Otter Creek Fall HT 2006

Alright! I'm on my home turf now, trying to defend my spring win title! I have been boarding at Otter Creek for a little over two weeks now since school started at the beginning of September. Hannah feels at home, which may not be a good thing because she tends to "perform" more at shows!

45.9. Dressage score which definitely reflected our test. She was a little tense and it showed in all of our movements. We were ready for XC though! The course looked tougher than the spring, which it always is to wrap up our Area IV season.

I walked the XC course a few times and went over it in my head and which lines I was going to ride. I headed back to my dorm for some sleep only to wake up bright and early to return to the farm.

Prelim was the last division to go for the day so I had all day to hang out and watch other people ride. It was finally time for the Prelim division to start so I headed back to the stable to tack up. We went to warm up and she felt amazing! She was strong but controllable and we headed to the start box. Once out on course she was perfect! We jumped through all the combinations flawlessly and ended up with a double clean run XC.
I was prepared for show jumping Sunday morning. I warmed up and Hannah felt great. We headed to the show jump arena and waited our turn. The course was giving people a hard time and a lot of riders had rails. We entered and negotiated the course carefully only having one rail and one time fault. I was happy with our performance this weekend and we finished in 5th place. It felt like a great way to end our AREA IV season and we were qualified and ready to go to our first CCI*! Oh I was so excited!