Who is Counting Anyways? - Majestic Oaks Recap

Butterball and I went to Majestic Oaks on Saturday for the schooling show. A coworker was kind enough to switch with me so that we could practice stadium (and XC!) once before heading up to SC for Oktoberfest. 

He got socks and tail bathed Friday afternoon

I dressaged at 8:28, jumped stadium at 11:15 and then headed over for XC right after that. Since Majestic Oaks is very, very familiar to me, I opted not to go walk the day before. We loaded up in the dark, Butterball and Mr. GY's horse, and headed out. We arrived around 7:45 and I slowly got dressed and tacked. In dressage warm up I discovered that Butterball can actually form significant attachments to other horses. He was bound and determined to call for his buddy every minute or so. Ms. GY kindly took his friend further away and he kept a lid on it in the test. I only did about 15 minutes of warm up because, let's be honest, we were there for the jumping. 

And the judge, while scoring rather generously, called us out on the "more" of everything that was needed. More consistent tempo, more bend, more balance, etc. I don't really like Novice B and did almost lose my way once, so I'll consider it a win that I didn't get lost. Our 31.9 put us in 9th/11 with the first place score being a 26.4. 

Stadium featured a course with a number of related distances - 8 strides between 1 and 2, 9 strides between 3 and 4, and 7 strides between 5 and 6. Then it finished on a two stride oxer to vertical, exactly what we had not executed at Stable View. 

In warm up I remembered my wandering eye that I noticed over the summer and focused on keeping my eye ON THE SAME SPOT on the fence. Wouldn't ya know it, it helped. I'm still not honestly sure of the balance between micro-managing him that EM was trying to fix and acknowledging if our spot will be tight or long so I can add leg or wait a tiny bit accordingly, but I decided in warm up to ride him the way PW had me riding him successfully in May and June. My friend came and set fences for us and when I almost turned back to jump a larger than Novice oxer in warm up, she said "You're not going to gain anything by doing that. Just ride him forward and keep your shoulders up with your leg on, no matter what spot you get to." Turns out that was just the advice we needed because we went in and did that. 

I used the corners to try to take EM's advice (and every trainer before her really) to not let him get behind my leg through the turns. Leg on, surge forward, then softly balance before the fences without sitting deep and driving his back down. We got 10 strides between 3 and 4, I needed just a bit more leg the first two strides of the line and then it would have flowed nicely. And then we got an ugly chip stride in to the oxer at 9A. But I sat up and believed that my very capable horse could get out and we put three tiny strides in and then jumped the vertical just fine. Which, truly, if it had just flowed over the oxer I think I would have gained less confidence. 

After lots of pats for the pony we went over, got booted and vested up, and headed to XC. 

Warm up went well. The course was so-so. The first few jumps I was anxious and DEFINITELY shoved him past the actual spot and got rewarded with two chips at the base. We mostly fixed that by the end of the course, aided by NOT fixing it at the fence before the down bank which was right before the trakehner. The trakehner here has made me nervous ever since I was jump judging when a horse had a rotational and had to be euthanized. So I have a good amount of respect for it and actually channeled it appropriately this time by creating a nice bouncy show jump canter that got us at an appropriately slightly close spot so he could bounce right on over. 

Fence three where I first got it together a little bit

Fence five - corner

Looking towards the half coffin. He's SO CUTE 

Rails towards the ditch 

Getting the trakhener right

Second to last 

With our two clear jump rounds we moved up to 4th

Huge thank you to my friend/coworker and Amanda and Hillary for the media and support. My coworker said after XC she felt like BB was maybe not as comfortable as he could be behind. He's definitely not lame, but now that she knows him pretty well, she felt like he wasn't quite himself. I had the same thought out on XC: He wasn't changing cleaning right to left, and left is usually his preferred galloping lead AND he had a couple slightly crappier than normal jumps even when I did my part. I *think* what happened is I bruised his feet again. We did some canter sets on the edges of dirt roads near the pond we've been swimming in. And around here those dirt roads sometimes contain lime rock. I could hear the hardness change as we went and then saw new bruises pop up on his feet a few days later. It would also explain a lesson last week where he was *not* particularly helpful about leaving the ground. I'm going to see about putting him in pads behind. And also haul down to what I know is softer footing for our canter sets. I do plan on supplementing those canter sets with our water treadmill days as well, which should be nice and easy on his feet.