It's Been Forever!

I know. I know. It's been forever since I've blogged. I have officially decided to make this blog about Coco and Coco alone, and I will be creating another blog for my adventures with Dieter. It's only fair that they each have their own blog. I mean, they each have his own saddle(s), bridle(s), and everything else, so why not their own blogs??

Anyways, Coco has had a lot of the year off. We have done several schooling horse trials at Heritage Park in Olathe, KS, and Longview Horse Park in KC, MO. We've mostly taken the year off from recognized horse trials, though, so that Dieter could get his foot in the door. I've been mostly riding Coco 3x/week to keep up his fitness and make him happy. However, when we went to enter for Catalpa Corners, there was no starter division (and D and I weren't quite ready for BN), so instead of totally not going to one of my favorite events of the year, I decided to enter Coco. Plus, we needed to at least try for the hat trick (we'd won that event the past 2 years in a row).

We left on Thursday to go to Lorna's house in North KC where the horses (Coco and Duncan) stayed overnight so we could get an early start on Friday morning. We got to Iowa City around noon on Friday after an interesting ride with me, Chris, Samantha, and Taylor, as well as Sophie and Roger (the dogs) all piled into the truck. we set up stalls, walked the cross country courses, and rode the ponies. Coco warmed up really well.

First hiccup of the weekend: I forgot my show coat. Stupid me keeps it in the front closet at my house. Lorna suggested we check out JC Penny and just buy a men's suit coat. After we rode the horses, Chris and I hit up JC Penny where we had to take selfies with crazy colored suit coats (bright red and purple) before we bought a replacement. Then we met everyone else at HuHot for delicious Mongolian food and headed back to the show grounds where Chris and I were shacking up in our tack stall with the pups.

I didn't ride dressage until 11:30am on Saturday, so I had plenty of time in the morning to bathe, braide, and memorize my dressage test. I got on around 10:30 so I could give him a long warm up. The test was ok, but we've been having trouble with the left lead canter lately (most likely because he didn't get his hocks injected this year because we were planning on showing at local shows only). It was pretty sticky, but the judge seemed more upset that his mouth was open at certain points in our test. We ended up with a 38.0. I felt like it was fair given our moments of tenseness and the lateral nature of the left lead canter. We were sitting in 9th place out of 11 starters in my division.

Time to run cross country! Coco got several hours off to relax and let his mane un-crimp before we got ready to head to warm up. This would be my first cross country course using my inflatable vest; it made everything feel so bulky yet so safe all at the same time! I was honestly a bit worried about cross country, because it had been several months since Coco and I had even been to a cross country schooling. I feel like I can jump this horse with my eyes closed, but cross country requires a bit more finesse. Coco warmed up pretty well, though. He started out jumping a bit hesitantly (let's be honest, though, it was probably my nerves), but we got into a rhythm and started doing better. The course was awesome. It was the same as last year, so it should have been pretty straightforward, but as we ascended the hill to the water, I got over Coco's shoulder and continued at the canter instead of slowing to a trot and sitting back. Coco saw the water and said, "Is this sanitary?" as he did a 180. Thank god for that inflatable vest, because as I was hanging over his shoulder, all I could think was "don't let the vest inflate!" and I worked like H-E-double hockey sticks to stay on that stupid horse. I spun him around and we trotted right through the water like it was nothing and continued on. I wasn't sure how much time we'd lost, so I may or may not have allowed him to go a bit faster than necessary and taken some shortcuts on the rest of the course. We had no other problems. Coco attacked the jumps and we came in right above speed fault time. Other people must have had some trouble on cross country, because even with a refusal on cross country, we moved up to 8th place.

Steak dinners for all! We all earned it. Especially Samantha who spent the entire day running around taking pictures for people. What a champ!

