Hawley Bennett is so cool. And Coco loves jumpers.

Last weekend we were fortunate enough to have THE Hawley Bennett-Awad in town (thanks to Sally Spickard, who is also awesome). It was such a great experience to be able to ride with someone of her caliber. She really reinforced that Coco and I are doing everything right.

Check out the full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZy-T22-tJ4

We started with an easy warm up with emphasis on getting lead changes and continuing straight after the fences. Then we did a little course and even got to jump a training jump, which Coco did like a champ. We went to the water and did banks into water (which Coco and I hadn't done for a while... and it showed). We did a mini course by the water. Then we moved on to the bank complex and did a bank down and a bank up in addition to a few other jumps in an S pattern with emphasis on going straight after jumps again. Finally, we did ditches and worked on going both ways over ditches and added a jump between. Hawley ended cross country with a speech about the importance of wearing air vests on cross country (hers had saved her life twice) and writing hand-written thank you notes to people for the clinic (which I have already completed and put in the mail). 

Stadium day was great. Hawley said that after a day of cross country, when horses are tired, their strides tend to shorten. Everything was set up as a 9-foot stride (which totally worked for me and Coco). We started with a grid, then did the grid to a 4-stride bending line (which could go to the left or the right), 5-stride lines across the diagonals, a 6-stride line along one outside line, and a series of 5 1-stride jumps along the other long side of the arena. We just played with different combinations of the obstacles until time was up. It was a blast, and Coco was an absolute rockstar. We talked to Hawley a bit about moving up to Novice, and she said Coco and I would definitely excel there. It also came up that I'm trying to lose weight before AEC's and she said something along the lines of "You're too good a rider to let that be what holds you back." and "You already have exceptional balance, losing weight will only make your balance even better." She said that next year, when she comes back (she made it seem like it was obvious she would), she expected Coco and I to be competing novice, ready to go training, and me to have lost 50 pounds. Hopefully I don't let her down! Overall, it was an amazing weekend. Coco and I learned a lot and we have a lot of fun exercises to take home.

A week later, Coco and I were off to play at the Great Plains Hunter Association Fun Show at Olympia Equine Ventures. We had been taking some lessons with Amber Mazza of Iron Horse Hill Farm and having a blast with our throwback to the jumper ring. We decided to register for the 2'9" Hunter Derby and two 2'6" jumper classes (one traditional jumper class & one power & speed). We schooled at OEV on Friday night and Coco was a champ, as usual. Sophie and I stayed at Chris's house on Friday night and we got up early to get to the show at 9am on Saturday morning. We didn't even bother bathing the horses, because the outdoor arena (where I would be riding all day), was super muddy after a night of rain. I had forgotten how much hurry up and wait there is at hunter/jumper shows. It was 3pm before I even started getting tacked up (Taylor even found plenty of time to nap in the bed of the truck... See the pic below). We did the hunter round of the derby and were having trouble getting leads and suppressing our jumper roots. We were sitting in last place going into the handy round, but it was OK, because we were just there to have fun. The handy round went well. Again, we were having trouble with leads, but I thought it rode well. We finished in 4th place.

On to the jumpers! Our first jumper round was great, we left all the rails up and immediately moved on to the jump off, which we rocked. Coco and I got 2nd place. Then we did power and speed. We went balls to the walls, took all the tight turns, and had a blast! We were flying (controlled, of course), and I don't think Coco or I would have had it any other way! We ended up 1st in that class. Overall, we tied with another horse & rider pair for champions of the division. I mean, I know Coco is a champion, but it's kind of nice to be reminded every once in a while! We got some pretty ribbons and a new container of horse treats (which Coco approved of) and headed home (not before grabbing some delicious barbecue at Snead's in Belton before heading down to Butler). We got back to Chris's house, fed the ponies, ate BBQ, and I drove home (while talking on the phone to stay awake). It was a good day!

Check out the compilation video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFXuVd_ntTw

So... on the horizon... we have the American Eventing Championships at the end of September, Heritage Park Horse Trials in Olathe, KS at the beginning of October (which I have already entered to go Novice), and Windmere Horse Trials at Longview Horse Park in Lee's Summit, MO at the end of October. The end of the season is going to be a whirlwind, and I'm so excited to share it with Coco and my barn family. There will definitely be more blogs to come, so stay tuned!

