Kentucky Part Four: The Final Day

Butterball had a nice calm night and then his usual morning graze on Saturday.

Jogs started at 7:45 AM. After texting back and forth with Amanda the night before, trying to reason my way out of braiding, I set out to braid Butterball (time number three for those of you counting) after our morning walk. I COULD hear the announcements in the barn and about 30 minutes after jogs started, as I rolled up the last braid before starting his forelock, I heard "if you want to compete you need to show up to jog NOW". I panic tossed the bit back into his bridle and threw it on his head as I started attaching reins as I walked the poor pony rapidly up to the jog area. Turns out I missed the essential "One star" part of that. Ooookay, turn back around, go put on the actual clothes I was going to jog in, braid the forelock, etc etc. 

The really, really, really, really nice part about this horse is that I KNOW he is damn sound. The ground had been PERFECT for our endurance day. So going into the jog there was no underlying anxiety. And after we did our little trot, half circle, and then trot, they announced "WPF Westerlie is accepted" without any hesitation. I put on his slinkie when we got back to the stall, but then watched him try to rub out the braids under the slinkie on the water bucket and stall walls. Amanda had grudgingly said if I was only going to braid for stadium OR the jog, to braid for the jog. So I yanked the braids. I then headed over to a stadium course walk with Carol. 

The course looked pleasant enough. The line from 6-7 was a 7 stride line (it always makes my brain happy when the number of strides corresponds to the fence number), which seemed like a good place to gauge our pace for the 2 stride at 9AB. Butterball and I had taken two lessons with PW while prepping for Kentucky and he very graciously did a course walk over the phone with me after I sent him the map. He also went over how to set warm up jumps, which I coached DH through. 

I watched a few 1* riders go and saw a lot of people not get straight for 3, which led to that rail coming down. I also noted that every single horse was braided. Dammit. 

Pony was TIRED and was napping in the back of his stall when I came back after watching stadium 

So at 12:30, I braided Butterball for the fourth time, this time using Quicbraid, which led to probably the best set of braids of the whole show. I got on about 30 minutes before my time and started the hack along the horse paths to the Rolex arena. This was a really nice warm up. They were letting six people at a time in the warmup arena with jumps while the rest of us waited in an almost directly adjacent arena. I warmed up at w-t-c and felt out Butterball. He was definitely tired, but felt good and adjustable and willing still. 

When we started jumping, we were not nailing our warm up fences. It wasn't awful, but was slightly off each time. I focused on riding forward away from the fences regardless of the distance we got in though. I let him walk for a few after doing the instructed vertical - bigger vertical - oxer - wider oxer off of both leads for a total of 8 jumps. When there was one in front of us, I popped over the oxer again and that time nailed it. 

Then we headed in and jumped a really lovely clear round. We got a bit of a deep spot to the second fence. And you know what I did after that? Got him in front of my leg! Holy shit guys. I responded to something in a relatively quick fashion. And Butterball, bless him, responded perfectly even though I know he was REALLY REALLY TIRED. What a good boy!!! The rest of the round went very smoothly, a tiny bit deep to 5, but overall possibly the best course we've jumped. I could not have been happier with him. It tracks then that I like almost all the pro photos and he looks stellar in all of them. Thanks again to Xpress Foto. 

1- Good start! These fences did seem to be set a bit soft. Or maybe that was just in comparison to XC and steeplechase the day before! 

2- a little deep AND I'm twisting right, dangit. But he is NOT TOUCHING it. Funny optical illusion the way 8 lines up directly behind 2 with the blue and white rails. 

3- Good boy!

4- Could he be any more perfect?? 

5- We got down the line a little quick

6- wish I were releasing better 

9A - in

And OUT in 2 strides! 

10!!!! 

We picked up our completion ribbon and vet sheet from the week and hacked back to the barn to stuff the BEST BOY full of cookies. I was SO happy with him the whole week. I would certainly change things about my prep (both at home LAWLZ and at the show) for dressage to set him up for success better. But we came to jump all the things, preferably on the first try, and learn from steeplechase, and we definitely accomplished BOTH those things. 

Completely over it, plz feed cookies and let me sleep
Also, this might be the most brown those boots have looked in a photo and I'm not upset about the way the brown tack/green coat/brown boots turned out  

We ended up packing up right after stadium and heading home. The low overnight was only 70 with rain forecasted to start at midnight, which seemed like pretty bad camping weather. And I was relatively skeptical about driving through Atlanta in the middle of the day Sunday. So we hit the road about 3:30 PM and arrived home right around 3 AM, about an hour shorter of a trip than the way up. At the first stop poor tired pony had barely eaten any hay. I could tell by the poop piles he was standing in the same diagonal orientation and not moving much, so I wasn't too worried. I think he was just sleeping. At the second stop I gave him some soupy alfalfa pellets that I had prepared as we were loading up. He tore right into those, which made me feel good. This will definitely be part of our long (>2 hour) haul arsenal in the future. 

When we let the ramp down at Ms. GY's, he trotted directly over to his two friends and then flung himself down in the sand for a good long roll. A check the next morning showed that the tiny bit of swelling of his pasterns that had happened while stalled was completely gone after just 8 hours of turn out.