Getting creative now with our show recap post titles, because why not.

I have a lot to catch up on from the past week, but lets start with the horse show, yes? We ran a Training at a one-day schooling HT last Wednesday, in an attempt to knock the rust off and see how Presto is feeling now that he’s post-ulcer treatment. First off, my ride times were positively delectable – 9:30am dressage and 10:30 show jumping, followed by XC. I got there at 8:30 and left at 11:15. What an absolutely delightful morning.

Anyway. I noticed that the judge for my ring was someone that is kind of notorious for never saying anything particularly positive. I think her scores are always pretty fair (if a bit on the stingier side than some others) but I’ve ridden in front of her like 4-5 times and have yet to get a positive comment. Superb. Nothing like an early morning soul-crushing.

I got on to warm up and Presto was a wee bit wild. He really wanted to spook at something but we put him to work pretty quickly so that he had to focus on that instead. He stuck his tongue over the bit at the first part of our warmup – something he’s never done before – so that was a new one. We raised the bit a hole and he didn’t do it again but come on man, no new tricks. Overall he felt decent… he did kind of give me the feeling that if I really went for it in the canter lengthenings I might find myself seated on a kite, so the decision was made to just be conservative and aim for a relaxed obedient test.

And that’s pretty much what we did. I hadn’t ridden that test in like a year, and only ran through parts of it the day before, so part of me was like “boy I hope I remember this test” and the other part of me was like “boy I hope he keeps a lid on the fireworks”. So it was conservatively ridden, but mostly accurate, and he did everything I asked him to do with minimal fuss. I came out of the ring and me and Trainer both were just kinda like “yeah sure, not bad, could have been worse, wasn’t brilliant”. She figured it was high 20’s, I thought it might be around a 30 from that judge. But I guess she was feeling generous because we got a 26.4, with no score lower than 6.5, four 8’s, and a 10 (our first!) for the halt.

I mean there’s still not a single positive comment on there, but I’ll take it. Even the remarks on the back just said “some nice moments”. LOL. I had to laugh. Compliments just aren’t something that judge does, apparently. That’s my best score from her so far though. Either way it put us second in a decent-sized division of mostly pros and a few solid upper level horses. Gonna be honest, I do enjoy starting off near the top after the first phase. Thank you Presto for making the judges like you on the flat.

We had show jumping in pretty short order after that, and no time to really walk the course. We walked over and watched a few rounds just to learn the course, then I went back to the trailer, changed out my tack, had a snack, and soon enough it was time to head back over to showjumping warmup. We didn’t do much in there, just popped over a few jumps and headed over to the ring.

Presto jumped well, but I did not ride well. I was just disorganized and went a little fetal at one point. He had the rail at fence 2 (mostly because I think he was kind of staring off at XC and not paying much attention) and then I just… outright missed a couple times. It wasn’t my cutest effort. And it caught me a little off guard tbh because at this point cantering around a 1m course with him usually feels like something we can do in our sleep. I think I got a bit lackadaisical about it and needed a bit of a “hello, wake up, ride the horse ya dumbass”. I am out of practice y’all. I also realized later that I didn’t take time to visualize riding the course in my head, which I always do, and I think that was part of my issue. Luckily we’d had enough of a gap after dressage for the rail to only drop us from 2nd to 3rd.

Either way, that phase was done, and I went back past my trailer to put on his XC boots and my vest. Then it was over to XC warmup where we had to wait a bit for them to work through some people ahead of me, then we did some forward and back at the gallop, hopped a few jumps, and went to the start box.

The course was pretty straightforward, a fair Training I thought. I think the most complex part was the water – a rolltop with 5 straight or 6 bending strides to a drop into the water (if you rode the 5 straight you dropped down at a bit of an angle) and then turn right in the water and jump a kinda-skinnyish wedge out. The coffin was 2 strides to 2 strides, there was another downbank combo in the woods by the road, and a trakehner towards the end. Fairly standard for the level.

Presto tackled it with his standard vigor. Ok, perhaps there was too much vigor at the down bank to the water. I got him there on a little bit of a gap and rather than pat the ground (ain’t nobody got time for that, he says) he went COWABUNGAAAAA and leaped into the water like a deranged hippopotamus. Don’t worry, I bought the photo series. It’s iconic. Just me out here flying the newest airline, Air BongoBoi.

When we landed I was entirely on the buckle of my (very long) reins, and we were like almost in the middle of the water. It was a relatively absurd effort on his part, but he seemed most delighted. He definitely tested my rein-gathering skills as I had to quickly swing a right to head to the skinny.

Otherwise it was pretty uneventful. My eye needs to tune back in to the cross country pace and distance… it’s been too long since we last jumped at speed and I kept getting him a bit deep. He didn’t care but it sure annoyed the shit out of me. I’m kind of sad there’s no pic or video of him jumping the open oxer though, he galloped down to that one beautifully and really pinged off the ground there. To his credit, he feels great. Definitely my happy boy again.

We finished 14 seconds under time for a double clear, which moved us back up the leaderboard to take the win. I was admittedly disappointed in my own performance… I felt like I rode a bit crap, honestly. Presto gets the credit for that particular blue ribbon. But clearly he’s back to business, we confirmed that part. Now I need to get myself back up to par!

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