Bow and I participated in out first three-day, the Fresno County Horse Park CCI & H.T. (Feb 2019)! Since it was out first together we did Intro level, and my goal was to be “on horse! on course!” (as my friend frequently says) and while I did steer us astray in dressage, we made it! Here’s my review:
Note: we hadn’t actually done any jumping since our December clinic at the Fresno County Horse Park. I will do a post about that shortly. This one was fun!
Our story begins on Thursday, where I had to load Bow by myself, in the rain. He got in easily enough, with the usual bribes, but kinda freaked out when I was opening the windows. I stood with him for a while until he calmed down, then we were off for our three-hour drive to Fresno. We went over Pacheco Pass and I drove in some of the scariest conditions I’ve ever driven in. I was crawling at 30 mph with wind gusts of 70 mph shifting the truck and trailer toward the frothing lake below. At one point I drove around pieces of another car. I could SEE the wind. When I made it to the other side I pulled over and laugh/cried for about 30 minutes (and looked up the windspeed). I have a camera in my trailer and I glanced at it once or twice and Bow looked pretty cool, but his behavior when we went to load to go home indicates he may not have enjoyed the ride.
We arrived to find our stall wet with about 2″ of standing water. Yay. It was sunny, though we had just missed a hail storm. Yeah, the conditions for this show were an extra challenge! I got his stall set up, longed, met our lovely neighbors, had some pizza and went to sleep in my warm, dry, motel room.
Friday: Dressage!
Check out that Sweet Iron Co. stock tie!
We didn’t have to go until 2PM so I had plenty of time to get ready. I went to the braiding clinic they were offering in the morning. It was a great review (the style of braids I know how to do!) because I hadn’t braided in a loong time. I decided not to bother braiding though because of the rain. I headed up early to the warmup arena after longing because I didn’t have anything better to do. I also decided to wear my nice velvet helmet, my nice dressage coat, and my brand new Ariat dress boots (second wearing! They will get their own blog post!). It was sunny when I left the barn, it was raining by the time I made it to the warm-up arena. And it rained for like 20 min straight. I was soaking wet! And poor Bow, he could NOT get his brain around WHY we had to behave in this huge open space in the mud! Ugh! Then it cleared up a bit and we headed into the dressage court. We have a full-size court at home, and the short court apparently blew my mind: I missed the first movement. I had a few other rider errors but Bow was really good once we got in the court. He appreciates having a job to focus on. does anybody else read their dressage test comments and wonder why they even try? After getting over the disappointment, I see that the judge gave us an essay of useful training information, but I wish we’d done better. But we got a score and we got to go to the next phase!
Saturday: Stadium!
The day dawned freaking cold. Seriously. There was a 50% chance it would start raining at the same time my jump round was scheduled. It was raining during the warm-up, but managed to not be significant when I was on-course. Bow was having a complete meltdown it the warmup. He just didn’t get why were trot around in the big open space where he could be running and/or running back to his stall. Once we were on-course though, he was so cute, ratable, and focused. He did rush a few times but we were double-clear and off to the next round!
Sunday: Cross country!
Here’s where I tell you a secret: click here and go to the gallery of photos taken by Marcus Green Outdoor Photography and a few from my friend Christopher Reed from the whole weekend!
Guess who was running late? That would be me. They changed the times, it was freezing cold the night before at the Area IV gala (which was quite nice because I got to hang out with Tracy!), my list of excuses goes on and on… ANYway. Bow was pretty cool until we got to the warm up arena, we checked in, found out a few jumps were closed and we’d be directed to the part of the water complex we weren’t going to drown in. Then we had to actually warm up, and Bow was jet-powered. Connie, my coach, was like: take the X! Mr. Enthusiasm flew over it. Then she was all “take the log” and the log was seriously larger than anything wed jumped in the last month. Uh, ok. We survived and then we had to go!
So, there’s a train that goes past the Fresno County Horse Park, and wouldn’t you know it, a train started rumbling past when we started out countdown. Which meant the first jump was not only a water jump, due to the size of the puddle (intro doesn’t have water jumps), but there’s a train. Bow’s brain melted. He would. not. approach the first jump. The video of this is awesome I bet (I forgot to pay for it so it’s not ready). We circled, he cooperated, and we were off!, Jump two was also into the train and Bow wasn’t impressed, but jump three is where he was like: Ooooh, we run around and jump the jumps? Point me at jumps! True joy.
Damn I love this horse.
After looking at all of the photos, I think I need to shorten my jumping stirrups quite a bit. There’s a lot of other stuff to work on, but that’s the whole point of being a beginner, isn’t it?
Oh and one more observation: The purple pants worked with the orange! It was risky, but I had to try it. 🙂
You read the whole thing! 😍 Leave a comment with your instagram profile and I’ll give you a shout out on instagram!