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!!

Disappointment at AECs, Success at Heritage, and A Stupid Knee

So I’m going to be completely honest. I haven’t written in a while because I was embarrassed to admit that I was disqualified from AECs. However, if I want to keep up with my blogging, it is inevitable that I’ll have to share that experience as well as that of our last show of the year at Heritage and our winter endeavors. So get ready for a bumpy ride and a large blog, because there’s a lot to catch you up on!

American Eventing Championships

It was a dream to head to Texas with my barn. Lorna, Sam, and I were all planning on competing. Lorna and Sam went in 2013, so they knew the ropes. They would be competing novice. I was the rookie of the group competing beginner novice, and I was loving every minute of it. The atmosphere was phenomenal!  We got there on Tuesday so that we could spend the Tuesday and all day Wednesday watching other riders, acclimating our horses to the Texas-ness of it all, and shopping (of course!). My parents, who had just moved to Austin, were also planning on coming to watch us compete.

The advanced riders started their dressage on Thursday, and it was a real treat to see them all ride. Coco and I rode dressage on Friday afternoon around 2pm. It was a pretty good ride. We had had good warm up dressage schoolings in all the arenas and he was being really good as far as calmness while we were walking around the show grounds. I wasn’t worried. I was sure we would be middle of the pack after dressage, as usual. We ended up getting a 33.0, which is pretty good for us. It put us in a tie for 17^th.

Saturday was cross country. I had walked the course 3 times and will admit that I was a little anxious. Some of the jumps looked really big and there was one line that was complicated going out of the first water. However, I knew that Coco would take care of me. The jumps themselves were nothing we hadn’t done before. We were definitely capable. Warm up went great. The warm up area was a bit hectic and we got weird striding to our first couple jumps, but after I calmed down, it seemed like everything would be fine. The course started out riding great. Jumps were easy and Coco wasn’t looking at anything. We were having fun. I was worried about time, though. We usually take cross country extremely fast and have to be careful not to get faster than speed fault time. However, because this was championships, the goal was to get as close to optimum time because that would be the determining factor in ties (which I had managed to find myself in). So throughout the course, I was more focused on my watch and my time than I typically would be. Everything was going well. I was coming into my jumps at just the right times. And then the weird line after the first water came. It rode well.  And the line after 7 rode well going to the 8^th jump, a really big roll top that had seemed like it was maxed out and was the first jump of the course that really gave me any anxiety. Something went wrong as we approached. Coco tried to add a half stride and caught his front end on the jump, sending me over his right shoulder straight to the ground beyond the jump. I landed on my forehead and immediately started crying, not because I was in pain, but because I knew that my ability to complete the AECs was over. You can see all the fun here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f3VlGbB3H4. Looking back and talking to my coach and seeing the video, there is nothing I could have done to prevent this fall. It was one of those freak accidents that just happened. Our pace could have been more consistent, but that’s always something we need to work on.  However, Coco obviously took care of me. After he tripped, he obviously took great care in where he was placing his feet so as not to step on me. And when I was on the ground, he patiently stood and waited for me to gain my composure and get up. He’s a great horse who clearly was looking out for me.

It was really upsetting to continue the rest of the weekend in Texas, but being unable to compete. I found myself frequently breaking into random tears of disappointment. However, we will definitely be back next year to redeem ourselves. It took a couple jumping lessons and a cross country school at Longview when we got home for me to regain my confidence and trust in Coco, but we came back better than ever and headed to Heritage Park in October.

Heritage Park Horse Trials

After much deliberation with Chris and soul searching, I decided to maintain course and compete novice for the first time at Heritage Park. The cross country course is usually pretty straightforward and we had schooled most of it earlier in the summer. I was nervous, but very excited. My barn mates were awesome about helping me through my nerves, too. We had a lot of people competing at this event. Lindsey, Lorna, Sam, and I were all going to go novice. And Taylor was going to do beginner novice. Chris would have her hands full. We would be hauling to the show grounds every day and went on Friday night to ride a schooling dressage test. It went really well. Coco was too collected in his canters, jigged at the free walk, and we needed more bend (as usual), but it gave us some good things to make sure we did correctly the next day, for the real competition.

