Author: Amanda C

The good thing about being the only person in Prelim is that our 30.7 dressage score was good enough for first. Admittedly, anything I did that day was going to be good enough for first, as long as I stayed on and didn’t forget the course. Which was enough of a challenge for me at a first Prelim attempt, let’s be honest.

After dressage I walked stadium one more time then swapped tack and got back on. We headed down to stadium warmup, which is very small and the footing is pretty deep. I hate all warmups as a general rule, but I hate that one the most. I just could not get Henry in front of my leg at all coming out of the hairpin turn (he’s kind of the worst at handling deep footing) and he decided maybe the solution was to just stop. Twice.

That was not the solution.

Trainer promptly went and acquired me a whip, Henry got smacked on his hiney for the first time EVER by me, and proceeded to become extraordinarily offended. His eyes bugged right out of his head as he leapt into a gallop, feet magically unstuck from the deep footing, and he marched right down to the oxer and pinged over it like the Good Boy he usually is. We went up to the ring and waited for the people walking the course to clear out, and Henry stood there doing the equine equivalent of rocking back and forth in fetal position in the corner, still wide eyed and absolutely beside himself about getting a smack on the butt. Seriously horse, it was one smack. And you kind of had it coming. Get in front of my damn leg, you drama king.

Once we were in the ring I picked up the gallop like I meant it and powered down to the first jump. After which Henry landed and basically just kind of dragged me the whole rest of the way, screaming “OH MY GOD I WAS A BAD BOY, OH MY GOD SHE HIT ME” on repeat. Still traumatized, clearly. He definitely never once even vaguely thought about stopping. I think I could have gotten him there upside down and backwards and he still would have jumped. Granted, he never once even considered listening to any of my attempts at a half halt either.

You know what’s not useful on an overly dramatic horse that’s having an existential crisis about having been a bad boy? A goofy little loosely-fitted hackamore with a leather curb strap that is essentially a glorified halter. In normal circumstances it’s great, but this time… not so much. We ended up just too deep and flat, past the distance to a few of the verticals, and had rails there. Which is the complete opposite of Texas Rose, where his rails came at the oxers.

The hardest jump sequence to me was 5-6-7-8, which weaved across the diagonal. 5 was an oxer placed very close to the in gate off of a really awkward short turn, then bending to a vertical in the shade, then land and hang a sharp left to an oxer, then land and hang an even sharper right to a vertical. It was a very herky-jerky sequence and the turn to 8 was sketchy at best.

Really though, Henry’s little temporary lapse in sanity aside, it was fine. It was our second real Prelim round ever, no one died, and it wasn’t tragic. Two phases down, one to go. I sure was laughing my butt off as I pulled him up though, which took some effort. Henry’s eyes were still bugging out of his head like we might all just randomly start beating him at any moment, because clearly that happens to him all the time. Honestly Henry, you are ridiculous. IT WAS ONE SMACK. In FIVE YEARS of owning you.

After that I had to shove him full of cookies back at the barn, which seemed to convince him that he was indeed a Good Boy again. He relaxed and went back in his stall to munch on some hay for a couple hours before cross country, his Bad Boy experience completely forgotten.

My ride time was at noon on the dot, as soon as dressage wrapped up (dressage is all in the middle of XC, so I’m pretty sure no one wants to be doing their test as horses are galloping right past them). I stepped into warmup just as the last person was saluting, and after a couple laps of gallop and a few warmup jumps, Trainer sent us on our way with a “Good luck, have fun, ride smart!”. I got over to the startbox and turned on my helmet camera, which ended up being a huge mistake as we had about a 10 minute delay while all the jump judges finished finding their spots. As soon as Control radioed and said they were ready, my camera beeped and died. Not even kidding. I’m really sad about it now. Luckily there were a few people videoing and Hillary was taking pics, so I at least have some media.