Jumping day is the best! We have time to actually watch the higher level riders. Chris and I set up camp next to the show jumping ring and just watched. There were a lot of problems on the show jumping course. Lots of rails being dropped, refusals, and slipping and sliding. When the time came, I headed back to the barns to start getting ready. For once in my life, I wouldn't be the last rider in our group (Taylor rode after me in her BN division). I got Coco ready and kept him in a halter so we could watch some of the competition and didn't have to get on until we were completely ready. He got a good warm up and we did out usual show jumps. The warm up ring was particularly hectic, but we got through it, even after a rider fell off and her trainer wouldn't stop laughing as her horse trampled bystanders in his rush back to the barn. Coco's love of show jumping really sparkled and we went double clear (like the champ he is) over the challenging course. We moved up to 7th place. Yay, purple! If we hadn't had our trouble on cross country, we would have been third.

Overall, though, it was a good weekend. It made me happy that Coco is still happy to event, but it made me wonder, when is enough enough? At what point do I need to think more of his well-being and safety instead of what I want him to do? How will he tell me when he's finished? I don't think a 20 year old saddlebred needs to keep running cross country. I'm not opposed to continuing in dressage or jumping schooling shows, but I'm not sure it's in Coco's best interests to continue with strenuous USEA shows. Our group talked about going to Texas Rose Horse Park for their November Horse Trials. I would really like to finish an event at Texas Rose Horse Park on Coco. I feel like I owe him that after 2 rider falls at the last 2 AECs. I let him down and we both deserve to finish that course. Maybe without the stress of AECs, we'll be able to do better. That will likely be Coco's last USEA recognized horse trial and we'll opt for schooling shows over the winter and in the future. Coco has had a good life, he's happy, and I would hate for something to happen to him to cut his future short because I was selfish and wanted to compete for too long. He's an amazing horse, and I would rather keep him around as long as possible, safe and sound, than selfishly compete him until I break him. I love my Coco Bean.

Queeny, Blood Clots, and a Victory at Catalpa

I totally forgot to blog about Queeny Park, and because it's been a while, I've forgotten a lot about what happened there. But here are the highlights: Dressage wasn't our best. They were running behind and he was fantastic in the warm up, but it was really difficult to keep the bend and rhythm in the corners. Our first canter was way too slow, but we improved in the other direction. We ended up with a 40.5. Definitely not our best. So be it. Cross country was literally the exact same course as 2014, except for the first jump. Coco rocked it. My friends came to watch, but they had gone to the Renaissance Faire in STL prior to coming out to watch cross country and didn't account for all the extra time it takes to get from the parking lot to the XC course. They got there right as I was walking Coco off the course. But it was good to see them and I appreciate their support! Stadium was tricky, as usual at Queeny, but Coco rocked it. I think we had a couple of jumps where he totally saved me, but we survived it and went double clear. We ended up 4th!

We got back from Queeny and I had killer charlie horse cramping in my left upper calf and lower inner thigh. I assumed it was from riding, as it is pretty typical for me to have some muscle fatigue & cramping after horse shows. I went about my business and assumed it would get better. It got worse. As the week progressed, it got to the point that I could barely walk, it was super uncomfortable all the time, and pain medications were no longer helping. About a week after the show, I finally went to a walk-in clinic thinking they would reiterate that it was a muscle cramp and give me more strategies to alleviate the pain. Instead, the nurse practitioner sent me to the emergency room, because she measured my left calf and it was slightly swollen compared to my right leg. I also have a history of pulmonary embolism (blood clots in my lungs in 2009), so it was even more probable that something could be more wrong. They did testing at the ER and found out that I had a DVT (deep vein thrombosis with blood clots from my middle thigh all the way through my middle calf), The ER doc put me on Xarelto and sent me home because my vitals were fine and I didn't have too much distress. I took the next couple days off work because of the pain and it all started to get better. Then I had my follow up appointment with my primary care physician who told me that if I fall off a horse while taking Xarelto and have internal bleeding, there is nothing that can be done about it to make my blood start clotting again. He suggested that I stay at beginner novice to limit the possibility of getting hurt and that I switch to coumadin so that if something happens, I can take vitamin K and reverse the thinness of my blood. Hopefully that won't need to happen, but so began the month of constant blood testing to determine the right amount of coumadin to make my blood thinness therapeutic. 

