GVRDC HT - N

I didn't think a three hour drive was that bad, nor did I think an 8am dressage ride time was that bad. Then I realized that I also had to get up, have breakfast, drive to the barn, feed the horse, wrap the horse, put the horse on the trailer, drive, and give myself enough time to unload the horse, unwrap the horse, check in, tack up the horse, longe the horse, and warm up the horse without being stressed about running out of time. What I'm trying to say is, Hubby and I got up at 2am Sunday morning and I'm still tired.

Dressage

The severe thunderstorms forecasted for the day were downgraded to showers by that morning, and we were lucky enough to only get rained on when we first pulled in. Even so, the grass was wet and deep and I feared for my life Bobby' s canter leads. I put him on the longe away from, but still overlooking, the chaos of warm up and he immediately trotted off as he took in his surroundings.

And he continued trotting for twenty straight minutes.

longe yourself, fool.

I finally convinced him to stand still long enough to clip the side reins on, and then he had a ten minute round of being sassy while alternating between cantering and trotting.

"i can't wait to show these other horses my best drama llama impression!"

He got his bit checked and my whip measured at the same time which apparently was cause for great distress and he nearly ran the nice bit check lady over. "Someone else is touching the whip! I just know they're going to kill me!" Fortunately, no lasting harm was done and we scooted over and began warming up.

"Wow, Bobby," you say. "You look like those months and months and months of dressage work have finally paid off when it really counts."

LOLZ.

Is this your very first post? Of course it didn't!

While Mr Magee managed not to take offense to multiple riders nearly colliding with him when they refused to stick to the "Stay in your own fucking bubble" code, he was traumatized (read: overreacted) when he had to pull up short trotting around the ring just before going in when the rider coming out randomly cut in front of us while not paying any attention at all to where she was going. She did apologize which probably saved her life because I was ready to shank a bitch.

Needless to say, that horrible (not really) action made Bobby's brain explode into a whole new stratosphere and he pranced into the ring with his head held high. Comments for the entire test can be summarized with "tense, hollow, braced, tense, tense, tense...." You get the idea. He also really needs to learn that the free walk does not mean "You are free to wander about across the diagnol." On a positive note, I'm not ashamed of my riding. I don't think I look half bad, if you take the princess out from underneath me. He ended up with a 37.4 which is my second worse dressage score ever and put us in ninth.

Stadium

Hubby and I got back from our ten hour hike to and around the xcountry course (no shit, dudes) and off in the distance I spotted a large, dark bay, high-withered horse being grazed. Upon closer inspection, I recognized the neon green bell boots and I took off running to see what had befallen my miserable sod of a horse this time. Apparently his genius self managed to get a front leg tangled in his lead rope while grazing. And no, Bobby cannot wait on the trailer because he's taken to thrashing around when we're not moving. Dick.

Our neighbor had seen him in a state of semi-distress and helped him out of his predicament and took him over to graze beside the stadium ring. She was very, very nice about it and said he looked worried, but he waited for someone to come rescue him. Good ole Bobby. He had nary a scratch on him, so while Hubby went to collect his family who had come to annoy the shit out of me cheer me on for my birthday, I started getting him tacked up.

you can tell we're always on the same page.

I was in full blown panic mode bridling Bobby. I was literally about to burst into tears. I did not want to jump at all. Like, at all. I somehow convinced myself to stop being a drama queen and climbed aboard. We walked around on a loose rein for a few minutes, trotted one lap, and casually turned to the crossrail. Bobby immediately jumped into the canter and blew over it. Whatever, right?! All I had to do was release, and I did manage that! We walked around for another couple of minutes and pointed for the vertical. Same thing: canter, jump, release!

ok, it's a sucky picture, but look where my hands are!
also, this horse jumps like a boss when not jumping like a looney.

