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I’ve pretty much given up on official pictures or videos from AEC ever getting posted, so now I’m going out of order and posting 5 things I learned before I actually finish the show recap of stadium day/awards. Desperate times…

Everything is better with a team

Seriously, if you ever get the chance to participate in an Adult Team Challenge or Championship, DO IT. I always have fun at shows no matter what, but having a built in team of people that you genuinely want to succeed and do well makes it even better. It’s not often that we mere mortals at the lower levels get the opportunity to compete as part of a team, but there’s just something about being “in it” with other people that makes it more special. Your success depends on theirs, and vice versa. You feel a responsibility to your teammates that makes it even more important to do well… you don’t want to let them down. I was more excited for Bobby when he won than I would have been for myself, and I was super proud of and elated for every person on the team for going out there and getting the job done. I’ve never yelled and screamed and cheered so much in my entire life. Also, if you qualify for AEC and even have just a remote chance of making the trip, DO IT. This was, hands down, the most fun that I have had at a horse show ever. The prizes are badass, we had parties every night, and the atmosphere was awesome. I mean, come on, that British announcer guy alone is worth the entry fee.

It helps to have a trainer as crazy as you are

The ridiculous unicorn and rainbow and glitter theme would not have worked as well with a super serious, reserved, quiet trainer. Don’t get me wrong, when it’s time to do work she’s all business, but AM can take a joke and is completely on our level of nuts, and the fact that she so good-naturedly played along made it extra fun for us. Especially when she bet us that if we won the team championship she would wear the unicorn mask for our win photo. Chronicle of the Horse subscribers, keep an eye on the AEC results issue.

Bobby and I, as dumb as we are separately, are even dumber together

I mean… I knew it was bad, but going through all the footage to make Shitshow episodes was eye opening. We are a couple of dumbs that are compounded times a million when we’re put together. We appear to have no shame, no filter, and no sense of propriety. You’re welcome world.

There are always people willing to help

We had so much support every step of the way, from trainers to friends to sponsors to you guys reading the blog and cheering us on – it means a lot to feel like you’ve got people in your corner. And of course an extra special thank you to Riding Warehouse, Mango Bay, Gypsy Tails, Straight Shot Metal Smashing, Uncle Jimmy’s, Willow Tree Farm and Lori at Mars. We had SO MUCH COOL SHIT thanks to you guys. The Unicorns looked pretty fantastical and had a great time.

Making Bobby fancy = I win at life

Bobby actually said the words “Having fancy shit is fun!”. Direct quote. From the man with rubber boots and plastic tack who has spent the past year making fun of me with all my ‘fancy shit’. Give him some nice new gear and all the sudden it’s like the beast has been unleashed. Wait til y’all see him at Holly Hill when he rolls up there in his new outfit. He’s still clinging to that Wintec for dear life, but ya know… baby steps.

Still waiting on media from AEC to finish off the recap (can I take a second to whine about how everyone uploads things from the upper levels on down, thus we’re always last priority for anything?), so you have to hear about the one exciting thing that happened this weekend instead.

Say hello to Black Betty! I mentioned her a couple weeks ago but yesterday I was finally able to go pick her up.
 

I took her straight to a metal guy because she needs some roof repairs, but hopefully she’ll be home and 100% road worthy in a week or two. Once I have a little more money accrued (hopefully by spring) she will get painted and turn from Black Betty into Betty White. Maybe by then the song Black Betty will be out of my head. Last week it was We Are The Champions because that was the victory gallop song at AEC. Stuck in my head All. Week. Long. Now it’s Black Betty. Building the soundtrack of my life, I suppose.

Back to the subject of accruing money… since I now have a trailer to finish refurbishing and a truck to buy, I have to let go of anything non-essential. Main things for sale:

Ogilvy jump pad – greige with navy binding and chocolate piping. I got a new one in my XC colors so I don’t really need this one anymore. This is a perfect color combination for schooling, it doesn’t show dirt or grime. $160

Easyboot Cloud hoof boots – brand new in the box, size 3. One for $65 or both and a carrying case for $120.

FITS breeches – new pair of Kimberly knee patch or Flex Free full seat. You pick size and color. $30 off retail price.

