Ice in your veins...

"You have to have ice in your veins".
Don't always take the first spot that you see.
Be patient.
Rhythm. Balance. Suppleness. Bada bum.

These are just a few things that have been running through my head lately. My favorite quote is the ice in your veins. Translation-there is a strong decision to be made-must be made with a meditated outcome in order to avoid having regret to your reactions in which could make the situation worse.

Stick to your gut-don't let "flight" instincts take over. Riding is a series of decision making. Small corrections and adjustments made to both horse and rider in order to complete the required task.

Coming back to Rocking Horse after my fall at the previous one-required me to have ice in my veins. I had to come back and prove that I had learned from my previous mistakes. My goals were set and I was ready to conquer the weekend.

Like all of the other FL horse shows there was at least one rainy day...as we loaded up Friday AM in the rain, I began to grow more nervous for the show jumping phase which was to be help in the afternoon.

As I warmed up for dressage, taking careful note to the footing, I over heard the announcer say that show jumping has been moved to Sunday. I was completely relieved in which helped me relax for my dressage test. Hannah put in a great performance. We scored a 32.8 which put us in 2nd for the day. I was very happy with Hannah-the judge stated that I had a "good mudder". That is the quarter shire in her pulling through!

I walked my cross country and was really excited, the course looked challenging with lots of good lines and questions. It would be a true test of the work we had done over the winter.

I can definitely say Hannah wasn't backed off at anything, the nice thing last year when I had just moved her up to Intermediate was that she backed herself off from the fences, she didn't seem to this time around! I definitely will need more bit for the future, my half halts were ineffective and I had a hard time getting her back before fences. She jumped everything fabulously and we came in with only 3.2 time faults! The time faults moved us back to 3rd, but I was just happy with the clean round!

After preparing at HITS previously in the week I felt ready for show jumping. Although the ring at Rocking Horse was much smaller than the large jumper rings at Post Time, I felt prepared. We headed into the ring after a short warmup and jumped a nice round with only one rail. After negotiating the tough show jumping course that proved to cause issues for many, we ended a very successful weekend of accomplishing our goal-to complete our first Intermediate horse trial of 2010. Not only did we accomplish our goal but we ended up winning the division. It was a fabulous way to end the Florida season.

Stay tuned for more recent updates! Kick on!