Author: Amanda C

Finally, the good part!

I love it when one whole day of a show is devoted only to everyone’s XC… it’s like the atmosphere changes and all the sudden everybody is PUMPED AF. It’s the main reason why we do all that other crap, after all. If you’ve never stood near the finish line of XC at an event, I highly recommend it.

My ride time wasn’t until noon, so I didn’t even have to set an alarm. I slept in ’til a glorious 6:30, got up and fed Henry, took him for a walk, cleaned his stall, and basically just sat around and watched other divisions all morning. I was wondering if he’d be feeling a little bit tired from the day before, but the answer was a resounding no. As soon as we picked up the canter in warmup he gave me a very sassy little headtoss. He knew exactly what phase was coming, and he was ready. He’d been ready since before dressage, let’s be honest.

We’ve been to MeadowCreek a bunch before, but for the entire last few years that we’ve been coming, the course hasn’t changed much. For this show they flipped it around completely – not only running the track backwards, but also moving pretty much every single fence. Almost nothing was the same from when we were here in June. I was mostly glad about that, because it would give us some new challenges, but also a little nervous wondering if it would throw Henry for a bit of a loop. Nothing looked particularly big or difficult to me except maybe the new Weldon’s Wall (where the old half coffin used to be). That’s mostly just because I hate Weldon’s Walls and think all of them should die in a big fire. Otherwise though, I thought it’d be good.

Fence 1 was just a little rolltop

down to 2, a wide ramp. I wanted to get a little bit ahead of my time in the beginning and establish a good rhythm, so I let him open up a bit for the first few fences. The speed was 470mpm, pretty fast, and the second half of the course was a lot more twisty and technical. I wanted to have some time in hand before we got there, therefore more gallop at the beginning. You don’t have to tell Henry twice.

3 was just a little brush table

then around to 4, the chevrons.

He was already on fire at this point, SO HAPPY to be out. We had a little bit of a gallop stretch to 5, a table

Then I started putting him back together for the first real question – the combo at the mound. It was a rolltop, up and over the mound, with a skinny rolltop off to the left at the bottom. I thought this rode really well, and he locked right on to the skinny rolltop with no problem.

Yeehaw, y’all. Game on. I think this is the point where I started smiling.

I let him keep rolling a bit to 7, the cabin in the fenceline

because after that is where I had to start putting him back together. After 7 we hung a sharp right and there was a random tiny little skinny log in the middle of the field at 8 (which I’m pretty sure he thought wasn’t on our course, I felt him going “are you sure that’s the right one? It’s so tiny!” right up until a few strides out)

before a big rebalance and sharp left to the water. He loves water. I love water. We’re on the same page. The log into the water has a bigger drop on the landing side than you realize, but that just makes it more fun AMIRIGHT??? He jumped in a little more bold than I was expecting, so the 5 strides rode a bit tight, but no problem.

Out of the water there was another sharp left down to the next question on course – a drop bank to a rolltop. I didn’t anticipate any issue here, but obviously wanted to try to jump down the bank as calmly as possible so it didn’t ruin our distance to the rolltop. He obliged and it rode perfectly. Smile is even bigger by this point (in between the wheezing. God it was hot zipped up inside all my gear.).

Then we wove around some trees to a little table set back in the shadows. I don’t like this thing in theory because it’s so dark but it always seems to ride fine. This time was no exception.

After that was the brand spankin’ new Trakehner. The ditch was big. At least I think it was big, I wouldn’t know for sure because I didn’t walk within 20′ of this thing on the course walk. It looked big from that far away so there was no need to get any closer. There are some things I just don’t need to know, ok? I gave him a little tap with the whip at the base, more for my benefit than his, but he just sailed right over. I think Henry was so high on cross country by this point that there could have been a family of grizzly bears in that ditch and he wouldn’t have noticed.

After that we crossed the bridge to the other field and had a bending line combo of brush fences. It took a couple whoas to convince him to come back for this, but it rode fantastic. No problem.

Thanks for the video Kate!

After that was the dreaded Weldon’s Wall, the only fence on course that had really caused me any concern. The ditch in front wasn’t wide, but I still hated it. I stuck my feet a little further in the stirrups, sat up, velcroed myself to the saddle, and looked up where Trainer told me to (for once in my effing life)… just in case he took a peek! But honestly, I don’t think Henry even noticed there was a ditch. He got right up to the base and we landed galloping away. Gold star for the pony.

I got so overexcited about not dying at the Weldon’s that I kinda forgot to rebalance for the next little rolltop and we took a bit of a flyer. Oops. Sorry Henny.