After a month and a half of DVT excitement, we headed to Iowa for the Catalpa Corners Charity Horse Show. This is definitely one of our favorite shows of the year. It's always beautiful. The organizers and volunteers are awesome. And it's just always a blast! We got there around 3pm on Friday afternoon, got the horses settled and walked the cross country course (which was totally different than last year) twice. We fed the horses, Sam braided Scotty, and we ate dinner at a pizza place before heading back to the hotel and falling asleep. 

Saturday came quickly. Sam rode dressage and had a pretty good ride on a tough horse! Then she went and got eliminated on cross country when Scotty wouldn't jump a red coup with a metallic pig on the front of it. Taylor was worried about Duncan't front right leg, which had been swollen for a couple days but was getting better, and she decided not to ride. So it was all up to me for MSEC! No pressure! Dressage had been running ahead of schedule, so I got ready a little early. Then I realized that there was a break right before my ride time, which they were planning on using to get back onto the correct schedule. Coco and I walked and walked and walked. He was really behind the bit warming up, so we played with his cavesson and flash and it seemed to improve a little bit. In the arena, the test went well, but he was fighting me the whole time. I felt like I was using indirect rein too much, having trouble bending in the corners (typical), had no impulsion on the first canter, & was fighting with Coco the whole time. As I walked out of the ring, Chris had a huge smile on her face and said that it looked good. I was happy. Coco and I did the best we could do. We ended up with a 36.5 putting us in 5th place. 

Someone fell off on cross country (at the same jump Sam had had trouble with). As unfortunate as that was, it was nice, because it gave me and Coco some extra time to get ready and relax before going straight to XC. In that time, Coco fell asleep. Coming out of the stall and heading to cross country, he was falling asleep. Warm up was good, but he wasn't particularly energetic. Maybe that would be ok. We walked to the start box and waited for the countdown. When the start box dude said "3-2-1. Have a great ride!" I accidentally pressed the mode button on my watch. Instead of just going and hoping for the best, I fumbled with the watch for a bit before I was able to get it straightened out and finally head out of the start box. I wasn't too worried, because if Coco and I are going to have trouble with the time, it would be being too fast rather than too slow. I was right. Coco was flying. We were both having a blast, but I've gotten a lot better at knowing what 350 meters/minute feels like and that's helped a lot. Coco did the first half of the course like a pro. He fumbled over the trout fence after the water, looked at a cordwood fence, and took the second to last fence like a goober (I think he left out an entire stride... wasn't expecting that). Then I had him cantering in place and didn't get a good stride to the last fence (totally my fault), but we did it! And double clear... or so I thought. We trotted and I hopped off before I remembered to stop my watch. It read 5:57. Optimum time was 5:58. When the results went up online, they said I had 1.6 time penalties. Sam and I immediately went to the show office with my watch in tow. Apparently there were a ton of people with the same problem, because it looked like a riot at the office. I guess they entered the optimum time incorrectly into their scoring program. After the correction, it showed that we went double clear and moved up to 3rd place!

We were so excited about the competitors' party and Chris even paid money to go to it. Then we found out that they were serving Italian food and quiche instead of the typical BBQ and delicious cornbread. We decided to go to Mongolian BBQ instead. After that, we headed back to the barn to wrap and walk horses, Sam & Taylor & I spent some time letting the ponies look at scary XC jumps and talking while everyone else kindly did our chores for us. We headed to Coldstone for some delicious ice cream and then back to the hotel for a quick swim (on an awesome water slide the hotel had) and went to bed. 

