Author: Amanda C

My stadium time was only about an hour and a half after dressage, so I didn’t have a lot of time to waste in between phases. Or, alternately, a lot of time to stress about stadium. We saw the course for the first time that morning, walked it, and then went off to do dressage things. I kind of prefer that.

Henry wasn’t even sweaty after dressage (the weather on the 2nd weekend was SO MUCH NICER than the first! It was cool and overcast and breezy.) so I didn’t bother bathing him. I also didn’t bother looking at scores. I was happy with the test he’d put in, so what did it matter? I went and watched a few Prelim rounds to get a feel for how some of the lines were riding, then by the time I cleaned him up, changed all my tack, and got us both ready, it was time to get on.

While my ultimate goal for stadium is always a clear round, my REAL goal this time was to not make any stupid mistakes. Specifically don’t crash, or don’t do something so stupid that my horse can’t bail us out. Aka don’t repeat Week 1’s performance.

When I first got on, Henry still felt really quiet… a little bit behind my leg and just not as sharp as usual. I figured the previous 10 days were catching up with him, so I opted to take my whip with me in the ring (I usually don’t) for some extra oomph. Turns out, all that really did was make him more flat and strung out, so… maybe not next time.

Some of the rounds I saw before mine had been pretty rough. Really, a large percentage of the rounds I saw all day were rough. The courses were quite demanding, and rails fell left and right in every division. I haaaaated the start to our course – an oxer to vertical line coming diagonally across the ring, followed by a quick 8 bending strides to another oxer heading directly at the gate. I mean… way to come out swinging? Who made the course designer mad?

That rode fine though, and then we turned up to a double in the same spot as the one I messed up the first week. This time I didn’t mess it up (yay, redemption!) but I didn’t whoa enough in the line after the double, causing us to get a little too close to that square oxer and taking the front rail with us. Womp womp.

The rest of the course actually rode nicely though. The weird little rollbacks toward the end of the course were just fine (sat up! did not pull!) and Henry jumped them well. The last line was a little oddly placed but we got in fine, and came down to the last double – oxer to vertical. By this point Henry was just a little too flat. He tapped the oxer, but it stayed up, then tapped the last jump, and it fell. Womp womp again.

When I was in the warmup Trainer asked if I knew my dressage score and I said no. She asked if I wanted to know before or after stadium, and I said after. I don’t need incentive to feel pressured! So I was kind of bummed when I came out of the ring and she told me, and found out we’d been in third. Adding two rails to that sucks. But most of the division fell victim to that course, so I still only dropped from 3rd to 6th.

At least I didn’t try to kill us this time. Baby steps?

 

Okay, now that I’m back to a real computer let’s kick off this Week 2 recap party!

Since our new pre-ride tactic seemed to work really well Week 1, I repeated the same kind of prep. On Friday morning I hopped on him before we left Alabama, just for a quick 10 minute walk trot, going from stretchy to regular walk and trot. Just enough to get him to take a deep breath, basically. On Friday when we got to the show grounds we did the same thing. I think I was on him total 10 minutes again, maybe. He went right to work and was super, so we quit while we were ahead.

On Saturday my ride time was at 10:51, so I got on at 7am and did another 10 minute session. There’s something about these quick little 10 minute rides that really help settle his brain. It’s like they’re enough for him to loosen up and relax, but not so much that he starts feeling pressured or gets worked up. I took him back to the barn, bathed him, braided, and slowly got ready.

I got back on at 10:30 and walked up to the ring to find that they were running early. My ring was finishing up a break, and then there was only one person ahead of me. I think I warmed up for maybe 8 minutes before the steward asked me if I was ready. Henry felt relaxed and happy, so I went ahead down there about 10 minutes ahead of schedule. Another few minutes in warmup wasn’t going to change anything for the better.

They had all new judges for week 2, none of which I was familiar with, and we were in a different ring. As soon as I got down there, said good morning, and gave them my number, she asked if I was ready and blew the whistle. Alrighty then. Nobody needs a full lap around the arena anyway, right? I see how they were already running so early.

I trotted up centerline on the most rideable version of Henry that I have ever had in the dressage ring. It’s amazing how much easier things are when they’ll let you use your legs and ride them forward into the hand. It’s taken literally years to get him okay with that. The first half of the test was pretty decent… he came bangin up centerline like a real horse, then we tracked left and went straight to those stupid 10m half circles. These have always been challenging for us, it kind of takes away some of your momentum there at the beginning and tends to get a tense horse a little stuck. They weren’t amazing this time, but they were the best we’ve done in the ring. From that movement you go straight to canter. He was reasonable about that, a bit hurried in the transition, but for him decent. The lengthenings on the circle will never be great, so whatever. Next time we redo the tests can we please keep the canter lengthenings on a straight line? My horse is built too downhill for this crap.

