And Bridget joined us! The weather forecast looked dismal, but we were going to chance it and hope for the best! It was about a 7 hour drive (with bathroom breaks & gas stops) from Butler, MO to Norman, OK. Health certificates were obtained. Bridget's trailer was not-so-seemlessly unloaded and reloaded into Chris's trailer. And we were on our way. We got there Friday evening on September 20th. Bridget and I both had nice dressage warm-up rides. Bridget requested Mexican for dinner and it was delicious.
Saturday morning was rainy. It rained pretty hard and the show ended up with a 2 hour delay from original ride times. Bridget and I both had nice dressage tests. Then it was show jumping time. There wasn't much time between Bridget's ride and my ride, so I was going to go watch Bridget's ride with Dezi in-hand so she wouldn't need to stand tied in her stall. I was standing with Dezi in the warm-up area talking to Chris when she suddenly was staring into the distance. I turned around to see Bridget's horse rearing. Big. Like straight up. And the next thing I knew, she was on the ground. And she wasn't moving. Chris raced over to Bridget, someone caught Bridget's horse, and I immediately headed back to the barns to tie Dezi in her stall so I could help with Bridget's horse. By the time I got back to the warm-up field, Bridget's horse had been caught. I started walking back to the barns with her when I heard that they wanted the horse so Bridget could get back on. She had been cleared by the medic... though we're not sure how. Long story short, that was a very bad idea. For the next few hours, our conversation went something like this... Bridget would say, "Did she buck me off?" Someone would respond, "Yep!" To which Bridget would reply, "Bitch." Over and over and over and over and over and over and over.
So after all that excitement, I was expected to ride my stadium round... Cool. Thanks, Bridget. They were taking riders as soon as they were ready in an effort to speed up the show before the incoming rain. And because they were going to try to run preliminary and training cross country that evening instead of on Sunday (because at that moment, the forecast for Sunday was 80% chance of rain & Norman was expected to get 9-11 inches of rain overnight). We had a quick warm-up and then headed in. AND WE JUMPED DOUBLE CLEAR!!! IT IS POSSIBLE!!! (More on that to come later) I was sitting in 2nd place overnight with a 32.0.
The rest of the evening consisted of cleaning up our area (including organizing Bridget's stuff as much as possible, seeing as she was pretty much jello at this point), watching some training/prelim cross country, and then a quick trip to the ER with Bridget. They ended up doing some imaging & blood testing and diagnosed her with a concussion. We were supposed to wake her up every 3-4 hours overnight and try to have her avoid screen time (harder than it seems). Dinner at Sonic because we were all tired and just wanted to go back to the hotel and sleep and wake Bridget up and then sleep again.
When we woke up on Sunday, the sky was foggy, but the weather forecast looked a lot more inviting. Only 10% chance of rain, and whatever rain had happened overnight was barely noticeable on the Oklahoma clay. They pushed the start of cross country to 11am, but decided to run it! Yay!
Cross country. Was. Awesome. There were some really tricky questions, like a tall white wall (for BN) with black mulch in front of it that looked kind of like a ditch followed by a three stride to an actual ditch. Dezi took it no problem. And then there was water. Our kabuki from Catalpa. Chris and I had planned exactly how to take it and when to begin trotting and Dezi went through it with only minimal hesitation. The second to last jump on the course was a big BN table that was bright pink! I was a bit concerned, but Dezi could care less. It was fantastic! We ended on our dressage score and went home with a 2nd place ribbon!
Then, two weeks later, there was Heritage Park Horse Trials.
Chris was riding in a dressage clinic that weekend all day on Friday and early Saturday. She dropped Dezi and me off at the horse park early Friday morning and we were on our own. We rode a practice dressage test on Friday afternoon and it was bad. Really bad. She wasn't with me and I didn't know what to do and I didn't have my Chris there to help me get through it. We ended up with a 37.5. Good thing that wasn't the real deal. I had to be quick feeding her and getting out of there, because Anthony and I had the Luke Combs concert at the Sprint Center! We had a blast, but it made for a short night of sleep.
It pretty much rained all day on Saturday, but there was nothing too crazy or overdramatic. Thanks, Mother Nature. We rode our dressage test in the rain. It was a good test. We had our Chris there to help iron out all the kinks in warm-up, and I actually had a brain during the test. We were sure it was going to be a good test, and then we saw the score. 36.8. It didn't make sense. Only .7 better than my horrible test the night before but so much better in reality. Unfortunately, we heard that there were a lot of inconsistencies in that judge's scoring. Some people had obvious errors and got good scores and others, like myself, thought they had good tests and got bad scores. We were sitting in 7th going into cross country.