Right after the rolltop I heard my watch beeping for the 4 minute mark. I was like uh-oh… we’ve only got one more jump and the optimum time is 4:40. The twistier stuff at the end didn’t eat up as much time as I’d thought it might. So I brought him back down to a casual canter, loped across the bridge, over the itty bitty last fence (which I think he found insulting), and across the finish.

When we finished I had one of those “OMG did I forget a fence or something?”. It seemed like it went by so fast. I quickly took a mental stock of everything and was like no, we definitely jumped them all. I checked my watch and we were great on time, about 15 seconds under optimum for a double clear. Then it was a “HOLY SHIT THAT FELT EASY!”. It was the smoothest cross country round we’ve had in a long time… pretty much everything jumped right out of stride, I followed the plan, we were efficient with our track, and Henry felt absolutely brilliant answering every question with a resounding “I’d be delighted!”. It is such a joy to sit on that horse cross country. It makes all his dressage bullshit worthwhile.

Better yet he cooled out quickly, his legs felt good, and he had enough energy to come snorting and spinning off the trailer when we got home. He still wasn’t the least bit tired.

So now our first recognized Training is officially in the books, and it feels pretty great. Not gonna lie, I got a little teary-eyed on the drive home. Henry and I’s very first event was November 2014 at that same venue, a BN where we had a stop at the little baby down bank. I remember walking that course and saying I would never go Novice, everything just seemed so big and so impossible and so beyond us. Yet here we are now thinking Training seemed easy. Who would have ever thought? That horse is a fat little sassypants but he’s worth his weight in gold.

So yesterday you got the backstory… today you get the consequences.

On Saturday I was up at 6 to feed Henry and continue my quest for finding the farrier. I was one of the first people up and about, and while I didn’t actually find the farrier, I did see that his son’s horse was now in his stall. That meant he had to be there somewhere. I decided to go ahead and braid Henry while we waited for daylight. Judging by all the ground-in poop in his stall, it looked like WildHenry had paced all night, and he was a royal PITA to braid. The idea of a nice pretty braid job went out the door by the time he whacked me in the face with his head for the fourth time, so he just got some big fat braids and I called it good.

By 7 the farrier still hadn’t emerged and I started to get worried. I kept asking around, hoping someone had seen him or knew where he was. By 7:50, an hour before my ride time, I was on the verge of panic. Finally I stumbled across someone who told me where his RV spot was, and I marched over there like a crazy person and knocked on his door, basically begging him to come out and tack my horse’s shoe back on ASAP. He said he’d be out in a few minutes, so I threw my horse at one of the moms (I’m so sorry) to hold for him while I went to get dressed.

Finally we had the shoe back on, we threw some tack on him, tried to knock the dust off, and I swung aboard my wild mustang. And he was LIT. What I really needed was a 15 minute canter and a good 30 minutes of trotting and transitions and lateral work. What I got was 15 minutes of me trying to convince him that I could actually touch him with my leg without him bouncing up and down like a cracked out llama. His sassiness level can always be measured by his tail… the faster is spins, the less fun I’m having. That thing was spinning like a helicopter.

Awesome.

Even that early in the morning it was 80-something degrees and so humid we could both barely breathe. He was dripping, I had sweat streaming into my eyes, and I was sitting on a fire breathing dragon. All I could think was thank god we’re only here to survive, because that’s about all I could expect from this test. It was tense… REALLY tense. I had to ride very very carefully to prevent a blowup, and he seemed to think that the faster he moved his legs, the faster he would get to cross country. It wasn’t particularly attractive. Also I really really hate Training B with a burning passion. Canter lengthenings on a circle are really hard when your horse is built like a QH. Just saying.

I will say, to his credit, he was obedient. He didn’t want to be, and he was angry about it, but he did what I asked him to do. We got through it. That was the most important part. Of course, I forgot to pick up my test sheet (again) so I can’t tell you what the scores or comments were, but they aren’t hard to imagine. If you really want to watch it in it’s entirety, knock yourself out.

The judge gave us a very generous 34.6. It’s a little frustrating because I know that a really good test is lurking just beneath the surface with this horse – he’s been AMAZING at home lately – but given the circumstances of the day, I’m just gonna tuck it away and move on. It could have been a lot worse, all things considered.

Our stadium wasn’t until 3, so he got to have a bath and a graze and go back to his stall to chill for a while. Of course, by the time 3 rolled around it was hotter than the surface of the freaking sun. 95 degrees in September seems excessive.

I let him have a long walk around warmup so we could make sure the little hamster in his brain was actually on it’s wheel. He seemed almost TOO quiet, until I picked up my reins to start trotting, at which point he LEAPED into canter. Ok, so it’s gonna be like that then. Glad I decided to put the Dr Bristol on and not carry a whip. I just let him canter for a bit until I felt him start to actually relax. We jumped a few warmup fences and he felt great, so we just chilled and waited our turn. Y’all know how badly he deals with the heat. No point in pushing him.