This is Sophie. Isn't she a cutie???

Lorna and I rode dressage on Saturday morning at almost exactly the same time. Jackie came to watch. I even brought Sophie (my new puppy) to watch and get acclimated to the show environment (hopefully she will be a good horse show puppy). I recommended that Chris watch Lorna, seeing as I got my best dressage score ever at Catalpa earlier this year when she didn’t see me ride. Superstition. My ride was good. The judge was the same one I had had the night before and she said that the ride looked a lot better. We got the same score, though, a 31.3. (Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTAhkCnY2U4&list=UUkmV2MiImdwXP6TtlR2wX2Q)

Cross country was that afternoon. I was really excited. I tried not to overthink it, though. The last event when I had tried that whole thinking thing hadn’t gone so well. My plan was just to go clear and not worry too much about the time. We were absolutely perfect. The pace of novice is absolutely perfect for us and everything rode great! No need to be concerned about the speed fault time. We had a blast and ended the afternoon on a double clear cross country, a crazy eventing high that can’t be described, and a new 4^th place position.

Stadium jumping was Sunday morning. The course reminded me a lot of Queeny Park, so I was sure there would be a lot of rails dropped and a lot of movement among the positions. Our warm up was pretty disastrous. Partly because the organizers had decided that the Novice A and B groups would go together in reverse order, so it was really confusing because Lindsey was supposed to be a whole group of people ahead of me, but I actually ended up having to ride before her because I was in a lower position. Our warm up was rushed and the warm up area was hectic at best. We got through it, though. Coco got into the arena and instantly knew his job. He was really good, until the last line. I think I took too long of a line getting to it, giving him too much time to think about it, and then pushed him too hard in the middle of it. (Check out the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYmyWgI_Xpg&list=UUkmV2MiImdwXP6TtlR2wX2Q). We ended up knocking both rails, which dropped us down to 5^th place. Still not too bad, though, considering that was our first novice event ever. I was very happy.  Coco was very happy. Chris was very happy. Overall it was a great show season and Coco deserved some time off.

Show Season and Beyond

Coco got 2 full weeks off after Heritage. We rode in a dressage lesson with Amanda at Willow Creek and then he got some more time off for Thanksgiving and bad weather. We had a meeting discussing goals and schedule for next year. The plan is to go all novice (and hopefully qualify for AECs again) and then maybe do training at Heritage in 2015.

And then I broke myself. Sad panda. I tore my lateral meniscus of my right knee when I was playing board games with some friends and went from sitting on the floor to standing. I had to have surgery (lateral meniscus repair) and have been out of the saddle for about 4 weeks as of this blog. I’ve recently been depressed thinking of all the things I’m still having trouble doing and all the riding I’m missing out on. I don’t think I’d be able to bend my knee enough at this point to mount or even put my feet in the stirrups. However, this is probably the best time of the year for this to happen. No shows and no need to do any crazy conditioning. Hopefully my physical therapy and recovery goes well and I’ll be back in the saddle in no time. My friend Jackie has been riding Coco when she has the chance and plans to continue riding him. Chris and Lindsey also said they would help with lounging him and picking out his feet until I can get out more often. I’ll be sure to keep you updated on how things go from here on out.

This last photo is me, my pup Sophie, my friend Jackie who was a huge support at Heritage and during all my competitions this year, and my boyfriend Matt, who's been super supportive of everything I do. I can't wait until he can come see me and Coco compete. 

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!!!

Queeny Park and USPC Championships 2014

I forgot to post an entry after our adventures at Queeny Park!!! How could I?!?!