I was good with that and ready to go in. Oh, no. T/N was running late so they had to reset the course first. That only took a few minutes, but then everyone and their trainers had to walk the course at least ten times each. Then, just as it looked like we were going to be allowed to start riding the course, someone pointed out that one of the combinations was a one stride which is not allowed below Training. So that had to get reset to a two stride, and then everyone had to rewalk the course. Holy shit, people. I had seen three training rounds go and I knew the course already. It's not that fucking hard!!! Needless to say, we walked around for a good forty five minutes.

me: the fuck is going on here? i should be on xcountry by now.
bobby: fuck these other fucking horses. oh, heyyy. that's a lady!

Finally our division started getting called in and we popped over the vertical once more two riders out. Then we got scolded by ring steward for not standing right by the gate as the rider in front of us went around. I wanted to be like, "Do you want to make this antsy fuck stand still? Feel free. I'll go stand over here and watch." Whatevs. We were walking in as the other rider jumped the last fence. No harm done.

fence 1

fence 2. the majority of the refusals were here.

Bobby rocked that shit. I might have had zero brakes and questionable steering, but at least I didn't have any stopping! We didn't hit any problems until the fifth jump which sat close to the last jump as you came out of the turn from four. Bobby locked onto the wrong jump and I had to cut our turn short to pull him off of it. He came in at an awful distance and got a pop on the shoulder for encouragement and bless his pony heart, he took it for me.

heave! you can do it, bobby!

He pulled down a rail and had a little scoot sideways when he heard it fall. It was only a five stride line so we didn't have much room to get reorganized, but I gave him a little neck scratch and told him he was a good boy and he kept his shit together enough to get relatively straight and jump six. He had the top panel of that one down, too.

bobby: can we make it in one?!
me: no, no. cancel that, bobby.

He went flying into the two stride, and I opted to go around five instead of making the inside turn like everyone else to get to nine. That earned us two time faults, but he had a clear path to nine and jumped that clean.

bobby's all, "where's the spread on this bitch?"

Two rails and two time faults, but hot damn--we finished!

WE FINISHEDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!

Cross Country

Course walk.

The course actually looked really fun with the exception of the cliff diving experience of the fourth fence. Hell to the no is all I'll say about that.

It was about a six mile journey to the start box (Have any of you been here that can corroborate my story? That is no shit.). Bobby kept looking back at me as we hacked over there like, "The trailer's back there if we're not going to jump any more jumps. Where are we going?" We finally made it just as the rider before me was starting out and the timer gave me a one minute warning. Uh, what?

I decided not to jump a warm up jump which I think ended up being a mistake. It was such a long walk that Bobby lost his crazy horse jumping groove and left the start box like, "What the fuck is going on here, lady? Are we jumping or are we trail riding?"

 He went up and down instead of forward to the first jump, and backed off so much on the second jump that I was ready to pull him around and circle him before he launched from a stand still. It was a combination of the two for the third jump and I pulled him right up after that and elected to retire. I wasn't doing him any favors by not committing to the jumps and I wasn't about to attempt skydiving over the fourth when we could barely get over a log on flat ground.

We might not have finished, but we didn't get eliminated either. I'm thinking positive here, folks.

this horse seriously loves his dew.

We then had to sit around the truck for two more hours and "hang" with Hubby's family. I'm not sure I can explain the joys of this adequately so I won't even try. Bobby thought it was the best time ever, though. He was pretty sure they were his personal cheering squad/feeding team/head rubbing assistants/best friends in general. The awning that had been erected (don't even get me started) blew over on top of him at one point and he just stepped back and was like, "Now about that cake...."

totally staged. bobby figured out quickly the small child had
nothing to offer him. 

Looking at it from someone else's point of view, it probably wasn't a very good show. But for me, while the dressage remains disappointing due to sudden attacks of "I AM SO TENSE FOR NO REASON" on Bobby's part, I am just totally pumped we actually finished stadium. That was enough for me. Now we have zero plans for the rest of the summer until I feel like finding a show somewhere. But until then, we're going to do a lot of trail riding and zen out for awhile.

Hubby's brother did take a bunch of stadium pics with his fancy camera so hopefully I'll be able to share those this week at some point.