I took both horses on Sunday. Dieter just did the BN combined test and Coco did the full horse trial. Dieter's dressage was first and then I had to do a quick tack change to get Coco ready. Warm up went fairly well. He got a really, really long walk (old man deserves it), and rode like his usual self. Our dressage test went ok. He acted like he hasn't been there probably 10 times and seen the orange boxcar in the corner of the dressage ring probably 10 or more times and acted like everything was totally new. But overall he was pretty containable and I'm pretty sure he knows that test by heart by now, seeing as we've ridden it so many times. His left lead was pretty questionable, but we know that he needs his hocks done and we're just waiting until closer to the Texas recognized show in November. I wasn't going to push it, so I got mostly off his back and let him go forward so it wouldn't look too lateral. We pulled off a 34.5 going into stadium and cross country. I have no idea what place we were in after dressage... I was too busy riding 2 horses. :P
They give us a time frame for stadium and cross country. For example, beginner novice was from 1:15-2:15. I rode Dieter right at 1:15 and then had to do another quick tack change before Coco's stadium round. As soon as he was tacked up and I was on him, he acted more like a 5 year old who had never been to a horse show than his 20 year old with lots of show miles self. He was prancing. He wouldn't walk. He was neighing to Dieter the whole time. He wouldn't stop moving. Once we started jumping and cantering, he was better. Once it was time to do our stadium course, he remembered his job and was fine. He jumped the stadium course like it was his job (because it is). We went double clear, in true Coco fashion. Check it out here. Then we went out on cross country and when he was away from the other horses and we were by ourselves, he was absolutely perfect. He jumped every jump he was supposed to jump. I swear he knows that course (we have ridden it 4 times by now), because he was locking onto the next jump as we were landing jumps. He was absolutely perfect in every way. We came in pretty close to speed fault time (whoops). I was so happy with him. I jumped off and gave him a long walk around the jumping warm up area so he could cool down a bit before we went back to the trailer. He got a quick hose down and was good to jump in the trailer to go home. After his lineament bath at home, he was happy to chug some water and head to the pasture to play. We ended up in 3rd place in a competitive class. I was extremely happy with my old man!