I figured that I would know after jump 3 (the big red wagon) how the rest of the course was going to go. As usual I wanted to come out of the startbox positive, getting him thinking forward right away. If you can get Henry convinced that he’s running away with you a bit (which he isn’t, but he thinks he might be) at the beginning and jump a couple of fences from a more open gallop, his confidence swells. He came out of the box all business, pinged over fence 1, and when I landed and put my leg on, he eagerly dug in and galloped away. At that point I thought “Hmm… I think this might be a good day…”. We jumped the big rolltop at 2 out of stride, then wove around the mound to the wagon. I saw the distance as soon as we came around the corner and so did Henry, and again, we galloped over it right out of stride. A huge smile crept onto my face at this point and I let out a “HELL YEAH GOOD BOY”. As predicted, by jump 3 I knew how it was going to go… and I knew we had this.

We wove through the woods over the combination at 4ab, down the big log stack with the dropped landing, over the skinny, and then up and over the Irish bank. The chevron came up fast off of a short turn but Henry never even blinked, just popped over and kept right on galloping through the trees to the trakehner. Clearly for our first Prelim I wasn’t worried about time at all… I hadn’t even worn my watch, nor was I going to press him for speed. Trying to make 520mpm would basically be a flat out gallop for Henry, and I wanted to just let him gallop at a comfortable pace and focus on having good jumps. It sure seemed like everything came up one after the other really quickly as it was, without many long gallop stretches. I guess that’s the effect of riding through the woods versus out in the open.

After the trakehner we had a narrow rolltop out of the woods, coming back into the main field for the water. This was a “busy” spot, with a log down into the water, a skinny on the opposite bank, then immediately to a bending line of arks as we curved back around the water. I sat and whoaed as we came down to the water, taking care to jump in quietly (and slightly to the right) lest we go blasting past the skinny. As soon as we landed from that Henry moved right back up to gallop easily over the arks, landing and powering away, back up the hill. He had plenty in the tank, and he seemed to be having a grand ol’ time as he hopped over the bench like it was a speed bump.

From there we headed to the jump that I thought might be most tricky, a big corner off of a left hand turn, heading back into the woods. The tricky part for my horse was the fact that there was an unflagged fence right where we needed to turn, and I thought Henry might lock onto that one, messing up our approach to the corner. And he did lock onto that one (Henry you are predictable) but I stuck my right spur in and got him turned toward the corner instead, which he locked onto with equal gusto. By this point he was having such a good time I think he would have jumped a tank if I pointed him at one.

After the corner we curved around the edge of a pond and popped out a few strides away from the brushy boat table (I dunno what else to call it, it’s a table with an orange boat on the front face and brush on the top). He jumped the freaking snot out of that, stumbling a little on landing but quickly righting himself back up and galloping on. From there we went to the downhill bank combo – a skinny rolltop, two strides to a downbank, then down the hill to a chevron with a dropped landing. That put us back into the main field once again for the last two fences – the train and the big ugly last table. The train was easy peasy, and I came up to the table thinking “ok, self, don’t mess this up”. And then, there it was, the nice forward distance, and we closed the last 5 strides to get up to that thing perfectly. He jumped it like a freaking superstar, with room to spare. Definitely not tired.

And then we crossed through the finish flags, and then trainer yelled “YOU HAVE A PRELIM PONY!” (which you can hear in the video) and then cue all the bawling that I already wrote about on Monday. We racked up plenty of time faults, as expected, but we were clear. We finished. We did it. We actually fucking did it. Days later I’m still pinching myself, and still stuffing Henry full of cookies.

It was a totally respectable round too, not even a case of survival. I felt like I made mostly good decisions, and my horse felt like he was brimming with confidence. He had plenty left in the tank, definitely could have gone faster, and strutted back to the barn like the damn unicorn he is.

It was one of the best rides of my lifetime, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.

Alright, enough of the mushy preamble, time for the good stuff! Swapping back to my old show recap format for this one, because there was a lot of “other” stuff besides just the riding parts to talk about.

