A nice shot of Bow and and my new jump coat.
I’m working on all of the updates for 2020. But until then, let’s move on!
Our first show of the 2021 was the Fresno Winter HT at the Fresno County Horse Park. Long live FCHP! It had been for sale and we could have lost one of our best facilities, but it has safely changed hands and it’s as good as ever!
We did Senior Beginner Novice again. We didn’t do as well as I had hoped last time we went out, and we hadn’t had many opportunities to jump over the winter break. I was not feeling ready to move up. I also bought a brand new ENORMOUS trailer that I have set up as a “weekender,” and this was our first outing. My third time driving a 35’ gooseneck was over Pacheco Pass (and we came home in the dark, Yikes!) Yes it was just as stressful as you can imagine. Thank goodness there wasn’t a wind storm this time. Bow had to deal with a lot of new noises in the new trailer and he was a bit stressed, too. But we made it there and he appeared to be in good spirits.
We did our usual “arrive, set up, and head straight for the dressage rings to acclimate.” Bow is sensitive to sounds and a bit of a drama queen, so getting him familiar with the place he needs to be calm and focused is a priority. After some protestations on his part he settled down.
We rode and after he was all tucked in I had to acclimate to my new sleeping accommodations. My new trailer is awesome. It rained, it was cold, and I was comfy. It’s like having my own fort like when we were kids.
All of our ride times were pretty late so I had time to braid, longe, and hang out a little on Friday before dressage. He worked well on the longe line, with Meg encouraging him to be steady. I tried rubber band braids and… it was a disaster. 😂 They stayed in but oh boy… was it bad. I had a nice lunch with a warm broth to drink. I want to do a whole post on trailer camping and food soon!
So we head out for dressage and Bow was … exactly like he is at home! No extra drama! He was so good! And we managed to get our very best dressage score to date! It was a 30.3 that put us in 9th so read into it what you will.I was pleased. Though that .3 hurt a little: someday I’m going to have a score under 30 and get a sticker in my test!!
It rained on Saturday for stadium. It turns out rubber reins are still slippery if you are wearing the wrong gloves. I know from every instructor I’ve ever ridden with that I need to shorten my reins, but this round took it to a whole new level. Unfortunately it allowed Bow to basically run off with me over and over again and then I had to sit him down over and over to get him back. Not the prettiest of rounds, but I’ll take the double-clear. I even wrapped my reins at one point in an attempt to keep them from slipping. Ugh. Overall I was actually very happy with him, even if my mouth had other things to say on course. Seriously considering a mouth guard so I shut up.
Bow also managed to destroy the world worst braiding job I had attempted to keep from dressage the day before. I fixed it and it looked a bit better, and then he SHOOK IT OUT. This was distressingly near our jump round ride time! Fixing the braids AGAIN ate up the time I had intended to longe him. It’s a good thing he was in a good mood that day. And apparently third time is the charm with me and rubber band braids, because the final product wasn’t too bad.
Sunday dawned a beautiful day. I had to manage packing the trailer and putting things away for the first time, and not knowing what I should pack or not before a 3 PM XC round was pretty stressful. I was also just tired. It was a lot of new stuff for me. Bow seemed to be quite happy though.
I’m usually either really early or distressingly late to my warmup at Fresno. Today I was early. That fifteen minutes or so ride from the stables to the warm up ring always throws me a bit. I try to optimize the best amount of time to get Bow warm and not bore him to death. We had some beautiful relaxed jumps in warmup. I wish I had video of him going over the brush fence. Bow likes to clear them by a mile if I’m not encouraging him to go to the base. We got him to the base, too.
Then we headed out for our cross country round and I’ll just spoil it now: we had four refusals. We were eliminated.
I have a few snippets of video from Meg and some photos from the photographer.
He started out cool and collected and I caught myself worrying about it. I liked this relaxed attitude for sure, but … what do I do?? Which I think is part of what happened when we had our first refusal. I was just a passenger and he needed me. Bow is pretty good with water now, he’ll even lead the group through water! But in the past he’s needed A LOT of encouragement. A few months ago we had tried to step off a small bank into water and he wanted nothing to do with it. I think he saw the water behind the jump, had second thoughts, and I just wasn’t there. And if you are thinking he wouldn’t remember that, let me just say he’s still worried I’m going to try to put another party hat on his head, and that was back in May. Anyway. Once he was at the jump he could clearly see it didn’t have a water, he jumped right over.
The next few jumps went really well, including the ditch. I’m wary of ditches because I came off at the one at Twin last year.
Over the brush, up and down over the little bank, and to the orange roller thing in front of the water. He has on occasion balked at during schooling this water, I think because of the way light reflects off it making it very mirror-like. Guess what, he stopped again. And I was so shocked I just turned him around and ran him at it. Bad decision guys. He stopped again. Then I actually thought about our predicament (three out of four refusals now) for a moment and angled the jump so it was clear he had some time before he had to deal with the water and he went right over. Then he hesitated before the water but went through.
Jump fourteen was the sawtooth. In the past we have had problems schooling it and I should have ridden it more assertively, but honestly I wasn’t in the game anymore. This was our fourth refusal and we were eliminated, which is sad because we’ve never had a problem with the next two jumps and we could have placed as high as 7th.
We walked off. I admit I was mad at myself but mostly just tired. Sometimes things just don’t go your way.
The drive back in the dark over Pacheco pass was a bit nerve-wracking but we made it. I think it was a good weekend overall.
Next up: Twin Rivers Winter HT February 2021, we place second!