We got to the show early on Sunday so that we could feed and do chores and still watch some preliminary stadium jumping. We didn't make it in time to see any prelim, but we saw all the training riders. People were having a lot of trouble on the course. There were some tight turns and questions that didn't seem like questions until people started riding the course. Very few people were going completely clear. We warmed up and Coco was again completely asleep. In fact, I kind of wondered if there was something wrong with him as I hand-walked him to the stadium course area because he was walking so slowly. We got there really early because I wanted to walk the course one more time after they got rid of the extra jumps that our BN division wouldn't need to take. It walked nicely. Coco was good when I started riding. He had more energy, but he wasn't being too crazy. When we started jumping, he did his job perfectly (as usual) and any problems we had were totally my fault (also typical). When we went into the ring, he immediately spooked at a jump as we were headed to the first jump. That was the jump he fumbled over, but everything else rode really nicely and Coco was a rockstar, as usual! We went double clear. (Check out the video here: http://youtu.be/V1qRNYZV3Ng) The worst we could finish was 3rd! And then the impossible happened... the second place person knocked a rail! And the 1st place person knocked 2 rails! And we were 3.7 points behind first. We got bumped up to first place! Coco is such a champ! We were both so happy! Catalpa has been good to us! I couldn't have been happier with him!!! 

With the drive home, dropping Scotty off in North KC, and then driving to my house from the barn, I didn't end up getting home to sleep until about 12:30am that night. Waking up for work on Monday was rough, but totally worth it after an awesome weekend! And then Tuesday I started my new job. So far it's been going well! 

Longview Horse Trials 2015

The weatherman said it was supposed to rain all weekend, in addition to raining all last week. Good thing Coco and I had dropped down to beginner novice and some wet ground wouldn't be able to hold us back.

Lorna and Sam were doing their first Training level event & it was very exciting for them! Coco got his bath Friday afternoon (he wasn't at all excited about it) and then Friday evening, we all went out to walk our cross country courses. The BN course was pretty straightforward with no real huge questions on the jumps. The toughest part would be remembering the course, because there were lots of S turns and U turns this time around. I even got lost the first time I walked it, going from jump 8 to 15 without thinking too much. It was nice, though, because the turns made it easy to add or subtract time depending on how we were doing at that point on course.

5:30am on Saturday morning came quickly. We loaded Coco up and headed to Longview. Lorna and Sam did their dressage and Coco decided that the morning would best be spent freaking out. He needed someone to hold his hand as he hand grazed all morning, stubborn little jerk. He whinnied and screamed the whole time I braided him at the trailer and then we spent lots of time grazing by the huge yellow tent at the edge of the arena that has horse-eating things jumping out of it.

We started getting ready about an hour early and had a nice long warm up, first by the trailers and slowly making our way toward the arena. My friend Stephanie had come to watch and it was exciting to share horse show life with her! Lindsey had to coach me before dressage, because Chris was busy with Lorna and Sam at the cross country warm up. Good thing we had plenty of time to devote to warming up, because it took Coco a full 45 minutes to relax. When we went down center line, everything felt like it had come together. Coco didn't even look at the scary tent and was bending. We could have had more impulsion (which is rare) and his free walk to medium walk transition could have been smoother, but overall, it felt like a good round. We ended up in a 3-way tie for fifth. Oh no, I was always worried I would be in a situation like this when I would need to actually get close to optimum time on cross country. 

Sam and Lorna both had successful cross country rounds. Lorna went clear with time penalties only. Sam had one refusal at the corner, which she said was her fault, and also had some time penalties. After she brought him back from his bath, though, he had a huge wind puff on his left front leg. Chris wrapped it and they were going to keep an eye on it overnight. Apparently, it got worse and he wasn't wanting to put any weight on it later that night. Sam decided to scratch from stadium in hopes that he would improve.