From that you go to stretchy trot. His was fine. He stretched a little but he’s never as good with this movement in the ring as he is in schooling. Tension makes that difficult. Then it was the walk work, medium to free to medium. All that was actually quite good for him. Last fall/this spring he was going through a serious jigging phase, or would try to launch back into canter as soon as I touched my reins. That seems to be gone now, knock on wood. I only did about eleventy billion walk transitions at home.

After the walk he definitely was more tense. The canter this direction was not as good, and the transitions weren’t as balanced, and the trot lengthening was bleh. He stayed with me though, so that’s okay. At no point did he tune me out and turn into a panicked 2×4 (his favorite go-to panic maneuver).

For the first time I felt like we put in a test that was kind of reasonable. It’s still not up to what he’s really capable of, and we still have a lot more tension through his topline than he does at home, but he never really got stuck or up and down or on the verge of explosion. As usual the comments were mostly about improving suppleness in his back (trust me I know, I’m sitting on it!) which really is just his tension showing.

Our score was 32.4, his best ever at a recognized Training, and was good enough to put us 3rd after dressage in a field of really nice horses. THIRD. Henry. What?! He also got his first ever 9 on a recognized test. There were still plenty of 6.5’s but nothing scored lower than 6.

I’m pretty darn pleased with that. There’s still a lot of room for improvement from both horse and rider, but to see such immediate payoffs from the little bit of tweaking we’ve done in the past month has been really encouraging. We were near the top both weeks of Chatt after dressage, which is NOT a place we typically are, we have always tended to land solidly in the bottom third of the field. Plus he improved from week 1 to week 2. I really feel like we’re on to something with this and for the first time I think maybe, just maybe, he’s finally starting to get this sandbox thing. Maybe?

Sorry about the radio silence on Friday. I really really hate trying to write blog posts on my phone and by Friday I just Could Not deal anymore. Apparently I don’t skip days very much, since I had several people message me and ask if I was okay. Ha!

And I definitely have a whole lot to recap from the past few days, and the show, and all that stuff. Buuuuut as I type it’s midnight on Sunday and I’m in the backseat of a truck somewhere in the middle of Louisiana, and of course that means I’m still limited to my phone for writing posts. For my sanity, the real recaps can wait.

Mostly I just want to say that my horse was so spectacular these past couple weeks and I couldn’t possibly be more proud of him. My heart almost can’t handle how fantastic he is. He’s not perfect, I’m not perfect, but he’s my wildest dream come true. That horse tried his little heart out for me both weekends, and I can’t ask for more than that. He is a quirky little weirdo but I wouldn’t trade him for all the tea in China. How I got lucky enough to stumble onto this horse, I have no idea.

Chatt Hills was also really fantastic. The barns are incredible, the footing is lovely, and the courses – both stadium and XC – were challenging. It was 100% worth the trip and I’m so glad that I decided to go, even if it was pretty spur of the moment and a little last minute. The venue is top notch, Georgia was beautiful, and the weather this past weekend was phenomenal.

The second weekend also drew a lot of vendors since it was Area 3 Championships, and I got to meet a few people from companies I knew through Instagram. Everyone was so nice and great to talk to. I can’t wait to share a couple of these great small businesses with you guys. Also, shout out to the $2 snow cone vendor. They’re the real MVP of the show series.

I learned so much that I can’t even wrap my head around all of it right now. About my horse, about myself, about riding, about showing, and yeah… even about life. There’s always more to learn and more perspective to gain. The group that we went with really pulled together and rallied, and it felt like a genuine team effort in every regard.

I feel pretty lucky to have had the opportunity to go, to own the horse that I do, and to be able to make these memories. Is this even real life? It was a great time and I can’t wait to do it all again next year (although I admit my vote would be for Coconino again). But for now, Henry gets to go home and enjoy an extremely well-earned summer vacation.

After the show ended on Sunday we packed all our stuff up and headed back to “base camp” a couple hours away in Alabama. That way the horses could get turned out, the humans could get a little R&R, and we could do some schooling before heading back to Chatt Hills for week 2.

And what have we been up to since then? A lot.

Monday was your typical post horse show day of errands and laundry. The horses got turned out immediately when we got home on Sunday and stayed out until early Monday morning. They seemed happy and refreshed. I got to work washing all the saddle pads from the weekend in the barn’s washer and dryer, and getting all that red Georgia clay out of my XC boots.

Then I ran some errands, including a trip to the real fancy Walmart in Leeds, Alabama. If you have never been to a Walmart in a small town in Alabama, I highly recommend. It’s everything you would expect it to be. 10/10, must see.

