Kentucky Part Six: What I Learned

Last post about Kentucky, I swear. Then we'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming. I currently don't have "programming" scheduled for this winter though other than a trip to HITS for a venture in to jumper land (or maybe hunter land??? that has been thrown around...) in December. The Kentucky trip was such a big goal that I'm enjoying not having firm plans for the time being. 

The Classic Three Day

USEA has a good amount of information on the classic format out on the web. Their main page also includes where you can find classic format events at each level. Pieces of the information I'm sharing below also came from our lovely clinician for the week, Carol Kozlowski.  

To lay it out relatively quickly, the additional pieces for a classic format that are not part of a national level horse trial are: the arrival exam; the jogs; phases A-C on XC day; the 10 minute box; and the vet inspection post cross country. 

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the arrival exams are for the veterinarians to get a baseline of your horses TPR and general appearance. Everyone has just arrived from hauls of varying lengths and yanked the horses off the trailer to mill about with a bunch of new horses nearby in a new setting, which means the base HR probably isn't what it is at home, but may approximate what it should return to post-endurance phases. 

The jog/presentation to the ground jury is the first opportunity to show your horse off to the ground jury. They should be braided, in a clean bridle (with approved dressage bit) and the handler should be neatly dressed. Some people take the opportunity to look very lovely, I went for not distracting. There is an order posted and similar corralling to a dressage or stadium warm up. When it is your turn you walk up to the ground jury, say hello, and then hold your horse from the front so they can walk around. 

I LOVE HIM 

They then ask you to go ahead, so you trot your horse down to the designated turn around area (usually marked by flowers or some other plant), come to a walk, turn your horse AWAY from you around the end, and then jog back. The jog should be done WITHOUT pulling on the horse's reins the whole time. Then they decide if the horse is accepted or held. Those who are held are then physically examined by another veterinarian to see if there is an obvious reason ie pulse in a foot. They are then re-presented a few horses later. 

While I practiced jogging at home, I had a completely different horse at this show, so I opted NOT to jog with the dressage whip we had practiced with. But it is acceptable to jog with a whip if needed. 

Turning around

I had previously been told by my vet at home to MOVE out during the jog - go as fast as you can without cantering

Carol told us that the really polished look while jogging came when you could time your strides with your horses 

The jog is repeated the morning of stadium. A few more horses were held that morning, but all were eventually accepted. 

The day following the jog was dressage day. There are 3 day tests, and ours were held in a standard arena. Read your omnibus ya'll (although, the omnibus did include the wrong pace for C, but that's okay). 

The next day is endurance day. This is where the major difference is between a classic three day and a horse trial. Phase A is a brisk trot to warm you up for phase B, steeplechase. Then phase C is a combo of walk/trot to cool down and prep for phase D, the XC course. 

Phase A and C have "gates" that you MUST pass through. The gates are just flagged spots with the standard red on right. Unlike cross country though, the volunteers at these gates are allowed and encouraged to help you stay on course. We were also allowed to hack A and C ahead of time. The gates are clearly marked and the 1K markers are also pretty large and clear. A is at 220 mpm, which is a brisk trot. If you're us this was some hopping up and down, some canter stretches, etc. You also do need to do some cantering because this is your warm up for steeplechase. 

Carol recommended coming through each 1K at 4 minutes, which gave you a tiny bit of extra time. If you look at the pace of 220 mpm and do 1K/220, then you actually have 4:30 for each 1K. She also recommended saying hello to the volunteers at each gate and repeating, out loud, several times, the gate number as you went through it so you remembered which gate you needed to be going through next. 

Between phase A and B, there is a 1 minute break. If you finish A early, you get a longer break before B. I don't recall the exact penalty, but time penalties are VERY costly on A and C; "don't get them" was Carol's instruction. Time penalties on B are more costly than D still, 0.8 penalties per second vs. 0.4 on D. 

Phase B is the steeplechase. And OMG is it fun. During the practice Carol recommended not hunting for a distance, just keep flowing forward. I settled for a tiny rebalancing 4-5 strides out because the one fence I didn't do that on he got slightly under. 

Go pony GO! 

Got a bit deep to this one

Much better

I was kind of worried about not having any warm up fences before starting steeplechase, but we practiced that after dressage and it wasn't a problem. It wasn't a problem for the true phase B either. 

Our steeplechase course was a single loop over 5 fences. Fences 1-3 were pretty flat, 4 and 5 were both after slight downhill slopes. The pace was 470 mpm and it was 1410 meters, so a nice even 3 minute course. 

Phase C starts exactly as phase B ends, so your start time of C is your end time of B. 

For us, the track for C was almost exactly the same as A, but with a little tiny out loop to gate 5. The 160 mpm pace is trotting and walking some. Each 1K marker Carol recommended taking 6 minutes. The actual time (1000m/160) you could take was 6:15. Then you pick up the trot again as your approach the 10 minute box and trot straight to a vet they point you at so they can get an initial assessment of soundness. 