We had some Jazzy B's for lunch and hung out with Steph for a bit before I went to get ready for cross country. Again, we had a long walk warm up. I was nervous. I don't know if it was because of our experience at Holly Hill or because of something else, but I had the biggest lump in my stomach making it difficult to breathe, eat, and warm up. I kept feeling like I was going to throw up. As we started cantering and jumping, the butterflies went away and everything was ok. We went out on course and had a blast. I kept thinking of the course as a slow jaunt through the countryside instead of going for speed. It was actually quite enjoyable. Instead of knowing where my splits were, I picked 2 jumps with plenty of space in front of them where I could do circles or trot a bit and I picked a time that I wanted to try to go over these jumps. That seemed to work better for me than having to do math while I was on course. We ended up coming in within 10 seconds of optimum time. We weren't exhausted. And Coco was in better condition than he's ever been coming off a cross country course. It worked out really well, and we ended up breaking the tie and moving up to 3rd!

Coco got a quick bath and we were headed back to the barn as quickly as possible so we could try to make it to Lindsey's graduation at 6pm in Independence. Chris took care of Coco and let him play with his buddies in the pasture for about an hour while I rushed home to shower and change. After getting lost, we made it to watch Lindsey walk across the stage, like a boss. Then we went out to dinner with her family. It was about 11pm by the time we got back to the barn, and we decided that Coco would be alright without standing wraps, seeing as we would be taking them off in about 7 hours (and I was in a dress, so wrapping would be difficult- way to think ahead!).

After about 6 hours of sleep, I made my way back to the barn. I took all my dressage and cross country stuff out of the trailer and we fed the horses. Then we were off. Once we got to the park, Coco was perfectly content to sit in the trailer by himself and munch on his hay. We watched Lorna's stadium round. Scotty was slow and wasn't able to get himself over the first jump, plowing into it. I think Lorna got confused as she circled at the walk a few times waiting for them to rebuild the jump. Finally, she had a conversation with the judge and continued for the second fence. He jumped the second and third jumps fine, but lacking impulsion, and he skidded to a stop at the 4th fence. She was asked to leave the course. Apparently the judge eliminated her when she went over to talk to her for providing assistance and allowed her to attempt to finish the course as schooling.

As usual, I got ready excessively early and spent a long time just walking around and getting Coco used to the show environment again. We found a nice quiet (and minimally muddy) place to warm up before we went into the crazy muddy warm up ring to do a couple of jumps. Coco was taking everything  like the champ that he is and we had no trouble, other than taking long spots (typical). We went into the ring and Coco was amazing. I was having trouble waiting for him to the fences. I dropped him in front of the 4th fence and he told me he was going to refuse the 5th fence about 5 strides out. His canter was just cruising more and more to the left and my upper body came down to the right side of his shoulder. As a last ditch effort, with the ground getting closer and closer, I turned his head toward the jump and squeezed him as hard as I could in an attempt to avoid a refusal. He scooped to the right to pick me up and took me over the fence, like that was what he had been planning on doing the whole time. I honestly had to compose myself, because I should have been in the mud. My horse saved me in every way a horse can possibly safe his rider. (Check out the  video here... https://youtu.be/lNDpiWdRyZU)  He really does sleep on my pillow. We finished the course and just kept getting faster and faster with me apparently unable to hold my upper body up. The last jump was good and I walked out of the ring thinking that I had just survived the impossible. Unfortunately (for her, but fortunate for us), the girl who had been in 1st place overnight dropped a rail at the first jump, and we ended up moving up to 2nd place! With this, we are again qualified for AECs in September! We can redeem ourselves!! Yay!!!

It was an amazing weekend. And Chris said we can move up to novice for Queeny and Catalpa this year, which will be awesome, because then the jumps at AECs will look like they're tiny (hopefully).

MACTA One-Day HT

So after 2 weeks of intense working out (2x/day) and riding (Coco got 1 week off and then we did 2 galloping rides & 3 dressage/hacks the next week), it was time for another test. This time, it was the Mid-America Combined Training Association's One-Day event at Heritage Park in Olathe, KS. We entered the BN division so that we could see how we might fare against similar competition at the MCPC Longview HT on May 9-11, next week.