Well here's the long and the short of Queeny Park in Saint Louis... We warmed up pretty well for dressage, but I was really nervous. I get nervous, but this was more nervous than usual. I forgot my stock tie and my bridle number and was freaking out a bit, feeling like a rookie eventer. We went into the ring and when I started my canter work, I started freaking out that I wasn't doing the correct test. I kept thinking "This is coming up too quickly, but surely they would ring a bell or blow a whistle or something to let me know if I'm doing the wrong test, right?!?" It totally threw me off and we ended up with a 40.5 in dressage... definitely not our best and I believe we were in 12th place. Cross country came around and the skies opened up during the novice divisions, sending everyone into a panic, causing one of the younger riders with our barn to be stuck at the start box in a lightning storm, and transforming the grass on which the stalls were sitting to become a foot of squishy mud. As the sun started to come out, we were able to get to cross country, warmed up well, and were the first beginner novice team to try out the course. It rode great and we ended up with 0 jump penalties & 0 time penalties. He didn't really look at anything, it rode really nicely, and the footing was actually decent given the recent weather. We moved up to 10th. He was an absolute crazy pony when I got on him for stadium jumping. He couldn't stand still and we had to constantly be walking to keep his focus. Warm up went well, but waiting for our turn and waiting until it was a good time to warm up were difficult for both of us with several mini rears and horse-initiated side passes. The course was hilly and very technical. Everyone in our class had at least one rail (except for 1 person), including us. It was unfortunate, but given everyone else's mistakes, it moved us all the way up to 5th! Yay!

We got about a month break and then we headed to The Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, KY! It was the coolest experience ever to pull the trailer with my horse on it into the KHP. I never thought we'd show here and can only image all the top eventers and riders in general who have shared these stalls, parking spaces, and arenas with us! Lorna and I were the midwest team for Horsemasters with the United States Pony Club. There were 6 horsemasters total: 3 of us in the beginner novice division, 2 in novice, & 1 in training. It was an awesome experience to do all the horse management associated with pony club, and it was also quite exhausting! You are constantly busy... if you're not cleaning a stall or cleaning tack, you're emptying water buckets or cheering on teammates or feeding or walking your horse... and you're constantly being judged on your ability to do these things and your safety & judgement while doing them. We also had several kiddos from our pony club competing, and we made it very clear that they would be the priority during this week. We arrived on Monday evening after about a 12 hour drive (including an extended stop where the ponies got out of the trailer for walks) and spent about 2 hours running around trying to set things up and get situated. It was hectic! Tuesday was the beginning of the horsemanship competition, but we were able to get a quick dressage ride & hack in before judging started at noon. Wednesday was formal day (they judge your horse's turnout and your turnout before you go to show) and dressage day. Samantha (one of the girls in our pony club) had her dressage test at the exact same time as me but on a completely different side of the park, so I was on my own for dressage. We warmed up well, working on suppling and listening, as well as transitions. I took a few deep breaths, reminded myself that I know this test and it's no big deal, and we rode the test well! I was a bit unhappy with my geometry during my canter circles and my transition to trot after our free walk, but the judge must have thought we were decent because we got a 34.5, putting us in 1st place in our division. Thursday was cross country day, and we were at the end of the day (4:30pm). Also, my coach was riding her dressage freestyle at the same time, so again, I'd be on my own (except that this time Lorna could coach me). We started out a bit strung out for our jumps with me jumping ahead and then I started singing the song "I'm Ready" by AJR and we found our rhythm. The course rode great! Coco was even a bit slow (I think he was pooped after all the traveling- we kept finding him laying down in his stall with no motivation to get up), so we were actually closer to optimum time than we usually are. The vet box was interesting- Coco's TPRs were VERY high after we finished, but he recovered within the first 5 minutes. I think his respiration was 112! Woah, buddy. Chill. Pill. But it was an awesome experience to see how the other horsemasters worked together to take care of me and Coco after an exhausting XC run. It really solidified that eventing CAN be a team sport. Friday was stadium day, and again, I didn't ride until 2:45pm, so there was a lot of sitting around and getting nervous. We spent the morning on walks around the stadium ring (getting used to the motor home, the crowds, and the food trucks), but when I got on him, everything suddenly became a big deal and he couldn't stand still. His anxiety was making me nervous and we spent a lot of time trotting up and down a nearby gravel road before we could start officially warming up. He eventually chilled out so that we could trot on a long rein. Jumping warm up went well (except that I was EXHAUSTED- my quads hurt with every stride of two-point) and then it was our turn to ride. Everyone was concerned about the last line... it walked as either a collected 6 or an extended 5 stride to a perfect 2 stride. We decided that we would go for the 6. However, I was so concerned about that line and tired as the course neared the end, that I forgot to ride correctly to the bending line right before it and was leaning on Coco's forehand as we approached the second fence, so he refused. We circled and he was fine the second time around and still made the time, but we ended up with 4 penalty points, bumping us from 1st to 2nd. Whatever, red is still cool! :)

