This is only getting broken up into two posts because I have SO MUCH media. Everyone say thank you to Leigh, XpressFoto, and Hillary for carrying the show recap in its entirety.

As I love to do during season, I entered the Thursday one-day division rather than any of the weekend divisions. Is it usually way more competitive because all the pros show their horses on Thursday to have more time for clients on the weekend? Yes. But ya know… I’d still rather be in and out and done and dusted in one day and just not get a ribbon. I’m very good at not getting ribbons, I have years of experience at it. (humble brag)

Anyway, my dressage ride time was quite early – 8:18 as the fourth horse of the day in the ring. Florida Horse Park is about a 45min drive, plus I needed time to park, groom, tack up, and put studs in since we were in a grass ring. Thus I had to leave the farm around 6:15am to make sure I wasn’t rushed. That meant I opted not to braid (let’s be real, I wasn’t gonna braid anyway, this was just an exceptionally convenient excuse). The day before I had spur of the moment decided to clip Presto again, and he got a bath, so… good enough, yes?

Like I mentioned, we were down in the grass ring, separate from the main arena with 3 other dressage rings. The perks of this were that we had our own warmup area, so at no point in time were there more than 4 horses in there. The downside of it was that I own the nosiest, most wants-to-be-in-the-chaos animal on the planet, and he kept staring up at the other rings wondering why he was being punished with quiet, calm, and relative solitude.

Either way, he warmed up fine. My trainer couldn’t make it that early, which was no big deal. I’d had a lesson the day before and she told me how to warm him up and which buttons to make sure I could push. He was a little sticky in the first two trot-canter transitions to the right (our bugaboo of the week, it seems) but then we got a couple good ones. He was in front of my leg but obedient, and felt pretty good by the time it was our turn.

We went in the ring and it started out pretty well, with an 8 for the first centerline and a 7.5 for the trot lengthening, right off the bat. As we went along tho, Presto started to feel a little… taller. And like his attention was beginning to wander up the hill towards the other dressage rings. He held it together until the second leg yield, during which he decided he should send out an emergency SOS call in the form of a high pitched scream as he tried to crane his head to look up the hill. Still, he halted well, and the free walk was fine up until the last few steps when he decided no horse could possibly endure these horribly serene conditions any longer, upon which he jigged. He never jigs.

And then it was time to canter and do the canter lengthening to the right. And well… yeehaw bitches.

He flipped that freak flag of a tail up in the air like an Arabian and away he went. It wasn’t cute.

I managed to wrangle him around something resembling a circle and then back down to trot within like 5 meters of where I was supposed to (a miracle really) and then had to canter the other way. Luckily I was able to keep the lid on him a bit more in that direction.

Luckily after that all we had left was the trot up centerline, which was quite perky but straight (another 8) and then halt/salute without getting murdered.

So that was… a thing we did. Kinda frustrating because again we were riding in front of the judge that always loves him, so taking those 5’s and 6’s in the middle were an ouch. We got a few 8’s tho to counterbalance, and she was kind enough to see through the yeehaws and give us a 7 on harmony (she thought I handled it well), so we ended up with a 31.

Granted, in a very competitive division like that, anything not in the 20’s leaves you down the leaderboard.

Sigh. A little disappointing because without the Fuckery it would have been a good mark, but that’s horses. Especially horses like this one. If he can’t be part of the chaos he’ll just make his own.

At least he’s cute in his new bridle. And honestly I love all my weird colored jackets because the sea of black and navy is so boring, but I can’t help but love how the black jacket looks on him. The sparkles on the pockets and collar coordinate with my boots and saddle pad and saddle too, so like… sparkle slay, even if black is basic. It’s still my favorite color.

After that we had a long 4 hours until showjumping. Presto hung out at the trailer with his hay, and I watched some Intermediate rounds and got a look at the course. As is standard around here, there was like one actual related distance outside of the combinations. If you don’t like long bending lines and rollbacks, don’t come to Ocala.

Then I popped over to XC to meet Ellie. I’d walked XC the day before and just had a couple questions/points of concern, so she looked at those with me and gave me her advice. Then I popped back over the trailer to get on and head to SJ warmup.

He was really super in warmup. I won it for sure. Every distance came up perfect, he was jumping phenomenal, and didn’t even try to yeet me when some other horses in the ring had a fiesta. I was delighted.

I wish I could tell you that we went in the ring and had the same winning vibe, but we did not.

Well, okay, one of us did. It wasn’t me.

The first few jumps weren’t so bad, but then I had too much time to think (always bad) and decided that pulling was the answer (it never is). We ended up underpowered and I buried him to a few, including both doubles which he then had to try extra hard to get out of cleanly.

Bless him tho, he did. He jumped his little guts out and was just the best boy despite his rider not helping much at all. Redemption from his feral dressage interlude, I suppose. All forgiven.

I managed to figure out how to put my leg on and finished up alright, heading back to the gate feeling a bit embarrassed and calling it “hot garbage”. Ellie perhaps more professionally said “the beginning and the end were good you just got too underpowered in the middle” which I think is just a nice way of being like “yeah the warmest of garbage” but ya know, tomato tomato.

It was a clear round though, bless him, and entirely because of him. One of these days I will learn my lesson about going the fuck forward, but it was not that day.

If you’re forcing me to look on the bright side, I suppose the good takeaways are that 1) he really is jumping better than ever. That’s indisputable at this point I think. 2) Clearly he’s plenty confident, because he can do his job just fine without my assistance. Those are good things.

Tomorrow, the fun part…