If you’re looking for drama, you know you’ll always find it here. Life with Henry is never boring, and he proved that on Friday afternoon when, during our last ride at home before leaving for Pine Hill, he decided to fling a shoe into the abyss. Do you know how easy it is to find a shoe in a 20 acre field? Spoiler alert: IT ISN’T. Lord knows where that thing is, because hell if I could find it. Cue a semi-frantic text to the farrier.

He needs to be sainted. Like for real he had just put this set of shoes on Henry on MONDAY (taking great care to get everything the way he wanted, I might add) and yet he showed up at the barn at 6:55 on Saturday morning to make a whole new shoe (which isn’t exactly quick and simple with clips and stud holes) and get us fixed up and ready to go. And then after he was done he tried to help me pack my trailer. He is a farrier unicorn.

With that crisis averted and taken care of so quickly, we were actually on the road to Pine Hill half an hour earlier than planned. I unloaded, parked my trailer (being early = prime trailer parking), unpacked, set everything up, and then I had some time to kill so I went to walk cross country to get my first impressions while I could be alone with my thoughts. I was concerned about the footing with all the rain we’ve had lately, but was pleasantly surprised by how good the ground felt. Clearly they had done a lot of work to help dry things out and improve the softer/muddier areas. There’s a course walk up online from the spring show (although it’s missing a pic of the last fence) but I wish I had done my own, because they had everything brushed up and decorated and the course looked just beautiful. It’s amazing how much of a difference brush and plants and flowers can make! Of course, since I was the only entry in Prelim I was like “geez I hope we make it this far, otherwise they decorated all my jumps for nothing.”.

After I walked the course, I got on Henry and met Trainer for a quick dressage school. Henry was uncharacteristically fantastic… like he buckled down and went right to work, feeling great and rideable and about as fancy as Henry ever gets. It was the best dressage ride we’ve had in quite a while. Suspicious. Highly suspicious.

Then we walked showjumping, which, after the enormity that was Texas Rose’s stadium a few weeks ago when I did the P/T there, Pine Hill’s stadium looked almost cute in comparison. The jumps are more simple, less intimidating, and I swear there were a couple at TR that could not possibly have been “only” 1.10m. I was happy that the PH course looked very comfortable to my eye. It was big enough, and hard enough, but not poop-your-pants menacing.

After that we headed out to walk XC one more time, this time with Trainer (when I say we, Hillary and her baby Bea came along for most of it, too. Bea is going to be a pro by the time she’s actually old enough to ride.). My favorite part was watching Hillary’s eyes as we walked past the big chevron in the woods. It looked just like this:

Prelim jumps are big. I don’t recommend making direct eye contact. I tended to just give them a friendly pat on the top as I walk by, without actually looking at it much. I definitely didn’t get within 20′ of the trakehner (don’t need to know how big the ditch is, thanks) and I know I didn’t get up close and personal with the others either.

Well, except for this one.

That’s the last fence, a big ugly gross table that was large enough to house a family of hobbits. There was sand on the top of it, which I used as my own personal little zen garden, dragging my fingers around in the sand while trying not to let myself notice how big that stupid thing really was. If we made it that far, it would be the last thing standing between us and a completed Prelim. I wanted so badly to make it to this fence, in all of it’s hideous glory.

It was one of those courses where nothing really scared me in particular, but everything demanded great respect. We are officially in the territory of No Joke. They’re all big, they’re all wide, they’re all solid AF. There isn’t a “gimme” fence among them, even the smaller ones have some kind of technicality to them. Mistakes are easier to make and they carry greater consequences. But underneath all of that, I also felt a budding sense of confidence. I felt 100% that we were capable of this, if I rode him right and made good decisions. I just had to focus on that and let everything else go.

After we were done at the barn, Hillary and I went and gorged ourselves on Mexican food before rolling into our hotel. Typically I have a bit of a hard time falling asleep at shows because my mind is just too busy going over the dressage test or the courses or visualizing how I’m going to ride things and trying to remember everything Trainer said. This time though? I was completely passed the eff out before 9pm. I think that little zen garden on the last fence did it’s job, because I felt pretty at peace with what we needed to do.