Due to the possibility of someone coming to pick up the jumps that were in the ring, we moved our jumping day up and did some grid work on Tuesday. We set up a crossrail, one stride to vertical, one stride to oxer, and then a small plank 2 bending strides to the left of the oxer and a small plank 2 bending strides to the right of the oxer. You had to think fast, have good body control, and slow the feet down a bit. This was a good exercise for pretty much all the horses.

The only real casualty of the day was my finger, which got a plank dropped on it while we were setting jumps. It doesn’t hurt enough to be broken, it’s just swollen and kinda funky-looking. I rubbed some dirt in it, it’s fine.

Yesterday morning I got woken up at 3am by flashes of lightning and distant rumbles of thunder. Sound familiar? Yeah I pretty much had a repeat of last week’s warrior dash, just a new middle-of-the-night version. I’m getting pretty good at dragging lots of horses up the hill to the barn at once. Seriously Alabama, we aren’t friends anymore. There was a 5% chance of rain overnight. FIVE. I released a lot of expletives when I opened my radar app.

After a change of clothes (because I was literally soaked through with sweat) I managed to get back to bed for a couple more hours of sleep before getting up to feed the horses. Once everyone else showed up we all hopped on for a quick dressage school, then headed out for a trail ride over the mountain. We went up, we went down, we went through, we went under… it was legit. We’re definitely not in Texas anymore!

Today we’re doing more intensive dressage rides and running through our tests, then tomorrow morning we head back to Chatt to do the whole thing over again.

I could really get into this whole adult summer camp thing that I’ve got going on here. I’ve got my pony, I’ve got some books… all I’m really missing are the s’mores.

And Presto of course. But the barn worker sent me a video of him the other day and said he’s doing just fine. I’m sure I miss him way more than he misses me.

I wish I could say that, after sitting in 3rd place over night, Henry and I came into showjumping and found some glory. But, uh… that’s not what happened. Because I’m dumb and make poor decisions. Not Henry’s fault at all, it was 110% rider error and I legit tried to kill us both. Sigh.

I was really freakin determined to go in there and focus and ride the plan. I went over it in my head, stride by stride, several times, and I wasn’t feeling particularly nervous or anything. And honestly, for the most part I actually DID execute that plan pretty well and keep thinking my way through it. Exceeeept to 4ab, a double coming diagonally through the middle of the ring.

We warmed up well, which was an encouraging start. Sometimes I go full-on dingbat in stadium warmup. We got in the ring, picked up the canter, and I had a good pace pretty much right off the bat. I was encouraged. The course started with basically a rollback from 1 to 2, which was a little tricky but a good opportunity for redemption after my mistake 2 weeks ago at Meadowcreek where I pulled through the turn to the rollback and had a rail. This time I did NOT pull, but kept my leg on, moved up out of the turn, and the first vertical, then oxer to vertical bending line all came up nicely.

And then… well. I lost my stirrup through the turn to 4, and instead of just rolling with it and focusing on the double, I focused on fishing wildly for the stirrup. Henry ended up crooked and behind my leg, I missed the distance to the oxer spectacularly because of it, and he rightfully slammed on the brakes rather than trying to climb his way through the double like that. I don’t blame him one bit, it was the right choice.

What was I thinking? I don’t really know. As soon as I lost that thing I had a flash vision of trying to ride through the double with one stirrup and landing on my face, so I guess I just froze and did nothing. Which, ya know… always works so well (heavy sarcasm here, clearly). I know without a doubt that I could have kicked on, jumped through without it, and it would have been fine. I do that all the time. It’s no big deal. But in the moment I just… chose poorly. Really poorly.

We circled back around and this time I rode the oxer like I was SUPPOSED TO and it was fine. He did have a rail at the vertical coming out, probably because I was riding a little defensively after the stop. It doesn’t take much for him to have a rail.

After that, the rest of the course rode according to plan. Well ok, Henry did trip spectacularly on the landing side of 5, but he got his feet back under him and we carried on down the bending line to 6 like it never happened. And he jumped the poop out of that oxer, for good measure.

Honestly, after 4ab he jumped everything really well. The outside line of oxers, the plank, and the last double were all super. If not for my idiot mistake at 4, it would have been one of our best rounds ever. He felt great, and I rode the rest of it just the way I’d planned.

So, while I absolutely did bungle that thing for myself, I wasn’t as disappointed as I could have been. Yes, I definitely have to make better decisions in the heat of the moment, and I have to recover more quickly. Henry was great, it’s his pilot that needs to step it up. I feel like I finally did a good job with the rest of it though, much better than I’ve been doing, at least. Now to just take the dumb mistakes out. Maybe this weekend I can finally put it all together?

This sport is really hard, guys.