The skies cleared and the weather was actually starting to look nice by the time we got to run cross country. The course ran beautifully. Dezi did every jump out of stride and could care less about anything. We almost had some trouble at the ramp in the middle of a clearing on the way to the water, not because of the jump itself, but because of the jump judges sitting right next to it. We trotted into the water, just in case, and then we went ahead and finished the course without issue. I crossed the finish line and felt like it had gone so quickly that I needed to go through the course in my head to make sure I had jumped everything. Double clear. We moved up to 3rd!
Sunday came around and I got to the show grounds early to walk Dezi and do chores so I could watch prelim, as usual. I ended up sitting around a lot of the day just waiting for our turn to ride. Dezi was good in warm-up... until we started jumping. For some reason, we couldn't leave the rails up and I was losing confidence. The more we jumped, the more I felt like I had no idea what I was doing and what I was doing obviously wrong. We kept at it with an emphasis on maintaining pace and I thought we had it all figured out as we went in for our ride. Oh man, was I wrong. I let her get wrong and strung out as the course went on, I didn't ask her to change leads when she needed to, I took a roll-back turn too short, and I pushed her forward to a long 2-stride when I should have asked for the add. It was bad. We knocked 3 rails and went from 3rd to 9th. Oops. But we did have a double clear cross country run, which will help with our AEC qualification.
And finally, we had Windermere Run Horse Trials at Longview Horse Park.
Again, we got dropped off at the park early on Friday morning so that Chris could make it to a funeral by noon. But it was alright, because I got a chance to walk cross country and watch some of the upper level riders do their dressage tests. Chris came back later and we had an okay warm-up. I could not figure out how to ride to the left. After several lectures about not over-bending and making sure that I reprimand her quickly for disobedience, it got better. After our ride, Chris and I walked cross country. We had a plan. Everything was fairly straightforward, but she helped me decide what routes to take and what to think about as I rode the course. After Chris went home, I finished chores, cleaned up a bit, blanketed the pony, and took her for a short walk before Anthony and I went out to play some pool.
I got to the park early on Saturday morning so I could feed and get chores done. I put in Dezi's braids and then had plenty of time to go watch prelim cross country before my dressage ride. It was a good ride. Warm-up was so much better than Friday night... I guess we both learned our lesson. The test was good. I felt like I thought throughout the whole thing and my walk didn't totally suck, like it sometimes does. We ended up with a 30.3, which put us in a tie for 2nd going into cross country!
Cross country rode well. The footing warm-up was really sticky and I just couldn't figure out our pace. The jumps were alright, but it felt like everything was difficult. I guess I was going to have to put some trust in my horse for this course. She started out really wiggly and leaning on my right rein until about jump 4 when we got into a rhythm and everything was fine. Jump 6 was the only jump where she showed any amount of hesitation. It was a new tall ramp. Jump 10 to 11 was cool because it was a bank up to a 5/6 stride to a bench with a novice bench and a starter jump very nearby. It was like she knew which one we were going to as soon as we got up the bank without me even having to direct her to it. The water rode well, at the trot of course. And then I had to take really wide turns and slow my pace going to the last 2 fences because we were going way too fast! With the slow down, we ended up going double clear! We moved up to 1st place. No pressure. Anthony left while I did chores and organized, and then he came back for the competitors party. When I got home after giving Dezi another walk and wrapping her, I couldn't stay awake as we watched the world series game on the couch and ended up calling it an early night.
Sunday started out with a bit of deja vu. I got to the horse park early to do chores and feed and walk her. Then I watched some prelim stadium and sat around for a while until it was my turn to ride. Warm-up went really well. I kept thinking about keeping her in a dressage-y canter as we approached fences and everything was riding well. I felt like I actually knew what I was doing. I was confident going into the ring. As the course went on, we started getting weird distances and I had to make choices to add or push for the long. Instead of taking control and telling her that I know more about this jumping thing than she does, I let her take the lead. Bad idea. We ended up getting a bad distance into a bending line that had her knocking the first and luckily leaving the second jump up and then we had a rail on the second fence of a 5-stride combination. I just didn't have the tempo and pace to get her through the course the way I needed to. I trusted her too much when I should have been in control. Those 2 rails took us from 1st to 4th, but we finished! And in the ribbons! I was pretty happy, honestly! And this third double clear XC round got us our third finish to qualify for AECs! Yay!
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