The course was a lot of singles, with a really tight turn from 2 to 3 at the beginning. I was a bit disappointed that the jumps looked so SMALL… Henry is much more careful and much easier to ride when he’s a little impressed. Plain and small always equals trouble for us. I need someone to jack the jumps up and put alligators under them, please (for real, I’ll pay cash).

One of my biggest issues in stadium is my tendency to come out of the corner and start pickpickpicking my way to the base, which I knew would be exceptionally easy to do with this course if I let myself be lulled into that. Really I needed to keep the rhythm and use the turns to rebalance us, then allow him to come forward out of the turn. I was determined not to pick.

Which, turns out, even if I had pulled I don’t think anything would have happened, because Henry was still on fire. He actually felt good though, jumping really well through the first part of the course (jumping me out of the tack at fence 5), albeit a bit unbalanced in some of the turns. I really should have puts studs in to showjump on the grass, I had a really hard time keeping that inside hind under him. Lesson learned for next time. Grass should basically always equal studs for this horse.

We were a bit tight jumping out of the second double, a very plain dark brown oxer, and he rolled the rail there. Not a surprise. Then we came around and rolled the next rail too. I just didn’t do a good enough job of getting him balanced back through that turn, and he was too flat coming in. My bad. I do wish they’d left the liverpool under that one for Training, it would have really helped me out!

So while 8 faults looks ugly on paper, I wasn’t disappointed. It was the first T stadium we’ve done where I felt like I actually rode it according to plan, rather than just reacting to whatever happened along the way. Considering this was the first course we’d jumped since the June horse show, I was perfectly ok with it. We weren’t there to win, we were there to put in a decent effort that we can go home and build upon. I think we did that. The polish will come.

The best part of all? We were now done with all the hard stuff… all that was left was XC on Sunday!!!

The Hot Mess Express was running pretty much 24/7 last week. The last Henry update you got was last Wednesday, where I recapped his series of calamities that kept us from actually properly prepping for the show. As of last Wednesday he had pulled a shoe, garnering himself 2 days off, but the farrier came and put it back on. I went ahead and asked him to just redo him, since we were almost at 5 weeks anyway, but he didn’t have his drill press with him that day, so he just tacked the missing shoe back on and came out the next morning to do a complete reset.

That was Thursday.

I get to the barn Thursday afternoon, ready to FINALLY fit a ride in. I went out and set up a few jumps in the field, since it had been, oh ya know, a month since we last jumped. I won’t even tell you how long it had been since we last jumped a course (coughtheJunehorsetrialcough). I set up our little warmup boxes, a 3’3″ vertical, and a 3’6″ oxer. We had a nice stretchy trot warmup, then went for a quick little canter, popped over the jumps a few times, and called it done. He actually felt super, especially considering how long it had been.

And then we went for a walk.

And then he tripped and did this.

Can’t even make this shit up, y’all. He had about 4 hours in these new shoes before he decided he was done with the four-shoe lifestyle. Hasn’t pulled a shoe in a year and now he’d managed two in a week.

I knew my farrier wasn’t going to be very happy with Henry, considering the guy had already been out two days in a row for my ridiculous horse. Turns out it didn’t really matter how he felt, because he had left my barn and gone to Houston to shoe horses for a couple days. No way he’d be back in time to tack Henry’s shoe back on (again). So Trainer confirmed that there would be a show farrier, and I just figured no big deal, I’ll get it tacked on tomorrow when we get to the show.

LOL.

On Friday I worked a half day, got to the barn around 11:30 to load all my crap, and we were on the road by noon. We made good time and rolled in before 2, I got a nice parking spot in the trees so that my tent was in the shade, got Henry’s stall all set up, checked in at the office, and proceeded trying to find the farrier. Someone told me that his son was showing, suggesting I check his stall and see if they were there yet. A little bit of creepy stalking later, I located the stall, but nope – not there yet. No big deal, I’ll just go hang out and wait.

I spent the next 6 hours checking that stall every 20 friggin minutes. By 7 it was obvious that I wasn’t going to get to ride that day, and I really didn’t even want to take Henry out and walk him around since he’s such a baby when he’s barefoot. Getting a bruise the day before dressage wouldn’t be good. We were not exactly off to the start I wanted for the show, not getting to ride him or even get him out of his stall. And with an 8:50 dressage time in the morning, I was starting to get nervous. Really nervous. What happens if the farrier doesn’t show up in time?

I watched my horse looking more and more wild in his stall before I finally did the only thing I could do: go to bed.

This is all important back story before we actually get to the dressage recap. The drama continues tomorrow…