The ten minute box was way less mysterious and challenging than I had thought. Granted this was NOVICE in October with a freshly clipped horse. YMMV given different settings. The goal is to get vitals back down ASAP so you can safely carry on to XC ten minutes after you trot into the vet box. 

He was 101.5 with a pulse of 60 bpm and resp of 56. when we came in. I think in warmer months, cooling would be more essential. You get 6 minutes until they re-inspect. That includes a repeat TPR and a jog in hand. If they have any concerns they will hold you. 

Carol had mentioned having extra tack, shoes, etc. in the box. They will let you start XC slightly late if you need a shoe replaced and the farrier was nearby. When I almost came off of him during phase C I did think maybe I should have had extra reins/whole extra bridle in case that broke I could replace it and continue rather than being forced to retire. 

As soon as we trotted into the box we were paired with a volunteer in an orange vest who started a timer and got us to the repeat vet check and then on to start XC on time. It was super well organized and took away a lot of the stress. 

Then XC was pretty standard, although a challenging course in this case. 

After XC there is another TPR. You can pull tack and let the horse cool down and then the TPR is repeated in ten minutes. Although I guess this isn't necessarily required since we got a visual "He looks very content" and then got sent back to the barn. 

The final jog is the morning after XC. My post-XC care consisted of a loooooong hand graze/walk the evening of the endurance day and the next morning before the jog; soupy alfalfa pellets that night; packing his hind feet (he's got pads up front) with Magic Cushion; and magnawave the morning of the jog. He is on electrolytes already and the way the weather was, he had gotten WAY hotter/sweatier on our conditioning rides than he did on endurance day. I figured I shouldn't fix something that wasn't broken. 

Helpful links regarding the classic format: 

• USEA Classic Series Guidelines
  
•  Preparing for Your First 3-Day
• The 10 Minute Box

Conditioning 

I roughly followed this conditioning schedule. But what we actually did is on the calendar below. 

The 9/4 ride is where I bruised his feet. And also the reason we only did 2 instead of 3 canters... I realized the road was probably not ideal. 

Every conditioning ride had 15-20 minutes of trot to warm up and 30 minutes of walk after the canter sets. When I was out on endurance day, I realized that the 30 minutes walk kind of approximates phase C. 

I also added 30 minutes of walking/hacking to the start of nearly every other ride starting in September, with the exception of lessons. Other than the last week of Oct 8 & 9, I didn't do conditioning rides back to back with lessons. But I wanted to feel confident headed to Kentucky knowing that he could jump stadium fences after doing an endurance day. 

I did up his calories for the whole thing too. He got more alfalfa in the stall AM and PM (they come in for 1-2 hours to eat twice a day) and he got Dac Oil added to his feed starting after Chatt. He got Pre-fuel starting 7 days out from leaving for Kentucky. He got a polyglycan injection q1 week and got his Adequan series in September. 

I did not do twice weekly canter sets. I've been told that ideal is q5 days. Due to footing and terrain around Ms. GY's (flat, lime rock), I hauled out to condition starting in September. This gave us soft footing and a hill. But realistically, I cannot, and will not for his stress level, haul him 2 hours round trip 3+ times a week for a jump lesson and two conditioning sets. I think once a week led to a plenty fit horse for novice. I do wish I'd added in the "sprints" in the last week a bit sooner. Not for his fitness necessarily, but to get both of us used to going faster. If we'd had a little bit more leeway we could have still made time on steeplechase even with the spook and bucking. 

Miscellaneous

I've never done pre-rides. But given how late our dressage ride was and how wired he was, a nice loose hack on Thursday morning probably would have done a lot for both of us. Nothing hard, just 20-30 minutes walk with a tiny bit of trot and canter in a nicely stretchy, forward way. I don't think this would have taken too much from his energy level over the next few days. I did take him for plenty of hand grazes, but there's something different about being under saddle and having to focus a bit, but not too hard, that I think would have been better prep for dressage. 

I thought about including my budget column for this, but really, the costs for the classic format were not much more than the costs for a big away show. The entry + stall was $800. Otherwise costs just included lodging for the humans, which we definitely saved on by camping, and massively increased diesel costs. This won't be an every year trip, but is certainly worth the splurge again at some point in the next few years. 

I mentioned it in another post, but Butterball seems to have decided he doesn't like drinking while traveling. I need to investigate Gatorade or something similar at home to see if that would tempt him. Otherwise, soupy alfalfa pellets seemed to work as well. 

Also, perhaps most importantly, DH discovered that Butterball LOVES Kodiak Cookie Butter Granola. Like really, really loves it. He got several handfuls throughout the weekend. 

Happy pony waiting for breakfast with friends a few days after arriving back home