Saturday we switched stalls for festival education, which was crazy, because we had to move 4 horses and bedding and strip the stalls they had been in. We figured out a good system using a golf cart and a tarp. The ponies got Saturday off. They deserved it. That night, we watched a clinic with Lendon Gray (dressage4kids.com), which was very interesting, considering she sounded exactly like my trainer Chris in what she was telling her students. On Sunday, I rode with Lori Hoos in the morning for dressage. We worked a lot on lateral work, like leg yielding along the rail and from centerline to the rail, getting Coco to be on the bit without flexing too much, and transitions. We rode with another rider who rides training level eventing & wants to move to preliminary and Coco was showing up her horse. Lori said that her horse has the body for dressage but isn't a team player and Coco is not traditionally a dressage type horse but is definitely a team player and wants to please. That was cool to hear. Then, in the afternoon, we rode stadium jumping with Bobby Dreyer. The emphasis was rhythm and at the end, he had us doing some fun roll-back jumper turns and they were actually going really well. Monday morning, we rode cross country with a national examiner named Cheryl Gaebel with a group of riders who were mostly novice. She emphasized rhythm, counting, and keeping the rhythm through water and over fences (again, sounds kinda like Chris). Coco did great! He jumped all the novice questions without even blinking an eye and he was totally game for whatever I pointed him at (and to think, I started the morning nervous about XC). She said that it was easy to see that Coco makes me more confident and I make him more confident on cross country, and she was telling people that it's obvious that we're in tune with each other and make a good team. Then Monday afternoon, we had a ground training clinic in the Alltech arena. I had heard about this clinic and seen Chris and her horse Stuart play with walking over mattresses, bridges, through pool noodles,and over teeter-totters, and I wasn't quite sure how Coco would handle it. He did fantastic!!! Again, I think it might be because he was tired, but he walked over the mattress after only minimal resistance, walked over bridges like he'd done that his whole life, walked through pool noodles with only minimal anxiety, and did it all again with me on his back! It was awesome! We traveled back on Tuesday with another 12 hour trailer ride and minimal traffic in Louisville, avoiding rush hour in all other cities. It was a pretty perfect pony excursion. Returning to work on Wednesday was really hard!!

Next up: Catalpa Corners next weekend (August 2-3).

Longview Horse Trials 2014

What a weekend!! I am going to be all smiles for quite a while!

But let's start at the beginning (or the last blog post). This winter, I made it my main objective to work on dressage. We need more bend. We need to lower his head. We need to make sure he's not too rounded while still being on the bit (quite the challenge for a saddlebred). And we need to generally be more comfortable in the dressage ring.

We worked on bending. We worked on trotting. We worked on turns on the forehand. We worked on keeping the reins short enough. We worked on sitting the canter. We worked on riding 20 meter squares. We worked on transitions (lots and lots of transitions). We worked on changing direction/changing bend. We took 2 lessons with Emily Wagner, a dressage rider from this area who is only 25 (she is absolutely amazing!), who gave us some pointers for maintaining the headset and leg yielding, among other things. We worked on dressage before every jumping lesson we had... Until dressage was running through our veins and became kind of fun!

So we signed up for the Longview Horse Trials here in Kansas City. We were ready. Our dressage had improved immensely and our jumping was also improving (dressage has a funny way of influencing jumping). Anyway, we decided to stick with beginner novice, so that we could have a successful first show of the season and a good confidence boost. The past week has been filled with tack cleaning, trips to the tack shop, & express orders from Dover, as well as more consistent time in the saddle with jumping lessons Sunday and Wednesday and a dressage lesson Thursday.

Coco had Friday off, but I had to go to work for a half day (to pay for my expensive habit). After work, I went to the barn to finish cleaning tack and start packing up the trailer for Saturday. Around 2:30, we left to go to the show grounds to walk our cross country course. I walked the course twice, once with my trainer, Chris, and once by myself. When I was by myself, I used this nifty new app on my phone, CourseWalk, to take pictures of the jumps and use GPS to get a digital map of the course. After we walked the course, we went back to the barn to bathe and braid our horses. Then, I met up with my friends from Columbia who had also come to the show. Abby brought Lena. And Kris, my trainer in Columbia, had brought a bunch of people. They're catching the eventing bug!!! Yay!!! After we ate dinner, they needed to go back to the barns to braid a couple horses, so I went with them. It ended up being a really late night. Abby and I got back to my house around midnight. 6 am would come quick!