Samshield visor – black, brand new. $100

Professional’s Choice XC boots – new with tags black front pair, size medium. $70

Coach purse – new with tags ($380 retail) eggplant purple. Super cute for fall. $150

Devoucoux Makila, 18.5 (runs small) wide tree. Excellent condition. $1800

Buy stuff. Betty needs a makeover.

Typically I’d be doing a stadium recap today, since I did dressage and then XC the past two days. But I’m still waiting on the photographer to post pictures, and there’s one in particular that I REALLY want to include in the recap, so y’all are gonna have to wait to hear the details of how AEC ended. Hopefully I’ll have pics by Monday. I will circle back around to it ASAP, I promise. Here’s a teaser to offset any complaining.

What I DO have are the contest winners for The Sparkliest Contest Ever. This one was tough. Bobby and I really liked two peoples’ pictures in particular, so we’re still awarding the big main prize, but we’ve also put together another almost equally as awesome prize pack for the other winner as well. Plus I have a little something for everyone who entered, so no one walks away empty handed. Ready to get majestic AF?

The big winner is Alyssa, with this pretty fantastically photoshopped picture. The sun rays. The flowers. The magical forest setting. The suggestion of glitter. Nailed it. She also submitted a goat version which kind of hints at the fact that goats could double as leprechauns and live in harmony with unicorns?

The second winner of the almost equally as awesome prize pack is Laura. We got a good giggle out of this perspective of your unicorn.

Thanks to all who contributed! Participants, please contact me with your address and I’ll start rounding up your prizes and getting them together for shipping.

As a side note, does anyone else think that this picture that Alyssa photoshopped of me and Bobby a few weeks ago:

sure looks an awful lot like what actually transpired in real life at AEC? Except Bobby stole my pose… he’s always trying to be more like me…

I’m not sure if I was just super relieved to be done with dressage or really confident about XC, but I was pretty pumped going into cross country day. I thought the course looked small and simple (which it should since we’ve been running Novice and this was BN) but I still felt like there were a few things that would require a bit of riding.

For those who haven’t already seen the course walk, you can find it on EVENTING FREAKING NATION. Hell yeah, unicorn famous.

Our ride time for XC was 3:53pm, right in the heat of the day. Because of that, and because BN is pretty small, we stuck to a really light warmup. We trotted a big lap, cantered a couple laps, jumped 3 jumps, and then just walked and waited our turn.

Henry is the king of falling asleep in the startbox so I actually had to wake him up a little to fence one. After that he was Game On and clocked right over the steps at 2, the logs at 3, and the hay feeder at 4 in the OK Corral. Then we had a bit of a long stretch to 5, a small simple log with a downhill landing. The fence itself was easy, but if you didn’t get the horse’s head up it looked like they were jumping off of a cliff because of how quickly the ground fell away on the other side. A few people in our division had problems here but Henry read it well and consequently it rode just fine.

Fence 6 was a small upbank with a few strides until the first water complex. This water wasn’t flagged but there was no way to get to fence 7, a yellow house, without passing through it. I was actually happy about that because they dyed the water blue for this event and Henry has never seen blue water, so I wasn’t sure what he’d think. Of course he just thought “WHEEE WAAATERRRR” and plunged right through and over the house on an angle. Because Henny = XC machine.

After the house we stayed on the angled line for a table at 8

After 8 we took a sharp right and headed toward the only thing I had any doubt about. It was a ditch, but built with a little log on the front side so that they really couldn’t read the ditch until they were right up on it. Plus it was filled with light gray sand that seemed to make a lot of horses give it an extra peek at the last second. It had proven a spooky fence throughout all the BN divisions, so my plan was to just get straight and then override the hell out of it. I growled and clucked and tapped him on the shoulder with my whip and Henry just cantered right over like he was confused about what the hell I was so riled up about. I ended up just looking kind of stupid. Not the first time, won’t be the last.

Then it was over the gray rolltop at 10, down the hill to the oxer at 11, down the bank into the crater at 12, and back up over the hay feeder at 13. Most of these were spent with me trying to balance Henry back up after my override at the ditch, which he mostly interpreted as “let’s go for a gallop”. After 13 I looked at my watch for the first time and saw that we were 43 seconds ahead of Optimum so we took advantage of the open space and made a big slow circle. It’s not that fun to crank them back down to 350mpm when they’ve been so happily running 400mpm at Novice.

