Well guys, this was finally it: our move up to Prelim. I talked about it some in our Patreon fb group but didn’t really say much publicly, mostly because I was frickin scared to jinx it. If you recall, we were actually entered in our first Prelim last May, and then I promptly fell off and broke my ankle, and between that injury, starting with a new trainer over the summer, and Presto having the monster abscess that took us out of the fall season, here we were again 10 months later finally ready to take another swing at it. Quietly though, lest I tempt the horse gods. We all know they are volatile and vindictive.

I picked Majestic for our first one because it’s the facility we’ve really spent the most time at. It also tends to not look quite as big and intimidating as some of the other venues can, at least to me anyway. It has it’s own traits that make it challenging, but we’ve shown there enough by now to be comfortable with it, so Majestic seemed like a logical choice.

Hillary offered to braid Presto for me, and you can bet your ass I didn’t turn that offer down. I haven’t braided him since like… early last year maybe? We tend to do mostly one-day shows, and everyone here is pretty relaxed for those. Braiding isn’t required, after all, and if you’re running under Prelim and/or at a one-day, it feels especially superfluous to me these days. Am I saying that because my horse is not exactly a patient and cooperative creature to braid and I hate doing it? Perhaps. Either way, it works for us. But this was his Prelim debut, and a two-day show, so… braiding seemed like the right choice. Hillary knows how much I hate it, and she offered to take one for the team and braided him for me at 6:15am. I nominate her for sainthood. He looked great.

It also worked out really well in my favor because I woke up that morning feeling kind of shit. My throat was a little sore and my nose was dripping like a freakin faucet. The cold and windy morning wasn’t helping at all, and I was mostly focused on trying to minimize my suffering and make sure my brain was plugged in for the tasks ahead. Braiding would have been extra miserable.

My dressage time was 8:48am, which seemed kinda rude but honestly – the vibes that time of day were immaculate. It was really quiet still because they started the day with just two dressage rings, one Open Prelim and one Prelim Rider. That meant there weren’t that many trailers there yet, and at no point was there more than 4 other horses with us in dressage warmup. It was so chill and lovely. Sign me up for that horse show experience every time.

Presto warmed up GREAT. Like he was quiet and relaxed and focused from the moment I threw my leg over. No shenanigans whatsoever. I practiced a few of the harder movements from the test, seeing if I was going to get any kind of resistance or yeehaw from him, but nope. He was just… obedient. I started joking that maybe I should take his temperature.

His test was much the same. Quiet, professional, obedient. One of the leg yields was a bit slow getting started – he was just a couple steps slow off my leg – and on the second 10m canter half circle I slightly overshot centerline a bit. I didn’t really go for it too much on the canter lengthenings because I wanted to keep my nice quiet test, so maybe it lacked a bit of sparkle, but overall I was really really pleased with him. No arabian impressions, no flagged tails, no yeehaws, no big mistakes. He even held together those counter canter strides with no complaints.

We scored a 28.3, which is exactly the same score we got from Peter Gray at our last Modified at Rocking Horse. I’ll very happily take that for a first stab at a Prelim test, especially when I can easily identify several areas of potential improvement for next time. It also left us sitting in 2nd after dressage, which is always a nice place to be!

After we got him back to the trailer and taken care of, I went over to showjumping to walk the course and watch a few of the early Prelim rounds. I dunno if it’s just me but I always like to watch enough to see one really really smooth, exceptional round (to see what I want to emulate) and one rough, not so great but survivable round (to remember that just because it isn’t perfect doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world). Is that weird? I dunno, it’s just how my brain works. Type A problems.

Anyway, the course looked great. After doing the 1.15m rounds a couple days prior, the 1.10m honestly looked a little bit small. That’s NEVER a bad problem to have. There was plenty to do though, with a double combination, a triple combination, a liverpool, and a triple bar (haven’t seen one of those in a while!).

Warmup was, once again, blissfully quiet. So was Presto. Sometimes he’s mature and trained and it catches us all by surprise. We jumped a few oxers, ending with a big square oxer off a short turn, then one big vertical before we went in the ring. He jumped the snot out of the big square oxer and I found myself grabbing for mane only to remember that he was braided. It’s a hell of a lot harder to grab a button. This braiding thing is impractical, guys!

We went in the ring and Presto was honestly foot perfect. Focused, rideable, and jumping great. I resolved to myself that if I was going to make a mistake, I wanted to make one going forward, not pulling, so if I was ever in doubt about anything I just sat up and put my leg on. Amazing how much better that works. Presto was super happy to just go forward and do his job. So trained. So fancy.

This is the horse I’ve been wanting to feel, and he really stepped up to the plate. We had one of the best rounds we’ve put together in a long time and logged a nice double clear, keeping our second place spot.

There were plenty of rails hitting the ground throughout the day in various divisions (fence 2 seemed to be a particular bugaboo for some reason? I guess it was kind of a harder “rollback” type feeling to have right off the bat?) and he’s certainly had rails here at this venue in the past, but he just felt – for lack of a better term – leveled up. Is it age and maturity? Is it the result of the training program? Probably both. Either way, I frickin dig it. I wanted the move-up to feel confident and competent, and so far we’d absolutely ticked those boxes in the first two phases. What an exceptional boy. All of it was just incredibly, delightfully, blissfully uneventful, like it was just another day at the office.

Of course, that was just day 1. After I walked XC with my trainer Presto got to go home, have a bath, roll in his sandpit, and take a nice afternoon nap in the sun. I got to shift my focus to the next (and biggest, and hardest) part. But that’s a story for tomorrow.