DVTCA Schooling HT at Carousel Horse Park 8/24/2014

Phew! What a whirlwind weekend.

I'll start with Saturday as that was our prep day for the show. I was determined to have a really good jump school with Emily to feel tuned up for the show. Earlier in the week we had tried putting Riley back in a regular full cheek snaffle and he was dull and heavy in it, so back to the Dr. Bristol which he loves and is light and forward in.

She set up a classic exercise, trot in over an X one stride to a vertical, one stride to a slightly bigger vertical. We worked on maintaining a consistent tempo without him zooming around (he's getting quite keen to the jumps these days*). Emily threatened to punish me if I didn't start releasing properly and I took her seriously and rode like a normal person for once. We threw in a canter circle after the jumps and added a jump or two to make a little course (including a liverpool!)

Some highlights!

Actually releasing!

Our first time over the liverpool together!

Adding in the vertical after the line and the liverpool.

We drove down to Carousel to walk our courses after we rode so we wouldn't have to rush around on Sunday (Also Carousel is really spread out and it's a HIKE to the XC course). My course only had 8 elements, but the terrain there makes everything quite challenging. Also, there's a huge community center that borders on edge of the course with lots of distractions.

After such a good jump school Saturday I was feeling very good about Sunday's horse trial. We were loaded up by 9:30 and ready to go! There were tons of people there by the time we arrived and each division had quite a large number of entries. I was entered in Open Elementary and Emily was riding in Open BN. I thought I entered Elementary Rider, but I think in the end, I felt better about not competing against a bunch of little kids on cute ponies. My group was made up of all adults as far as I could tell with some really nice horses too!

Riley is an over-grown pony and I love him. (photo credit: Carly)

There was one very sweet woman riding in my group who LOVED Riley and kept complimenting us when we were warming up for dressage. She had a lovely horse too, but I think Riley just looks like a giant pony and he gets cute points.

Hey lady, keep your eyes on your own paper  (photo credit: Carly)

Dressage warm up was fine, even though it was on a hill which made things a little tricky. Riley felt fresh and was moving really nicely so I tried not over school him while we waited for the judge to arrive back for our division, we were first in our group. He was bulging into my right leg a lot and doing that dumb thing I thought he had grown out of where he tries to pick up the canter tracking right because he doesn't feel like carrying himself properly. Um no, we're past that Riley. We stood around and waited awhile longer and then I trotted him around some more to freshen him up when I saw the judges car pull up. I walked him around the ring to her car to see if she was ready for our division and she said yes. I thought maybe I'd have a second to trot him around the ring but she immediately rang the bell! We put in a really nice test, even if Riley was thinking about leaving stage left at A every time we rode by. He was forward and supple and mostly bending properly. Our free walk was awful because he takes it as an opportunity to periscope around and see what everyone else is doing. The walk itself is nice, but not what they are looking for. We got a very reasonable score of 32.50 (also, all of the judges at this show were quite serious and didn't give away any points!).

Dressaging (thanks Carly!)

Am I obsessed with him? Maybe a little. (Great capture again Carly!)

Side note: I am never wearing those breeches in a show again, so dumpy!

We had plenty of time to kill so Riley got sponged off and rested until it was time to get ready for stadium. I didn't get a chance to walk stadium because everything was running so fast (it seemed like there were NO breaks in between divisions). That was mistake #1. When I got down to the warm up area it was utter chaos. There were three elementary groups all warming up at the same time. The space was tiny with a hill on one side next to a lake that horses kept spooking at. We sat around for a bit overlooking it and once it settled down a bit we went down to warm up (by ourselves!). He felt pretty game and I hopped him over the X a few times. We jumped the vertical twice and I cantered around for a bit and then he decided it might be fun to canter sideways up the hill back to the trailers. Grrrr. Emily came down after finishing her XC and had me school him a little more, by this time however, the warm up was filled with about 98678769 riders, including at least 4 Haflinger ponies zooming around recklessly). I came around to the oxer and he landed and bolted (mistake #2, trying to jump in a crazy warm up when you've already had a couple of nice quiet fences). I nearly ran over a poor girl as I pointed him straight at the wall of hedges in front of us. I shouted over to Emily that I felt like we weren't going to get anything useful done in all the chaos and she agreed, so we put our number in and waited. The course was quite tough and the first jump seemed to be a problem for a lot of horses. Every jump had lots of filler and there were a bunch of bending lines and tight turns (which I would have realized had I walked the damn course. The last two jumps had you going straight by the in gate and over an oxer and a another jump along the hill by the lake. We headed in and jumped the first fence no problem, I was so happy about clearing it that I forgot about fence #2 for a second, forced him to make a rollback turn and stuffed him over it. He didn't appreciate my antics, jumped way over it, landed and took off.

