As long as you don't include me not sleeping at all the night before and having Jurassic Age size butterflies rampaging around my tummy. I had chosen Dan Hobyn because it is fun, friendly, and laid back. It has a BN course that has a lot of the elements of a BN course but doesn't tend to be maxed out. It still didn't mean I didn't want to ralph all over my Mountain Horses warming up for stadium.
It's a tie to your trailer kind of place, which Annie seems to like because trailer hay is better than stall hay.
Dressage went exactly as expected. Annie takes longer to gear down in a field because fields are for jumping idiot. Plus we hadn't exactly been dressaging our way down the trails for our endurance ride. The dressage ring is by a road and I expected to lose her attention if a car drove by, which it did. What I was able to do however, is to continue to develop my "warm up smarter stupid" strategy. Not just sitting like a lump but incorporating serpentines, changes of direction, and transitions into my warm up to capture her attention. I believe in being honest about the skills we brought to the dressage ring and accepting the scores I deserve.
I wasn't there for the dressage though.
We went straight over from dressage to jumping, I had time to do a quick tack change but it wasn't necessarily and I tend to be a "let's get it over with" type of person.
I wouldn't call the course "beefy" but I would call it "looky" it's set in a grass field and there are lots of ups and downs, not very noticeable to the naked eye, but enough that you can get rolling downhill and lose control. It had LOTS of filler that we had never jumped before, and it's not our regular place so it was all unfamiliar.
With two rolltops (ACK!!!!! I dreamed about these, let me be honest with you), a brick wall, a panel, and a gate oxer it proved to be a good test of how badly I wanted to do this, how well I rode, and how game Annie was.
The first two fences Annie gave some room but not a big look, coming down to the rolltop I could feel her question me "Are we jumping that?! Are you sure?! Like for serious sure?! WELL OK HANG ON COWABUNGA!!!!!!
She questioned me at most of the other fences as well but was game as long as I was game and I could feel her raise up higher and higher in front on approach and drive her hindquarters under. It's a really cool feeling of power and being game but it's also a little scary because all of a sudden I'm jumping a fire breathing dragon over a castle. It's quite a bit of power in such a little body. If I wanted her to go over, she'd go over, but she wasn't going to skim over anything.
And then we were done. My legs shook, my adrenalin pumped, I had forgotten to count over half the fences. But I stayed on!!! And we didn't stop!!! AND WE DIDN'T FINISH LAST!!!!
Next time, we jump the moon!!!!
Video, as long as you promise to not laugh at my spazzy behavior.
No comments:
Post a Comment