This was both the best and “worst” XC round Presto and I have had together, so I hope y’all are ready for a roller coaster ride. Buckle up!

First: the course. Stable View is big. It just is. Lots of big tables, many of which we could not figure out how on god’s green earth they managed to make measure correctly for the level. Literally half the jumps were big wide tables, several with brush on top, and when you’re on a young horse that doesn’t brush through the brush – yeehaw, mofo. Enjoy your literally 4′ table!

That’s fine though, whatever, we’re used to the big tables by now. I mean, did I make direct eye contact with any of them while we were course walking? Absolutory the fuckin hell not. But ya know. It’s fine.

One of my bigger concerns was how the light and the dew at my ride time – 8:30am – might affect how things look and rode. Especially because there was a downhill trajectory at the beginning and a giant steep uphill climb in the middle… there was far more terrain here than Presto has ever seen and in case you haven’t noticed he’s ginormous, so I wasn’t sure how he’d handle that aspect.

The first jump was a full height skinny hanging log. Inviting? Nope. Especially headed directly away from warmup and directly into the sun. Sit up and kick, bitch. He did actually jump that quite well even though he was a little squirrelly (read: amped as fuck) before we went through the start box.

After that we landed and galloped away down a gentle downhill slope to hop over what was definitely the smallest and most inviting fence on our course, a house we shared with Training. Heading up to it Presto did take a look around down the big hill to his right, looking for other horses, but he kept coming forward.

Continuing downhill we came to the first big table – the iconic Stable View hammock. Mofo is wide, the pic doesn’t do it a bit of justice. It’s also got a bit of a shiny surface, and the early morning sun at my ride time hit the top of it and made it look like just a giant blob of light. I’ve loved things more than I loved jumping that, but Presto read it fine.

Then we had a little slope uphill to 4, a fucking huge (huge. It was huge. No one will convince me otherwise.) brush table that we shared with Prelim. It came up really nicely out of stride and Presto pinged over it like the most delighted little maniac.

Then we hung a rollback to the right, down a pretty steep hill to 5, a rolltop we also shared with Prelim. I thought this might be a little challenging for Presto having to turn and jump down a steeper hill like that, but I also really wanted him to learn a bit about terrain here at Stable View, so I half-halted then let him keep coming down it rather than trying to help him too much or pick our way down. He figured it out quite well, honestly, and pinged over the rolltop, then straight ahead to another table.

Then we had our first combo, which the pic doesn’t quite do justice. We had a MIM rail, 6 bending strides to an angled brush two-stride. What you can’t see in the course pics (which are from the Course Walk app and was posted by Stable View, I didn’t take my own) is the big berm a couple strides in front of the MIM rail. It’s designed to help give you a nice lifting half-halt, but it does mean you have to keep coming at it. Either way, it’s something Presto hasn’t seen yet. No worries, he powered up that thing, hopped over the rail, and we immediately found the line through the angles. Easy peasy. Big pats and an emphatic “GOOD BOY”.

We had a bit of a downhill stretch to our next couple fences, so I let him keep rolling there. He was absolutely in attack mode – anyone who has ever ridden a good XC horse will understand what that feels like. We hopped easily over the next two tables down in the trees and then got to the big hill in the back. I was VERY interested to see what he would do here. A lot of green horses get halfway up their first big hill and go “oh wow this is hard” or need a little encouragement to keep digging. All I did was put my hands forward and Presto absolutely ate that hill with utter delight. I loved that reaction, I think it tells you a lot about a horse.

At the top of the hill there was an upright gate which is always icky looking but it jumps superb. After that we came to the water… and here’s where we need a little back story.

Our last XC school before Stable View was meant to be a “quick and easy” (lol) pop over a few things. And for some reason that just wasn’t Presto’s day. I was having trouble getting into a flow in general, he was being a little weird about the ditch, and the first time he jumped down the bank into water he was hesitant about it, then landed real weird and stung himself (and almost launched me off the front). After that he was hesitant about jumping off the bank again a few times, but he did get over it and jump down fine before we were done. Still, not what you want to have happen right before a big show.

So a couple days later we took him to another venue, and he jumped down their banks into water just fine, absolutely no problem whatsoever. We thought ok, the other day was just a one off.

The water complex at Stable View is tricky. Because you come at it up a hill, the horses can’t see that there’s water there until they’re literally right on top of it. And what was the Modified line there? A cabin, two strides to a down bank into water, then around to a corner. The water is also dark, small, crowded, and not particularly inviting. Normally I wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but it looked a whole lot like the water complex where we had our schooling issue. Trainer and I discussed passing through the water first, as is allowed by the rules, but I figured that if we have a hole in our confidence/training, I’d rather know about it now so we can address it ASAP.

And well, we have a hole. Presto approached the cabin totally fine, jumped it, peeked down into the water, and spun. I turned him around, let him pass calmly through the water, reapproached the bank, and he jumped down fine on the second attempt. I think if we hadn’t had the schooling issue he still would have been surprised by the water coming out of literally nowhere, but he would have gone. I think him stinging himself on that water during schooling was in his head there and he just reacted.

Once he was in the water he was totally back to normal and snapped right back in attack mode. He jumped the brush corner afterward great, then absolutely flew over the next 3 tables. After that we popped over another cabin, down a hill, and swung a tight rollback left to pass through the next water (which he was also slightly wiggly about, but he went) and out over the skinny brush.

From there we just had one more combo, the big brush bending line to another corner. This walked in a normal 6, but I had angled the A a little bit and he jumped in bold, so I just straightened the line some and did the 5 instead, which rode nicely. After that was the most gigantinormous double brush table (I wish I’d taken a better pic of that, the brush was at my ta-tas on both the front and back of the table) which he absolutely pinged over. He was most delighted with himself. Then it was two more tables and a hop over the house at the finish.

While on paper I’m obviously disappointed to add a 20 to his previously spotless record, the reality is that this kind of stuff is part of the process, especially as things start getting harder. Nothing with horses is ever linear. He’s young, and we’re both learning. There was absolutely nothing naughty about his reaction at the water, I think he was genuinely surprised and concerned, and that’s fair. We’ve got some work to do on rebuilding his confidence about drops into dark murky water. He thinks it (literally) bites!

I was still hella proud of him for this XC round. Aside from that blip, he was actually fucking stellar. He tackled all the big tables, all the combos, and all the terrain like an absolute beast. He didn’t hold on to the water incident, he put it behind him immediately and clicked right back in. Those are all really encouraging takeaways for me. The scope and tenacity for the upper levels is definitely in there. We’re not ready yet, but it’s there.

The most important thing is that we came home with a happy healthy horse who’s looking and feeling great… we can work on the rest!