Saturday morning, I headed to the barn. We loaded horses and we were off. Lindsey rode first. She and her horse, Mikey, had a beautiful ride! They got a 25.5 dressage score, the lowest of the day. Coco and I warmed up well. He looked happy and relaxed. We went into our test, and it went pretty well. Now that I know more about dressage, it was easier to see where we messed up. We need to work on our geometry, our corners, and maintaining bend. But we actually got a few 8's!!! We ended up with a 34.0, putting us in 5th place in a field of about 12. Cross country was next, but we had a while. I put Coco in the trailer to relax and eat hay and headed out to the cross country course to see some of my friends ride.

When it was time, we saddled up for cross country. Our colors? Straight white. Except that I was wearing a teal/aqua shirt. It looked really sharp! We warmed up well. Coco was very excited and moving great. We only needed to take about 6 warm up jumps before we were ready to go. Coco felt fantastic. The course rode really well. The 2 jumps I was concerned about were the exact 2 jumps he looked at- there was a brand new wood table (Coco hates new wood) and a flower box at the end of the course filled with TONS of bright flowers. He looked at both, but did fine after I put some leg on him. But the time!!!! EVERYONE was doing circles before the last fence. It was really strange. Chris, my trainer, told me that if I needed to do things to slow down, I should do them in the back field, not right before the last fence. Well, I literally trotted jumps 11-13 and still was only at 4:00 when I went over jump 15 (of 16 total). It was either I get time penalties for being under speed fault (4:24) or I circle before the last jump. I literally yelled for Chris not to be mad at me while I did my circle. Whoops! But we went double clear!!! Yay Coco!!! Our clear cross country round put us into 3rd place. After watching our final rider (who had to wait a while to start due to a slight hold up on the course after a rider fell), I went to dinner with the barn family, wrapped my horse in standing wraps, took a shower, and went to bed.

This morning was an earlier morning. The alarm clock went off at 5:30. We loaded the horses and were on the road to the show at 7. The stadium course was full of twists and turns. Lots of roll backs and tight turns. We would have to be on our game and thinking the whole time. My friends Lindsey and Lorna got to ride it first, the ended up 1st and 2nd in their division, respectively. They said that it rode well. Coco warmed up like a dressage horse. Chris said that if he had looked like that on Saturday, we would have gotten an even lower dressage score! He was totally relaxed over his warm up jumps. Apparently, this was boring. We went into the ring and the first thing he saw was the red and white circus tent just outside the ring! He had a total spaz attack! We worked through it and continued on with our course. But Coco had plans to book it around the course so quickly that I didn't even feel like there was time to think. About anything. He was going so fast! I just went with it. He's usually careful. He knows his stride. He's a smart horse. He just needed my help with the directions. We flew through the course, having only slight trouble at the second fence and at the jump that was right in front of the circus tent (nothing a little voice and crop encouragement couldn't handle). We went clear!!! Yay yay yay!!! We finished the event on our dressage score of 34.0! I couldn't have been happier. We ended up in 3rd place!

Here is our list of awards and honors for this weekend:
1) 3rd place in our division (Adult Beginner Novice B)
2) 2nd place Adult Team (with Lorna and Lindsey)
3) 1st place for low point saddlebred (there were 2, yes 2 others!)- we'll be getting our plaque in the mail
4) We qualified for the American Eventing Championships!!!!! You need 2 1st-5th finishes between July 8, 2013 and September 18, 2014, and with our 4th place finish at Catalpa last year, we qualify!!! How cool is that?!?!?!?! Actually, of the 5 people Chris was coaching, 4 of us qualified for AECs at this show!!

We got tons of compliments! Christ was very impressed with me and Coco in our second time showing with her. She was sitting next to another trainer during my stadium round who was complimenting my seat and hands and saying that I rode my horse well despite our obvious difficulties. And the scribe for my dressage round (who is an acquaintance through Pony Club), said that she could see an obvious improvement in my dressage since last fall when she had scribed for us. I was (and still am) all smiles!!!

