Lyrical Equine: Ocala Festival of Eventing: Day 1

Through the generosity of a coworker, Butterball and I got to go to Ocala International Festival of Eventing this weekend to run novice again after our not so smooth go at Rocking Horse. Unfortunately this is not the "YAY we fixed alll the things and it was just wonderful" post that I was hoping to write. But there were many good parts of the show, and we ended on a good note.

Beginning at the beginning, I braided Butterball for the first time. He was quite a good, cooperative egg. It also only took about 20 minutes. My phone was in the truck and then we had quite a few visitors at the show, so I never did snap a picture of just him in his braided adorableness. But there are videos and photos of him in motion that will have to do.

I was a bit worried about dressage because I gave him Thursday off because work sucked and then Friday when I rode him, he felt worried. We'd done three training rides over the past week, and I think his sensitive pony self had taken the messages that he must respond to the leg and half-halts and turned it into "OH NO THE WORLD MAY END IF I FEEL LEG AND DON'T DO SOMETHING IMMEDIATELY AHHHHH!" (Which wasn't the message from the training rides, I promise) So we did a lot of our old soft trot-walk-trot transitions and by the end he felt more settled and confident. But Saturday at the show he felt completely relaxed and fine. Perhaps even a tiny bit dead to my leg, which meant we did transitions to wake him up because I had opted not to wear spurs, given how he felt Friday.

The dressage test was pretty lovely, but there are still so many areas to improve on, it's exciting to think about. Our canter scores have continued improving, but the judge still pinpointed that as our weakness.

This was good enough for a 30.6 and second place out of twenty-two! He then got to take a nap on the trailer while I took my first look at cross country, which looked fun and very doable. This horse trial is the culmination of the winter season in Florida so often has courses that are challenging for the level. Although as I searched through the omnibus post-event, it states "All courses are designed for horses competing at the level"

Our stadium warm up was a bit meh. I kept losing power coming through the right hand turn to my warm up jump and kept burying him at it. When he did take the slightly gappy spot, I got solidly left behind. If I wanted a tricky warm up, this was it, but we got it right eventually and then quit on that.

It looked like a fun course overall. It had been a 3AB for training, but it looked like they were leaving B in for us. It walked as a long five strides from 3 to 4, so JT said make a decision and ride it. Every person I watched did it in six, so I made that decision. We went in and got going as instructed. I got a bit deep to 1 so kicked him forward. Two rode fine, but we got deep to three. Instead of sitting up and supporting for a quiet 7 strides, I flailed and drove him flat to the oxer at 4 where he said "no thank you, that was a poor choice mom." We regrouped and came back to it and it rode fine as did the left hand turn and then 5. I didn't get him back on his hocks (AGAIN) to 6 so we chipped it, but did a bit better to 7 and 8. It was a bit deep to 9, but that time I sat up and rode what had walked in six strides as a fine seven strides to 10AB.

Overall I was quite annoyed with myself for continuing to make THE SAME FREAKING MISTAKE of kicking him flat. He tries so hard to be a careful jumper. To oxers in particular, he feels like he cannot lift up from that long/flat stride, and after his hind feet hurt, he now knows there is the option of saying "no thank you". I came out feeling like I COULD NOT see a distance, which isn't actually the problem. When his canter isn't good, I cannot see a distance. An inability to see any distance is the result, not the problem. When his canter is good, we can be a bit deep or a bit long and be fine. If I miss but he is back on his hocks, he can pat the ground and then lift off athletically from the base if need be. I'm not sharing the video because you can basically sub in our stadium at Rocking Horse.

We have a plan and I'm sure we'll get there. Part of the frustration is that February/March when we were doing this it was because he didn't feel good. Now he's feeling good, but my brain keeps rolling this into FOUR months of doing the same crummy crud instead of just ONE.

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