Of course, since I fell asleep so early, I was wide awake at 4:15am. By 4:30 I gave up on the idea of going back to sleep, so I ended up at the barn half an hour earlier than necessary, waking Henry up out of a dead sleep (I swear he was snoring) to give him his breakfast. I had to be on by 7 anyway, so it was going to be an early morning regardless. Sorry bud.

I always have a hard time writing much about dressage. It just kind of… is. We go out, we warm up, we go in the ring, we do the thing, ta-da. Which is definitely selling it short, considering how much time we have spent laboring over our dressage (and omg is LABORIOUS ever the perfect word to describe it). Our ride time was 7:30, first horse of the day in Ring 1, which was nice because it meant warmup was less crowded. While Henry was not quite as brilliant as the day before, he was still pretty relaxed and on my aids. I went over to my ring early and the judge and scribe were ready too, so they went ahead and rang me in. Of course, Henry tried to leap into a canter at the sound of the bell (this isn’t the starting gate, ya dingus) which added a little dollop of tension just before we cruised up centerline.

Really though, it was a decent test. Not as relaxed as he can be, but also nowhere near as horrifically tight as he can be (and historically has been). I tried to ride as accurately as possible, although there were a couple of deep spots in really inconvenient places (like on the rail where I made my first 10m trot circle, and both corners where the 10m canter half circles are). He got a little stuck a couple times, but recovered well. Overall it was a very obedient, steady test with nothing overly spectacular, but nothing awful either. I’ve been repeating that opening sequence of 10m circle-turn left-halt-trot-turn right-10m circle-up centerline-leg yield for the past couple weeks ad nauseam. Generally I try to avoid drilling movements or teaching Henry the test, since he is the king of anticipation, but in this case this particular string of movements is challenging enough for him that it seemed to help us both if he knew exactly what was coming. It was much better than our last attempt at Texas Rose, so I think it helped.

The judge thought the test was good enough for a 30.7, which I will happily take with zero complaints and no questions asked, since she typically isn’t inclined to be overly charitable with her scores.

Tomorrow: on to the jompies!

I have a heck of a show recap to write about yesterday’s horse trial, our first Prelim. That will take me a little while though, and before I give you all the details of how it went down, I’m going to spoil it a little and tell you how it ended, and what a monumental moment it was for me.

It was an extremely emotional weekend, bookended by the lowest of lows and highest of highs. A good friend lost her horse on Friday, and as horse people I think we all feel our friends’ losses almost as acutely as we do our own. It’s a terrible feeling, understanding just how heartbroken they are, and also knowing that you’re helpless to fix it. Nothing can fix it. All you can do is stand beside them and feel it with them. We anchor our hopes and dreams to another living thing, a fragile one at that, and we love them in a unique way that other people don’t really understand. When we lose them, the pain is acute and pervasive. It is the worst part of owning and loving these animals, and it absolutely sucks.

Those kinds of things always hit me hard, feeling like a sharp reminder to always keep perspective and to have gratitude for what you have. And when it comes to Henry, I find myself repeatedly rocked back on my heels by the enormity of the gratitude I feel for him. He carried me dutifully around our first Prelim yesterday like a heat seeking missile, never missing a beat. It was one of those cross country rounds that we eventers live for – not perfection, no, that’s not what we’re about, but it was one of those rides where I helped him and he helped me, and together we just absolutely slayed it. It was a team effort, and we were in sync every step of the way.

As soon as I crossed the finish I was overwhelmed with pride for him, and pride for us, and there my emotional state swung 180 degrees the other direction. Who cries the whole way back to the barn after their first Prelim because they’re just so overwhelmed with pride and joy and gratitude and awe? Um yeah that’d be me. And then I alternated crying most of the way home, sometimes out of joy for myself, and sometimes out of anguish for my friend. That’s an odd yo-yo of emotion, but that’s horses. Sometimes they break our hearts, and sometimes they make our dreams come true.

