June, 2010

Seneca Valley Horse Trials

Posted on June 14, 2010

We have finally been deemed ready to go back out and compete at Preliminary again – Gemini has been schooling well and feeling great so we figured now was as good a time as any!  We entered Seneca Valley last minute and it turned out to be an excellent course for us to go out on!

    Weather forecast was hot hot and HOT!  90 something degrees and very humid but at least after two years of living out in Virginia we’ve adjusted quite well to these hot muggy days and have become quite accustomed to just dripping sweat and eating bugs.  Mmmmm, good times!  We had a reasonable morning ride time with dressage at 10:24, so early enough it wasn’t totally roasting out there yet and late enough that we didn’t have to leave the barn at the crack of dawn, which was nice since this counts as my day off for the week!  I hopped on around 9:45, having a well planned out warm up ready to go.  And then we proceeded to have a good warm-up, with some serpentines and canters to get all loosened up and then some lateral work to supple.  It wasn’t quite perfect, but was starting to feel pretty good.  Before going out to throw in some mediums into my warm up I figured I’d go check in and see if my ring was running on time as I had about 10 minutes or so before my ride time.  Walking over to the steward, Gemini tripped and stumbled on who knows what and off came his left front shoe.  It instantly occured to me that this was a sign of impending doom and maybe we weren’t supposed to go preliminary today at all!  Fortunately the ring stewards were sympathetic and allowed me to walk the half mile over to the farrier and get the shoe tacked back on.  “We’ll squeeze you in when you get back” they say. Perfect!  So I get the shoe taken care of and hurry back, at which point they inform me that they’ve just moved me to the end of the division and I will go in about 20 minutes.  Fair enough, and just about the right amount of time to re-start my warm up and get back to where we were at.  I got Gemini all ready to go again and then went to check in and now they are running behind and I will ride later.  UGH!  So I wait a bit longer, by this point Gemini is getting very agitated as it is hot and buggy and this is quickly becoming a very lengthy warm-up.  Finally at 11:40 I am allowed to head over to my assigned ring, but of course by this time the Intermediate cross country has started and the course happens to run by quite close to the dressage rings, and intermediate horses don’t go very slow.  Gemini suddenly wanted to BE an intermediate cross country horse and I quickly had to regain our composure and remind him that we still had our preliminary dressage test to do!  All things considered, it wasn’t a bad test, although I know we are capable of better, but under the circumstances I was actually quite proud of myself for keeping it together and dealing with what I had, although it had not been the perfect run of events that morning. 

   Finally finished with the dressage and now with only about an hour until my assigned show jump time I headed back to the trailer and downed some Gatorade and let Gemini rest in the shade.  I was a little mentally overwhelmed at the thought of heading out to the jumping phases so soon and with no time to sit back and focus on the courses, but what are you going to do?  I pulled it together and tacked up and headed over, figuring the sooner it was done, the better!!  Fortunately, after all that dressage, I knew we weren’t going to need much of a warm up for showjump so I headed over with 15 minutes to go, jumped a couple warm-up fences under the supervision of P Dawson and off we went!  Showjumping was very twisty, with about 5 of the fences being on a right handed spiral, it seemed!  But Gemini was on his game and was super focused on the fences and jumping his eyeballs out.  We came around to the last 3 fences – the triple combination and we just barely tapped the first rail in front, but after a nice balanced course I felt much more confident about going out and tackling the cross country.

    For the first few fences out on course both my horse and I were a little conservative.  I think we were both trying to feel out a good rythym and get our act together but after we came out of the woods and jumped an ENORMOUS picnic table things suddenly seemed to click and we both built confidence as the course progressed.  When Gemini jumped bravely over the corner after a little bit of a scramble at the downbank before it, I knew we were good to go!  With just a few time penalties we jumped around clean and had a great time, finishing 8th overall in a big open division.

 

Rubicon Horse Trials

Posted  on June 9, 2010

A big bonus of working at Windchase and having lots of different horses to ride is that sometimes the opportunity to compete different horses comes up too!  Originally I was supposed to compete a mexican horse named Orinoco, but “Zenon” found himself a great new home and I had no more project to work with!  As luck would have it, however, one of the clients had mentioned the idea of having his horse entered in the event and to simplify matters, we were able to switch the horses on my entry and I was given the ride on the beautiful Irish Draught, Tulla Gold.  The downside, however, is that when we entered him, I had yet to sit on him!  So with only one week before the event, I had to put the pieces together and get the horse ready to compete!  Fortunately for me, the horse is a well seasoned competitor, not so much in eventing, but he’s done plenty of foxhunting and jumper classes at the breed shows.  But we all know that that doesn’t necessarily mean doing three phases of an event will come easily!

    I had time to do one cross country school and one light showjump throughout the week and spent a few rides on my own figuring the horse out on the flat and seeing what I might be able to get out of him for the dressage.  And then it was off to the event!  The owners hauled him and their other horse to the event in style, in a big fancy trailer with 2 large box stalls set up that made it very cozy to work in the for the day!  The horses thought it was quite comfortable too!  Tulla put in a nice and steady dressage test and I was really pleased with it overall, happy that some of the things I’d been working with him over the last week had helped in the test.  Just as we were untacking after our dressage, a big storm came through and we found ourselves tucked away in the trailer tack room while rain just poured and poured and poured outside.  After thirty minutes or so of torrential rain the skies cleared and they announced that we’d continue on with an hour delay.  A little bit worried due to the fact that Tulla had no stud holes in his shoes, we proceeded on and the sun came out once more!

   Showjumping was a blast and although we had to take it a bit easy around some of the turns so as not to slip, Tulla was all business and jumped around the course boldly but respectfully and when we were done was looking for more fences!  Then we went on to cross country where after four or five fences, Tulla had it all figured out and galloped around nicely, both of us thoroughly enjoying ourselves!  So what a great treat to find out at the end of the day that we had won the division on our dressage score!  The owners were thrilled and I was happy that I was able to pull it all together in just a weeks work!

 

Birthdays in the month of May

Posted on June 9, 2010

The month of May is always fun here in the bubble!  There are a bunch of birthdays and this year the working students were sure to celebrate it.  My longtime roommate Jenna celebrated her 21st birthday, and as any best friend would, I went out drinking with her and made a night of it.  We won’t go into too many details, but let’s just say we had a great time that night and a not so great time the next day at work.  

  Fast forward a couple of weeks to my birthday!  Last year I introduced the girls to the infamous Red Robin, and I proceeded to do the same this year, as Dawn and Taylor had never been to the amazing restaurant.  Off we went after work and delighted in the bottomless french fry basket and the Mai Tai’s.  Oh, the Mai Tai’s…. Jenna and I are big fans!  I was having a bad day and loving my Mai Tai and decided to bring my Tiki glass home with me, tucked inside my purse.  (Don’t worry, I’m not that rebellious.. I actually asked permission to steal the Tiki glass!)