Chris brought her horse, Stuey, to this show! It was going to be their first show this year and they had a phenomenal cross country school the day before, jumping all the starter fences with confidence and grace! I watched her dressage and he looked pretty good. He was a little strong and spooky, but nothing too bad. It was their second outdoor ride this year and their first judged test this year.

Our dressage went fairly well. Coco was very anxious about the boxcars that were sitting near the dressage ring. Apparently boxcars eat horses, but only when they're in the dressage arena. They were perfectly fine when we were going around the outside of the ring before our test and when we walked past them as soon as we got to the park. But when you're in the ring, everything changes! He was kind of a crazy man when I first got on, just very excited and checking everything out and generally ignoring me, but he wasn't terrible. As we continued to warm up, he started to really relax and come down in his neck and start listening to me. During our test, he brought his head up and kept his eye on the boxcars whenever we were in that corner of the ring, but he mostly stayed relaxed and listening to me. He was a little tense as we went from our free walk to medium walk (typical... if anyone has recommendations to improve this, I'm definitely open to suggestions), but other than that, it was a really nice test. We walked out of the ring and were met with congratulatory praises from my trainer (Chris). When we got our test back, it was awesome, we had 8's for the entrance and final halt and salute and all 7-8s for our rider marks to score a 27.25. Not too shabby! It put us in 5th place after dressage.

Coco relaxed a bit while we walked cross country. The course was pretty straightforward. Nothing too far off anything that we usually did at the Heritage Park HT in October.
When I got back on, he was a little crazy again. He knew what was next, for sure, and he loves his job. We spent about 10-15 minutes walking around the warm up area working on being calm. Then we did our typical warm up (2-2-2s) around the warm up area while the starter horses were finishing up their courses. Chris was anxious about the stadium jumps, thinking that they had been set too high for a starter division. She lost a little bit of confidence when she did her warm up and was dropping him before the fences. She decided to scratch, but she let Sam ride Stuey for the stadium course in hopes to train him and see how he would do with the height and pressure. He did really good. He jumped a few jumps like a deer, but overall, he seemed to enjoy his job. Coco's round was pretty good. The first couple jumps were kind of sticky (my fault. I get nervous and don't let him have the speed he needs to get over the jumps), but as we gained confidence and impulsion, he started doing a lot better. We went double clear.

Time for XC! But first... water!!! I chugged about half of my Nalgene bottle! And we were off (after a tiny protest from Coco who didn't want to leave his buddies). The course was a breeze and Coco thought he was a real live race horse. He was FLYING!!! I was going with it though, because it was fun! Coco didn't look at anything and took all the jumps like he was a champ and I was actually maintaining my galloping position without being sore or out of breath (yay!!). We got 3 jumps from home and still had a minute before speed fault time, so we had to trot an excessive amount before finishing up the course. We came in about 15 seconds over speed fault. What a champ! We maintained our position in the pack and ended up in 5th place and with lots of confidence going into the Longview event next weekend.

This week will be filled with working out (and maintaining a healthy diet) for me and rest & relaxation for Coco. He clearly knows and loves his job, I just need to be fit enough to be able to keep up with him. If Longview goes well (and ideally, if we can qualify for AECs), we might move up to novice for Queeny, but we shall see. Right now, I'm going to try to live in the moment doing all I can to have fun (and do well) at the events and enjoy the time I get to spend with such a phenomenal friend of mine, my pony, Mr. Coco Bean!

Epic Fail at Holly Hill

Winter totally sucks! It makes it difficult to ride. It makes it easy to eat and sit around watching Netflix. And everything is sad.

To add to the depression that is winter, I had to take time off for my knee (I had surgery 12/23/14 for a lateral meniscus repair). And I told myself that after our strenuous season last year, Coco deserved some time off over the winter.

