great outing during a wonderful weekend! He looks great in that pic.
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*snort* coked out dolphin hahaha
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