August 2014

I decided to end my 2014 season at the same event that we had our first outing at in 2013 - Rolling Rock mini trials.  In light of not riding frequently leading up to the event due to my back, I decided to compete at beginner novice again.

The morning of the show I was prepared to do the same routine as I did at South Farm, but when I lunged him - he was nice and calm and relaxed, so I opted against getting on, and instead just prepped him for our test.  I did get on him slightly early again, but after a few minutes of warming him up, I mostly stood/walked around until 15 minutes before our test when I started warming him up in earnest.  He was a completely different horse this time.  Not sure if he realized he doesn't get to jump until after dressage is done, or if he was just more comfortable at this venue since he has been there a few times now.  Either way, we put in a very nice test - no tenseness, blow ups, etc.  if anything, I should have asked for him to be more forward as he was slightly behind my leg and the vertical.  We were scored a 37.8, which was actually one of the lower scores of the show, and it put us into first.

I was nervous heading into stadium because I really wanted to keep my placing.  He warmed up fine, but then when we headed into the ring it went to crap.  He was sucking back then deer leaping at every fence, and we just couldn't get a good distance or rhythm going.  His athleticism saved the day and kept us from pulling rails.

I was pretty disgusted with our jumping in stadium and resolved to get him in front of my leg before we head out to XC.  I took him over to an open area and galloped him a bit then jumped the couple of warm up XC jumps they had.  Went much better.  I'm starting to realize that I really need to get him in front of my leg before we start jumping - and that means taking him for a little gallop/very forward canter.  XC went well, he's jumped most of the jumps there before, so it was a stroll around the park. 

End result:

Unfortunately, my back wasn't quite healed enough to handle Otter's deer jumps in stadium and I ended up re-injuring it.  Other than getting on and doing some walk/little bit of trot work, I gave Otter the rest of the month off because I also decided that I would be moving down to Baton Rouge in November and so would be starting our 2015 show season in December/January and wanted to give him a little bit of a break before we picked up serious work again.