April came up quick. And when April rolled around, I spent a lot more time in the saddle. However, I mainly focused on dressage rides, because that has always been Coco and my least successful phase of eventing and we needed to be ready for Holly Hill in Louisiana on the 18th-19th. Our dressage was looking good and it felt like we remembered what we were doing. We had a few jumping lessons, but it's really difficult to do too much of substance when all we can do is ride in an indoor arena.

So Coco got his bath on Thursday morning and we left for Louisiana around noon. After a long drive and about an hour break to stop and walk the horses, we arrived at Holly Hill around 12:30am on Friday morning. 

Friday morning, we had a dressage school, which went incredibly well. He was totally listening to me and my aides and we were looking like we knew what we were doing and belonged there. The rest of the afternoon was spent washing tack, bathing ponies (again :p), and walking the cross country course. We had a good diet of Mexican food (Holly Hill provided lunch and dinner- both different varieties of Mexican food, which was delicious) and headed back to the hotel. The weather for the whole weekend was supposed to be rain, so we were happy that we had one day to enjoy the show grounds and Louisiana before the weather turned on us.

We didn't ride until 1:45 on Saturday (typical for beginner novice), so I spent the morning watching my barn mates & some of the prelim riders do dressage. It was gloomy and rainy, but nothing too crazy for us insane eventers. As the weather was clearing up, I started getting ready for dressage. The warm up area was absolutely crazy and I think the announcer might have been dyslexic, because she kept confusing numbers and saying things out of order. They called for me to go into a more exclusive warm up area at 1:15! What?!? 30 minutes early? I didn't know if I was ready, but I figured that I would rather just get it over with than stress about the test and how ready we were for 30 minutes. After a couple 20 meter circles at the canter, the announcer started yelling at me, saying that I had entered this warm up area mistakenly. So after some confusion, I realized she had called 207 instead of 107 (though I could swear she said 107 repeatedly when I heard her and the ring steward had told me it was my turn to go into the ring next). We had a little more time to warm up, but the warm up area was crazy, so much of our time was spent avoiding collision and talking Coco off the ledge (stupid saddlebreds and their ability to slow gait when they're excited... Show offs! :p). Finally, we got to ride our dressage test. I think it went pretty well. He was a little looky-looky at the free walk and I forgot my test at one point and came to the trot from the canter a bit too early. But otherwise, I thought it went pretty well. We ended up with a 36.8, which isn't too bad considering it was our first show of the year. This put us into 16th place in a class of 20. Must have been some pretty stiff competition! But I guess this isn't the first time we've had to work our way back up the ranks!

So we had some time off and some R&R before we had to get ready for cross country. The course seemed pretty straightforward. Nothing we couldn't handle. A couple of the jumps seemed maxed out for BN, but we did Novice at Heritage, so we could totally handle maxed out BN jumps. Or so I thought...

I got into the warm up area and again, it was a little crazy. Sensory overload (for the OT crowd out there). We started doing our 2-2-2s (2 laps at the walk, 2 laps at the trot, 2 laps at the canter). We got to the canters and I could hardly hold myself in two-point. I was exhausted. I hadn't even started riding the course yet or taken any jumps, and I was tired! I suddenly got a sinking feeling about this course. We started taking some jumps and I was getting tired even more quickly. I needed water, but there was none in sight. I guess we'd just have to go and get this stupid course over with while I'm still breathing (kind of).