After our big slow circle we continued on to the other gray rolltop at 14

And stayed in our slow canter as we crossed the field to 15AB, the second water. This also caused a lot of problems in our division but I’m not really sure why. The house going into the water was small and Henry didn’t think twice about it.

He cantered through the water and I gave him big pats and told him what a good boy he was.

From here it was an easy lope home over the table at 16

And the brushy table box thing at 17.

We crossed the finish at 4:48 (optimum time was 5:11), I jumped off and loosened his girth, poured my bottle of cold water on him, and by the time we’d walked back the barns he was pretty much cooled off. It was a very easy trip around cross country for him, which was exactly what I wanted.

As I mentioned, the XC course claimed a fair number of victims. 38% of the entire division had at least one refusal, with 3 falls and 3 eliminations. Most of the problems seemed to be at fence 5 with the cliff-like landing, the ditch at 9, and the second water. Four of the people placed ahead of me after dressage had problems, bumping me up from tied for 13th to 10th place  – officially a potential ribbon spot.

As for the team competition – you might have thought from our dressage scores (25, 26, 30, 32) that we brought a bunch of dressage horses, but au contraire mon frere. We brought four very solid XC performers. Everyone on our team had an easy double clear XC, and our lead in the team competition grew from 5 points to 17 points after cross country. These unicorns came to play, and we now had 4 rails in hand going into show jumping. The only question left was: could we hold on to it?

On Wednesday when we arrived in Tyler I rode Henry in the dressage warmup and did quite a bit of canter work. That meant his brain came a little unglued and he was tense and over sensitive, so on Thursday we just hacked and stretchy trotted around. By the time Friday’s dressage ride finally rolled around, we stuck to what is now our standard warmup of w/t work only – no canter.  Henry was moving really well for him (thanks to the glittery loaner Devoucoux that you met in Episode 2 of The Shitshow) and felt about as good as I could have asked for.

Our hack the day before seemed to work to reset his brain, because he was very relaxed and obedient in warmup. We were able to ask him for a little more connection, a little more forward, a little bit of lateral work, and we got a few really nice circles. Then we just walked and chilled out because it was getting pretty hot by then and Henry thought he might die of heat stroke.

When we walked in the ring I felt Henry perk up just a little but he stayed relaxed and obedient. We picked up the trot, went past the judge and exchanged Good Mornings, she blew the whistle, and then into the sandbox we went.

I took a page from Emma’s book with the video and put in the scores and remarks for each movement, because she’s brilliant.

All in all I was pretty thrilled with his test. I let my accuracy go a little bit a couple of times for the sake of a calmer movement, and there were things that obviously could have been better but Henry held himself together unbelievably well in such a highly charged environment. We even got an 8 on a transition! He was shaking his head a little bit a few times – a bug must have somehow made it past the dense forest of squirrel hair in his ears – but he was polite about it and stayed focused. I actually found myself pushing him forward in the walk, whereas not so very long ago it was more a matter of trying not to break to the trot. Henny gets 5 gold stars for maturity on this one, I’m so incredibly proud of what a good boy he was.

For as much as I disagreed with the comments on my test from Corona last month, I really spot on agreed with all the comments this time. AND we got the much coveted “needs more energy” remark!!! HA! On a horse that has historically been nothing but a ball of nervous energy in dressage, that’s an epic win in my book. If the judge thinks he looks too quiet, I’ll take it!

My goal score going into AEC was a 35 and we smashed that out of the park with a 30.8, our second best score ever. But more importantly, it really was the most relaxed he’s ever been in the rectangle. He exceeded all my expectations, especially considering we really haven’t done much of any dressage work for the past month or so.

Our 30.8 was respectable enough to put us into a tie for 13th place after dressage, which is a good 7 places higher than I even dared to hope for. Best of all, 13th place put me solidly within striking distance for an individual ribbon, since they place through 12th. Remember how I said we would have to be incredibly lucky to get a ribbon? This is when I started thinking that maybe, just maybe, we could pull it off.

As for the team, after dressage Team Always be a Unicorn was ahead of the second place team by 5 points. Exactly where we wanted to be, leading right out of the gate and leaving all the other teams with nothing to do but hope we messed up. Now it was just a matter of hanging on to that lead with everyone else breathing down our necks. Nothing like a high pressure situation to make a national championship a little more exciting.