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! 

So this is what WINNING feels like??

Catalpa Corners 2014 was phenomenal. I couldn't have asked for a better weekend.

We had 4 horses going. Lorna took Scotty, Sam took Wish, Taylor took Duncan, and I was taking Coco in Chris's trailer. We left for Iowa City at 9am on Friday morning and arrived around 3pm. We set up the stalls, rode, ate pizza, and walked the cross country course (twice) all before dark (barely- my pictures of the jumps on CourseWalk are pretty dark). It's gotten to the point with cross country where beginner novice jumps seem small (I think that's a good thing) and the course looked really reasonable.

By the time I got back from cross country, Chris was almost finished braiding my horse (how nice!!). She had 3 braids left to finish when I got there. I was reprimanded for not taking longer to walk my course, because as soon as I got there, Coco followed the sound of my voice like a dog and wouldn't stand still for braiding anymore. I was banished. After everyone was finished with braiding, we all headed back to the hotel.

Chris and I took the early shift on Saturday morning because we wanted to watch preliminary dressage. Chris giggled as I played "I'm Ready" by AJR on repeat all the way to the show grounds. It was my Daniel Stewart cross country/pump up song. We didn't ride dressage until 2:03pm that afternoon, so the morning was spent watching my team members and helping where I could. Finally, I went down for my dressage test. Chris was coaching Sam for cross country (she was supposed to ride around 1pm, but they were running late because of a rider fall), so she wasn't available at that moment but I assumed she knew my time and would be over to help us warm up and watch my test when she could get away. We warmed up well, alternating 5 minutes of work and 5 minutes of walking and reviewing the test until it was my time to go into the ring. No one from my team was there. They must have been busy with cross country.

As I started trotting around the ring, I said good afternoon to the judge who said "All nine's, right?" I told him that he could go ahead and write that and then take a break while I rode the test, but that it was ultimately up to him. He said "we'll see." I rode my test and it felt really good. I was worried about my geometry, but I felt like I had Coco on the bit and our transitions were good and our bend was better than usual. However, I feel like whenever I think a test went well, I do horribly and when I think a test rode horribly, I end up doing well. I didn't have great expectations. After my halt and salute, I said "All 10's, right?" to the judge who said, "Well you did have a couple 9's." I freaked out and said "Really?!?!" His response: "Nope. Just kidding!" Not funny, judge. Not funny.

So I went back to the barn and took care of Coco. I started getting ready for cross country, considering we were supposed to go at 3:36pm. As I was getting ready, I looked at StartBox on my phone and it had me listed in first place with a 25.0 dressage. I didn't believe it. I thought it was a mistake on StartBox, didn't get my hopes up, and said I would look later to see what my real score was. Several minutes later, I checked again and sure enough, I was in 2nd place with a dressage score of 25.0. My goal was to get in the 20's!!!!! Welp, I guess it's time for a new goal! I called Chris and almost started crying I was so happy.

Time for cross country. I played my song ("I'm Ready") all the way to the warm up and while we did our 2-2-2s. Then we started jumping. Our first couple jumps had weird distances (pretty typical for us), but we were able to find our groove pretty quick. We jumped everything that was flagged, including the training level warm up cross country jump. We were totally ready. Coco found his stride almost immediately out of the start box. Coming to the third jump, there was a weird silo-looking thing next to it, so he was wiggly, but not resistant. As I came up to that jump, I saw Chris standing to the side. As we jumped it, I turned, looked at Chris, and yelled "WEEEEEEEEEEE!!!" The rest of the course rode really well. I honestly can't think of one jump that was difficult. At jump 11, my watch hit 3 minutes. Optimum time was 6:29 and speed fault was 4:38. I guess we had to slow down, but I just wanted to get over the ditch (12) with 7 strides to 13. After 13, we trotted. A lot. Enough to watch the girl in front of us have a refusal (we had been watching her have refusals all around the course though... tough break!). My watch hit 4 minutes right before jump 14 and I figured it would surely take us more than 38 seconds for 4 obstacles so we went for it. Coco was perfect. We crossed the finish line and then I remembered to turn off my watch. It said 5:03. I couldn't do anything more than hope and pray that we were over speed fault. I'm sorry, Coco and I aren't a 300mpm team. Lorna and Chris were there when we finished and helped cool Coco and me down. I felt like I was on top of the world!

Later that night, I found out that we didn't have any time penalties in cross country and the first place rider after dressage had had 4 refusals in cross country. I was in first place! How cool is that?!?! It was time to celebrate at the competitor's party, where they always have awesome food (and cornbread). It was nice to just hang out with our barn and catch up with some of the other people I knew in the eventing world. We walked horses, wrapped them, and headed back to the hotel.

Sunday morning, Chris and I took the early shift again so that we could watch prelim ride their stadium course. There were a lot of rails coming down and some people were having trouble making time. There was a lot of movement in prelim & training after stadium. I got Coco and we watched Lorna & Sam ride then went back to the barn to get ready. I was super early. Too early, so I got off him and let him hang out (he was falling asleep on me) until it was closer to our time to ride.

Warm up was not going well. I did not have high hopes. We couldn't find a distance or a pace to save our lives. I started singing my song and tuned everything out. As I went into the ring, I told myself that I was going to ride like I was riding in a lesson. Lindsey and I were competing to see who could have the prettiest ride and not knock any rails. After the first jump, Coco took over and did his job flawlessly. We had an awesome pace, good distances, and we actually looked like we knew what we were doing. Then on the last fence, we had a hard, hard rub and I freaked out. I looked back to see what had happened and freaked out when the rail was still sitting in the cups. I think we did it! I think we went double clear! I came out of the ring and saw Chris, who was grinning ear to ear. I knew we had done it. I cried. I bawled. And Chris took a video. And then I caught Chris crying. I was so happy that I couldn't contain myself. I'm sure I looked like the biggest nerd. They called the top 10 into the arena. Everyone had their ribbons except for me. They called my name and I was ecstatic! I turned to my fellow competitors and asked if they were ready for the victory gallop. I had never lead a victory gallop before!

We ended on our dressage score of 25.0 and went double clear in both cross country and stadium. And it wasn't an easy class with 22 competitors. I couldn't be more happy with Coco and myself for overcoming all the obstacles that have been holding us back.

A year ago, we had clawed our way up to 4th at this show. This year, we were defending first. It's amazing how much can change in a year's time. My horse doesn't look emaciated. We've figured out how to relax and bend in a dressage arena. And we can go to events like we know what we're doing. I can't thank my trainer enough for what she's done for me and my horse in the past year. It's been an amazing journey and I can't wait to see what's next.

Coming up next: American Eventing Championships in September. Then, we'll move to novice at Heritage Park in October! :) So excited!!!