The first 3 jumps were a breeze (2 logs and a vertical). I started getting tired and feeling my legs around the 4th jump (a simple red ramp). Between the 4th and 5th jump, there was a bunch of red clover (which was new to Coco) and there were some people sitting on the training jump next to our rolltop coming up. I half-halted and Coco listened a little too well. He popped up and to the left and I slid over his right shoulder onto the ground. (Check out the embarrassing video here: http://youtu.be/NkS08n8LJCk). "Welp," I thought as I looked up at my horse from the ground with the reins still in my hand, "I guess that's it for us, but thank God, because I'm SO TIRED!" As I stood up with defeat in my heart and a slight feeling of relief, I heard the girls on the jump ahead of us saying, "Get back on! You can still finish!" Oh. My. God. I have to keep going. I can't let Coco down. At that moment, I started running over to the starter fence nearby to mount back up. I got back on and we continued on our way. The rest of the course was the crappiest cross country course I think I've ever ridden. (Watch this video to prove it: http://youtu.be/G1ywyRwg-Z8) I was having trouble staying in two-point, I was basically pointing Coco at jumps and hoping for the best (which is why we had a refusal at the 7th jump), and I trotted way too much before the bank. I was just in survival mode. I wanted to get through this stupid course as quickly as possible so people would forget about my miserable fall and stop embarrassing myself. We finished with 17 time penalties and 20 jump penalties, keeping us in 16th place after cross country. Ultimate defeat. I felt like I had let Coco down, because I just wasn't fit enough to be riding that cross country course. I went back to the barn and took care of my horse and had a couple tears of defeat. I even had a moment when I considered that maybe we should just switch to dressage (even though Coco and I both have strong anti-dressage feelings) and forget the whole eventing thing. The rest of the day, water tasted gritty, so maybe I was really really dehydrated. We went to dinner that night at a Japanese hibachi restaurant (per Sam's request, as usual) and I just tried to spend as much time alone as possible (which I'm sure really helped my situational depression :p).

I was bound and determined to do better on Sunday in stadium. Stadium has always been where Coco and I shine. It's our favorite phase. We watched the novice horses go in the morning, and a lot of people were having trouble. It had rained over night and the ground was definitely wet and slick. There were people sliding to stops, people falling, and rails coming down all over the place. My barn mates weren't exempt from the mayhem. One had a refusal and sliding stop into the second jump of a combination, one had a fall as her horse tried to take a nap and ride the course at the same time, and one had a sliding stop with her horse sliding onto his butt into the triple bar. Someone had to show them how it was done. 

Warm up for stadium was better than cross country (maybe Chris (my trainer) was going easy on me). Coco was taking everything well and the footing didn't seem to bother him (he doesn't have any studs, only front shoes with little nobbies). Every time we came near the in-gate, Coco had a minor freak out of excitement and was difficult to control, but he finally calmed down. We went in to do our course and everything went perfectly. He was taking distances well. He chipped into the second fence of the 2-stride to make it a 2.5-stride, but he saved me when I tried to jump for him and didn't knock a rail even though he would have been totally justified in doing so. He felt like he was flying, but he was controlled during the whole round and listening to me pretty well. He didn't have any trouble at all with the footing despite intermittent occurrences of motorcycle turns. (See! I DO know how to ride!!! http://youtu.be/ZuCs3oYK_Xw) We ended up going double clear and moving up to 13th place. My barn mates and I cleaned out stalls, loaded up the trailer, and carried our drooped heads and ribbon-less hands all the way home to Kansas City. We got home around 3am on Monday morning and I made the poor life choice of going to work that day with a clear case of sleep deprivation. I slept 10 hours on Monday night and a week and a half later, I'm finally starting to feel back to normal.

Coco had a whole week off and I focused on myself, stepping up my healthy eating and exercise habits in an attempt to improve my fitness for the next show (only 3 short weeks later). I made the tough decision to drop down to beginner novice for Longview until I can get my leg and my fitness back. It feels a little sad and depressing to have to work so hard to do well at beginner novice, especially because I thought we would be ready to move up to novice this year, but I have to do what's right for me and my horse. I definitely learned a lot at Holly Hill about taking time off over the winter, the importance of fitness/endurance rides, the importance of taking care of myself and not just Coco... and that knee surgery totally sucks!!