Kentucky Part One: Travel and First Jog

Part one of many of our Kentucky trip, hopefully also including some tidbits about the classic three day format along the way if anyone has one on their bucket list (which I would DEFINITELY recommend after experiencing it!)

The three day is run along the FEI rules, which means that there are in barn arrival exams. Which means that you can't arrive in the middle of the night. According to the omnibus you could arrive between 8 and 5 Tuesday or 8 and 11 Wednesday. I fretted about this for about a week before emailing the secretary about my what-if scenarios. She kindly told me that if you arrive after hours there are directions to the iso stall at the show office. And that arrival times were actually until 6 pm. But you do have to pay extra for the iso stall. Once I knew Butterball wouldn't have to stand on the trailer overnight if we arrived after 6 pm (which realistically I knew was the case, I just didn't know how they got around that), I could be a bit more reasonable about planning our departure time. I had the truck and trailer fully loaded Monday evening. I had also texted my husband that there was no way I was packing this much stuff again any time in the next several years. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of my Tetris game, but I was pretty proud. The truck bed held tarped hay and bags of shavings. The cab had the food and cooler and the trailer tack room had most other things including my new (to me) bike and Ms. GY's bike for my husband. 

We woke up at 3:15, were out the door by 4, and leaving Ms. GY's with a Butterball snagged directly from his field by 4:15. The drive itself wasn't as good as it might've been but also not as bad as it could've been. We did hit traffic in Atlanta, but never stopped moving completely. I only had to slam on the brakes once when someone cut directly in front of me. Some swearing commenced along with pondering if I should've just run the truck into their little sports car. We moved smoothly through Tennessee, along some pretty winding interstate that continued into southern Kentucky. 

We hit another slow down just outside of Lexington. That one was almost more torturous because we were SO CLOSE. Butterball also was declining to drink while traveling, so I was worrying about him as well. 

We arrived at 5:05 though and stood in a short line for our arrival exam. The arrival exam itself consisted of a microchip scan, TPR, and quick survey for any pre-existing lumps or bumps. While I waited with Butterball, DH set up the stall for him. We were in the newest barns with super bright lights, ACed bathrooms, and hot water at the wash racks. But we were also DIRECTLY facing a construction zone. As dusk fell, they were still dumping loads of dirt, shoving, and then rolling it. It was a lot. And continued to be a lot, starting at 6:15 every morning. 

My "we made it!" picture. But that is one wide eyed pony I'm holding

Poor pony was pretty darn up that night. He was spooking at things he wouldn't normally and was hesitant to go in his stall. Based on his pig experience at EM's, I think he feels trapped and would rather be in the open if he's nervous about something. He did eat his dinner, but ate by taking a mouthful, spinning in a circle, staring out of his stall, and then grabbing another mouthful. I walked him for a bit and once the construction quit for the evening he settled some. He took some good long drinks as well which made me feel better. We gave him a bunch of hay and then headed to find our spot for the night. 

I had reserved one night in the KHP campground so we knew we had somewhere to sleep after a very long day. The website stated there was primitive camping but it was first come first serve, so I wasn't sure how likely we were to be able to get a spot. After a false start of ignoring the written signs but looking at the KHP provided map and Google maps that made us think we could go from stabling directly to the campground, we headed back to the main road and turned in to the campground entrance. We found our reserved paved/electric spot easily once we were in the campground entrance. We also found a bunch of very wholesome families and kids. There were Halloween decorations on nearly every RV and there were kids hanging out, playing, and biking. We hopped on our own bikes and explored a bit and found the massive field from primitive camping. 

After we saw the beautiful, sparsely occupied field, we made the decision to go ahead and move there. I loved seeing all the kids playing, but didn't want to find out when their bedtimes were. I got things set up while DH broke out the camp stove and made enchiladas with the homemade tortillas and brisket plus some pre grated Cabot cheddar. It was the same meal I'd had at Stable View but made ten x better by being heated. Sleep that night was pretty great, the camping pad on top of mattress topper in the gooseneck method continued to be a winner for this whole trip. It was in the low 50s overnight and made for a perfectly cozy night in my sleeping bag. Butterball did get his sheet on for the night. 

Such a lovely spot! Cook station behind the trailer. 

View towards the field

The lovely black walnut tree that gave us nice shade

Wednesday morning we made our way back to the barn by about 630. Which is also when the construction was starting again. I stuffed some cookies into Butterball as he moved closer and closer to the machines. He again ate while doing circles. 

Watch with sound on at max volume for the effect...

Standing in his stall, looking out 

View from the stall door

Walking/hand grazing was definitely more walking and trotting than grazing, but that's okay. DH broke out some acupressure points that helped settle him some after we got back to the stall. 

Once we got him slightly settled, I re-examined the packet info. 

Wednesday was a busy day, to the point where I got kind of panicky about when I was going to ride. There was also the uncertainty of the jog - it started at 3 with the FEI divisions. During the "horse inspection tips", they said 30-60 seconds per horse for the jog, but that it would be announce in the barns when each division had started their jogs. The problem was that the construction noise meant the announcements basically were useless in our barn. 

I'll recap the seminars in a different post, but I attended most of them except the cross country course walk and caring for the three day horse. I missed the vet seminar accidentally by running off to dinner after steeplechase practice, but intentionally walked the cross country course on my own. 

We ended up squeezing in our ride between the steeplechase course walk and jogs. The ride was especially useful because I discovered that our dressage tests on Thursday would be in the standard NOT the small arena. This was in fact in the omnibus, so is all on me. I also discovered that in the 20 years since I showed first and second level dressage in high school, basically the last time I rode in a standard arena, I had COMPLETELY forgotten where 20 meter circles fit. Well done me. I looked at some diagrams that night, but, spoiler alert, still didn't have them right by the next day. I also walked him through the jog area because, as I had anticipated, he had feelings about the lovely flowers distributed around. It just took a minute for him to get used to them and realize it was fine, but would've been way less fun if I'd been trying to present to the ground jury while he had his minute. 

After our ride I did a quick bath, mostly focused on stockings and tail. One of the many perks of his fresh clip was the quick grooming. Then he got braided for the first of FOUR times over as many days. I have a band on my pulling comb about 8 teeth in from the end that marks the size I have been braiding. I said fuck it and used the whole comb as my gauge for this week. I also declined to use Quik Braid because he dislikes the spray bottle and I didn't want to leave his mane super crimpy. 

Not my best work, but he was moving and I was tapped out of patience to try to make them perfect by the constant banging from the construction

We headed over to the jog and got checked in. Then we milled about for a about ten minutes and then completed our first ever jog. He was accepted without hesitation. We headed back to the stall where I yanked braids out and then took him for another graze.

DH and I then headed out for the first walk of the XC course. It was good timing since it was almost 6 PM, the time that I ended up scheduled to run XC. That made for an accurate assessment of the shadows and lighting we would be facing as we took on the course. My course walk pics in that day recap are mostly from that walk. 

After our walk we said goodnight to Butterball and headed back to our cozy campsite for more enchiladas and a peaceful night.