Yesterday Henry absolutely did make my dreams come true, although I’m not sure it’s even fair to describe it that way. This is not at all what I had in mind when I bought him 5 years ago, or when we switched paths from jumpers to eventing 4 years ago. I guess I never dared to dream big enough. This horse, in all of his imperfection and improbability, has expanded my ideas about what is possible. I never went looking for a horse like this, but how I got so lucky to happen upon him, why he fatefully ended up in my path, I’ll never know. And how I lucked into the support group I have – my trainer (who has believed in us from the very beginning, although I have no idea WHY, considering we were a messy BN pair when we fell into her lap), my friends, everyone who showed up or sent messages to wish us well and cheer us on… it’s incredibly humbling, and I’ll never stop feeling immense gratitude for all of it. It truly does take a village, and I hope that my achievement feels like your achievement too.

We don’t get a lot of moments like this in our sport. We put in so much work, day in and day out, month after month, year after year. Progress often feels agonizingly slow, if it’s even recognizable at all. There’s always something that could be better. We question whether we’re good enough, whether we’ll ever measure up, whether our horses are capable. It’s a lot of blood and sweat and tears and money. We agonize over every decision. Sometimes things happen that are beyond our control, derailing our plans and sabotaging all of what we’ve worked so hard to get. But sometimes, on these rare occasions, the stars align just right, everything goes our way, and we’re rewarded for all of that hard work.

Henry and I officially have a Prelim under our belts, with a clear cross country at that. If this is a dream, please don’t wake me up. These are the moments we live for, and if you don’t mind, I’m going to relish it for one more day before we delve into a recap.

The latest “controversy” going around social media the past few weeks has been the mega-scandal of burgundy coats in the hunter ring. I have to admit, reading all the comments on this one made my eyes roll around in my head a lot more than usual. The vitriol and passion that some people have about coat color is kind of astounding, when you consider the myriad of other issues in equestrian sport that are, IMO, massively more important and critical.

But if you waded through all those comments and arguments and opinions, it really all came down to one thing: tradition. The big argument against burgundy is that it wasn’t a traditional color – not one that you would see in the hunt field. Which is true… it would be a faux pas there. Other folks pointed out that we are far from being traditional these days anyway, so why not let people wear a coat that is still a relatively conservative color.

I was thinking about this more last weekend as we were getting ready to fox hunt. Especially as I donned my stock tie, and watched all the full members of the hunt put on their cubbing outfits with canary vests and green and brown tweed coats. Velvet helmets, black dress boots or brown field boots, horses with a traditional hunter clip (no legs clipped) or trace clip, banged tails, and flat bridles. Horses that were, while ultimately well-mannered, spicy and eager to get going, and easily leaping into a flat out gallop that could go for hours. Honestly, foxhunting bears a lot more resemblance to eventing these days than it does to the hunter ring.

But the h/j folks aren’t the only ones that have been talking a lot about the subject of traditional attire lately. Eventing and dressage have had the same types of dialogue, trying to find a balance between modern and traditional. With all the modern fabrics and changing demands and dynamics of the sport, many are ready to abandon tradition completely. Others cling to it as being vital to the soul of equestrianism. Every year it seems there are minor rule changes about what colors are allowed, or what embellishments, or what logos and how big they can be. Sometimes the rules get more lax, other times they get more stringent, like we can’t even decide amongst ourselves which direction we’re really going.

There are also those who believe that updating our apparel to something that looks a bit more in line with other sports will help our image as a whole. That part of why we get such a bad rap with the general public during events like the Olympics is because we look so different – elitist and unapproachable and… archaic. Not like what people generally think of when they picture an athlete.

So I’m curious – where do you stand on this? Do you think it’s vital to our sport to cling to more traditional attire, or are you in favor of giving equestrians a modern facelift and more freedom with their apparel?