This weekend was absolutely perfect!!!

Catalpa Corner and beyond!!

It all started in August when we went to the Catalpa Corner event in Iowa. We had been working really hard with Chris and there was a spot available in the trailer she would be riding with to the event. It all worked out perfectly, really. We decided to stick with beginner novice, though, until our dressage and my confidence improves enough to move up to novice.

That Thursday, Chris picked Coco up from the barn and we took him to Liberty, where we met Lorna, Sam, and Joan, the family that would be hauling the horses to Iowa. It was a 5 hour drive to Iowa City, but Coco had good company and so did I. We spent the trip playing Truth or Dare, talking horses, and just generally getting to know each other. We arrived at the show grounds after dark, got the horses settled and headed for the hotel. 

The competition started Friday afternoon for those of us in the starter and BN divisions, just because of the number of riders entered. And they changed the order a bit for this event so everyone could do cross country on Saturday. So the lower divisions did dressage and stadium on Friday with cross country Saturday and the upper divisions did dressage and cross country on Saturday with stadium Sunday. 

My parents came to this event! It was really great to see them. They're from Chicago and I don't get a lot of chances to go visit, so it's nice when we can meet half way. 

Coco warmed up really well for dressage. As soon as we went into the arena, though, his head went to the sky, he was looking at everything, and it wasn't our best dressage test ever. We ended up with a 37.6 with lots of comments about needing more bend and suppleness. Whatever. We had stadium next and I knew we'd rock that. It was a tough course with a lot of turns on slippery grass (oh, I forgot to mention that it was misting at this point). As soon as I could finish a quick tack change, clothing change, and a couple warm up jumps, we went into the ring and Coco was absolutely perfect. Double clear as usual. What a rock star! Before cross country, we were sitting in 8th place. 

Now all we had to do was wait until cross country on Saturday. We walked the course and it all seemed pretty straightforward. There were a couple fences that I would have to make sure I had his attention and kept him going forward, but nothing we couldn't handle. And very pretty. We walked the course several times. My dad even joined for a couple. And then we were ready to go. 

Coco was awesome. He looked at the first fence but as soon as I put leg on and told him that this is fun, he was more than willing. The rest of the course went by in a flash! Coco was absolutely perfect. He hardly looked at anything and I was having so much fun that I didn't want to slow him down. We came across the finish line with .2 time penalties for being 1 second under the speed fault time. Whoops! We were just having too much fun! 

Anyway, we finished in 4th place and I couldn't have been happier. There was a competitors party on Saturday night and it was nice to meet up with some of the other people I know in the eventing world, like my trainer Amanda from Fulton. We also took all the horses for a walk and took some group photos with the other girls I came with. 

Once I started looking around at the show before we left and at pictures when I got home, I realized that Coco looked really skinny compared to the horses he was competing against. Clearly, he had proved that he deserved to be at this level, but he looked nearly emancipated compared to the horses he was around. And you know it's particularly bad when your parents, who know nothing about horses, comment on how skinny your horse is. I guess I hadn't noticed when I was comparing him to the other skinny horses at our barn. I had to do something about it. I felt like a bad pony mommy. 

Chris offered for me to go look at her house to see if I wanted to move Coco to live with her. I went to check it out and totally fell in love. It helped that she's a trainer that I respect and would want to go to shows with, so even if just for convenience, moving to Chris's barn just made sense. Plus, she guaranteed that she'd be able to put weight on Coco before winter. 

Judy, the barn manager, wasn't happy when we left, but I wasn't happy with how my horse was being treated (there was one night when he didn't have any hay in his stall at all). She even tried to say that Coco was skinnier when he moved there than he was when we left (which is absolutely not true, because I have photo evidence on the contrary). My friend Molly moved her horse, Hank, too. 

So the next 3 months were filled with 3 meals a day, dressage shows, cross country schooling weekends, bonfires, pony club events, and making new friends. Coco has officially gained about 100 pounds since moving to Chris's barn. And he's still got about 200 to go. It'll take time, but I couldn't be happier with the direction we're headed.