Bring It!

As I sit outside my friends stall while she braids I figured I would have time to report on my dressage ride and go through my course. The smell of fresh shavings and hay wofts down the aisle. The weather is beautiful, not too hot yet and quite chilly at night.

Hannah is settled in and seems to have rested well last night. We arrived at the show around midnight and poor Hannah hardly had a good nights sleep before it was time to check in with the vets, braid and go in the dressage ring by 1133am. To say the least I had a very tired horse. She was well behaved in the warmup and tried to put in a good test. She jigged slightly in her walk but all in all she was a good girl, just tired so we did our best. The judges both scored very similar to one another both giving us a 58.52 for a total of 62.2 to put us in 22nd. Slightly better score then at Otter Creek CIC2* earlier this spring. Someday I hope to be able to get myself to my shows so that I can come with plenty of time for Hannah to recover from her haul, but I am very happy to just have gotten here.

I was able to get out on the cross country yesterday and check out our course. Not having done a show with Hannah since May makes the jumps seem large but overall the course looks like it will ride well. I need to go out and walk all my distances again and make a final game plan as well as have my coach, Philippa Humphreys, check it out. We start out of the box with a ramp down to an oxer, through the woods up a vertical log to a weldons wall. Next we head to the water and drop down a raised log drop bending line to a cabin. Number 6 is rather large, it is a weldons wall type fence but instead of a ditch there is a down bank in which they built up a large verticle brush fence to be jumped as one with a large landing downhill. Then we head on to a brush fence bending line up a bank bounce to a rolltop. We gallop on up the hill to the wnext water. We jump a corn cob round log across the water to a brush type fence on a mound in the middle of the water. And then a bending line to a skinny brush fence. After the water we gallop on to a turkey feeder and around to the sunken road. We jump a bench down the slight hill to go up the bank to another bench. Next we head to a large table to be followed by a skinnier brush fence in line with a larger brush fence followed by another skinny brush fence. Then we gallop on to our coffin with a skinny brush down to the ditch on to another skinny brush. Next we have two large corners set 4 strides apart onto a large flower table. As we head home we jump an open oxer to a skinny (but wide) table to a roll top and then our final large table shared with both Advanced and the CIC3*! This will be a good, challenging course for the both of us and we are ready for it! We are going to have to bring it!