We started with dressage on Friday...in the pouring rain. Stoney made it clear that he did not by any means want to be out there in the rain anymore than my trainer, Mike, who was standing in warm up with his open umbrella.
My horse is very hard to ride. Not only am I a week dressage rider, but dressage is definitley not his strong point either. It is already a struggle as is. Throw in the fact that my horse fluctuated from relaxed to tense on four different occasions in the twenty five minutes I was in the FEI warm up and you have yourself an almost impossible task on your hands. Our dressage test was nothing short of tense and a disaster, but hey, it was qualifying. And no matter how disastrous my dressage tests are, Mike always has a few positive comments afterwards.
The next day, the footing on cross country was almost perfect with all the rain we got on Friday. Almost. But I'll get back to that soon. The course itself was quite tough. My best friend, Victoria New, said that of all the CIC*s she's done in the past year (which were 5), this was definitely the most difficult one she'd seen that almost compared to the course at NAJYRC. And I can honestly say, the course rode just as difficult as it looked when walking it. Even with cross country being my strongest phase, Stoney and I barely got around. That's saying something. Even with attempting to gallop within the time allowed, I still cam in thirteen seconds over optimum. IT WAS HARD. Not only was it difficult, but it didn't seem to ride all that well for me or for the other girls from my barn. I never got into a steady rhythm when going around the course, and the only things that seemed to ride well for me were the two water complexes (which is really ironic).
Unfortunately, the footing was still a bit slick in a few places even with the huge studs we all put in, and my friend, Tori, had an unfortunate fall on course with her horse. Her sister, Elle, was unable to get around on one of her horses, had time on the other, and Clair Parker had time on her horse as well. Like I said multiple times already. It was a hard course and a rough weekend.
Stoney handled his first FEI jog very well. At least when jogging for the judges. He was prancing beside me when walking around the ring, waiting our turn to jog down the strip. It's safe to say he still had plenty of energy after cross country. He jogged like a super star, and we were off to show jump that afternoon.
Show jumping warm up was a little nerve racking. For the first half I was in there, I couldn't see a distance to the fences to save my life, which got me even more nervous. I could see the stadium ring from warm up, and the jumps looked VERY big. Big jumps don't neccesarily scare me. It was the fact that they were big jumps and I could not by any means see a distance. Even though my eye started to kick in towards the end, I knew when going into the ring, it would be a miracle for me to complete the course without missing badly to one of the fences. It also didn't help that Mike had me cantering up to these big upright verticals and wide oxers in warm up with my eyes closed. This prevented me from helping my horse get to the jump, making him fend for himself and figure out he needed to clear the fences without my help. This only began to work after Stoney crashed through a fence, getting a wake up call. But hey, you gotta do what you gotta do.
So no surprise that Stoney had the second fence down, an upright verticle that I got him to perfectly. He also had ten down, a wide, natural looking oxer that everyone seemed to be taking down that day. After ten, we finished with the triple combination, which I missed badly to. I'm still not comfortable moving him up to a big combination like that, and I am quite picky with the distance I see coming in to these things. So, I did exactly what I shouldn't have which was add a stride coming in. We ended up jumping the first from a standstilll, put two strides in the measured one stride, jumped the oxer (a big oxer) from a standstill (managing to somehow leave it up), and made our way out over the vertical. Like always, Mike had encouraging words. He asked me if the course had finished with the combination 9a and 9b if I would have been happy with the round, and I said yes. He said it was great til then, and we just have a bit more work to do at home to keep things together towards the end of the courses.
So, Stoney and I scraped by to pull out a qualifying round. Thankfully, our next CIC* isn't for five weeks, so we have lots of time to pull ourselves together to really show the best of ourselves at Greenwood. We also have a chance to get ourselves in check a few weeks before Greenwood when we run prelim at Holly Hill Horse Trials in Louisiana.
With this week, we have been and are still in the process of working out the kinks in our dressage and trying to move forward. This is way easier said than done. Trying a different dressage saddle may also be of help in improving our flat work, so I can't wait to try that tomorrow. Seeing as Stoney doesn't like to pick up his feet and relies way too much on me to help him in show jumping, he spent today in the round pen and will have plenty more sessions in there, where he gets to jump without a rider on his back, forcing him to fend for himself and pay attention to where his feet are.
So to wrap things up, I want to make sure you don't get the wrong idea from this in thinking that my first CIC* was a disappointment. I was quite happy that we survived it. Being Stoney's first FEI event and mine too, it was a lot of new things to take in, and he handled himself well (for the most part). Seeing as we also got a qualifying round, it would be crazy of me not to be happy with it. However, I am only human and can't help but be a little frustrated that our best did not come through in dressage or in show jumping. It was just a tough weekend all together, so in the end I am just relieved that we got through it. Now that we have, I have time to polish it all up before our second CIC* in Weatherford, TX.
Two of the four lap dogs Mike has, Harley and Sooner, on the 13 hour trip back home from GA.
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