Fence #3, I'm actually looking where I am going!

Now, I had probably 7 strides before the next fence, but at this point I had zero brakes and fence #3 was headed right at the warm up/in gate, so I opted for a nice big circle to gather him up and regain our tempo. He jumped 3 really well and we came around to #4 which was just begging for a runout and he jumped it like a champ.

Fence 4

The only other jump I was worried about was a fence sponsored by The Whip (an awesome bar/restaurant that's pretty famous out by the farm). It was black and red and he's been notoriously spooky around black things! But again, he jumped over it without worry. The line along the back of the ring rode really nicely too and we nearly missed the finish after the last jump because I was so happy we got around!!! #stopovercelebrating

Sorry about the last couple of photos, video stills The Whip jump!

After watching the video, I realize that Riley wasn't quite bolting after #2 but he was definitely headed that way, the circle was a wise choice and I think set the balance for the rest of the round.

We got a quick pep talk about XC and I made the 10 minute hack over to the start. There was a sweet girl on a naughty haflinger riding near me who was just crying her eyes out... I tried to talk to her but she was not having the best day. Then she got eliminated at the first fence (cheeky pony). I felt terrible for her! Anyway, after the stadium shenanigans, I shortened my reins, sat tall, and tried to think about our tempo throughout the course. None of the jumps were big at all and he's probably jumped half of them at this point just schooling there. But there terrain is very hilly and much of the course was downhill and slick. We walked out of the start box and picked up a nice balanced trot to the first fence. For some reason, none of the elementary jumps had proper flags, just little triangles on them... Riley was a little looky to the first fence, but jumped anyway and felt great, after each fence he got lots of praise and "Good Boy Riley" because he responds so well to it. He took a really hard look at royal blue box we had to jump, but everything else rode terrific (there were only 8 fences). We cantered up the hill and over the last fence and the woman at the end says, "well, based on praise up the hill I'm guessing you had a clear round"? Ha! I gave him a million pats and we walked back with a big smile with Riley feeling ready to go again!

If you read Carly's blog, and noticed all my photo credits to her on this post, you will see that we were at the same event. She and Bobby had a great day running novice and we got to spend a little bit of time together in between rounds. Oh yea, and this happened:

Riley and Bobby meet and are instant BFFs. In fact, Riley threw a bunch of his hay on the ground for Bobby to munch on!

And then Riley and Bobby tried to Out-DERP each other, first Bobby.

And then Riley. You be the judge!

Because there was such a large number of entries, scoring was wayyyy behind (I had no idea what my score was by the time we left) and I assumed I was out of the ribbons anyway with the +20, so I could wait to get my score later. I had a friend who was volunteering at the secretary's booth and she promised to send over a photo of my test when she saw it.  We headed back to the barn and I turned out and fed all the horses. A car pulled up and it was my friend from the show with not only my dressage test but a big, beautiful red ribbon! We came in 2nd out of 15, woo hoo!

Gorgeous big ribbon!

Hanging on Max next to our ribbon from Olde Hope.

I could not be more proud of my boy. He's seriously just the best dude in the world and I am thankful for him every single time I ride him. I was told by two more people on Sunday that he moves like a warmblood! Mr. Fancypants!

He makes me smile like no other!

**I just looked at the pro photos from XC and I HAVE to buy one, he looks ridiculously cute!

He's going to have a little time to relax while we look ahead at the calendar for the next event. We definitely want to do St. Augustine's HarvestFest (redemption from our crappy spring run) and we're skipping Fairhill in two weeks because I'll be in Florida for a few days the week before.