July 2014

So because I was grounded from the arm issue in June, I was only able to ride for a week or two before we went to South Farm HT at the beginning of the month.  Not the most ideal prep for a show.  At the same time, I was also really thrilled that my fiance was able to finally see us compete.  I decided that there was no way that I was going to let Otter's rambunctiousness ruin our dressage test this time, so I planned for lots of warm up time.  I got on Otter early in the AM to get all of his high jinx out, and I am so glad I did - we had about 30 minutes of bucks and leaps when I asked for upward transitions.  I don't ever get this behavior at home because he get so much turn out time that he gets all of his antics out before I ride.  I finally got him to quiet down and then I got off and put him away so that I could get cleaned up and could finish getting him ready.  When we were all set, I got back on him - a bit before I normally would just in case he had more energy to let out.  In the warm up area, I kept doing a lot of transitions, and finally I was actually having to ride with my legs on to keep him moving instead of trying to keep them off.  I still had about 20 minutes before my ride time, so I just tried to keep him attentive until then, by some walk breaks and some transitions every few minutes.

As a result of all of our warm up, I think Otter was slightly past his best point when we finally went in the ring since he was a little grumpy, but he put in one of his calmest tests so far, despite him thinking about ducking out of the ring at one point.  We were scored a 39.5, which I was happy with since we still had some hiccups in the ring.

When I went to warm Otter up for XC, all of the energy he had earlier in the day was gone.  I tried to be pretty conservative in my warm-up, just jumping a couple of times till he woke up and sharpened up.  XC went well (it usually does with him) and I could mostly let him cruise along.  I had to pull him back to a trot on the back half of the course to kill a little time because the speed was so conservative, but asked for a canter again before the next jump.  

The distance wasn't quite as tight as the angle of this picture makes it seem - The professional had a shot from a different angle that looked a lot better.

After the competitor's party that night, I walked Otter for a while and let him graze to stretch his legs out.

The next day I was pretty nervous for stadium.  I was in the placings after XC, but the scores were so tight that if we pulled a rail, we would drop out of them.  Warming up, I could tell that he was still a little tired from the day before so I tried to limit my warm-up again choosing instead to watch the earlier riders go.  A couple horses before our time I took him over some jumps and then headed in. 

All was going well, until we were 2 strides out from an oxer and one of the potted plants in front of it fell over!  Otter was not cool with the fact that the jump was moving, and started to plant on the brakes, and I sat back and said "No way, dude - you are going over this" and he went.

The fence with the horse-eating plant

We finished the course with no other issues, and I was so thrilled because it meant that we kept our placing.  While I waited for the last few competitors to finished up, I said bye to my fiance - he had to catch his plane back home - and hung out with my barn mates.

I love this photo

It turns out that because of our clean stadium round we moved up to 5th.  I also got to participate in my first victory gallop (So much fun, by the way).

A few days after the show I moved wrong at work and pulled something in my back that kept me sidelined from riding for another week, and then I kept myself to light riding for another week to attempt to prevent re-injuring it.  

During my downtime, I started making competition goals for 2015.  I decided that since it was very likely I would be moving to Baton Rouge within the next year, I wanted to go to the 2015 AECs since that would be the last year they would be held in Texas, which would be relatively close.  When I started researching what I would need to do to qualify, I realized that because of being an ammy rider in mixed divisions, I had an ammy placing higher than the show placing which qualified us for the 2014 AECs.  I was thrilled to discover that in our first season, despite him not being quite settled at shows yet, we qualified.