Today was a chilly start to the very early day. We rolled out at 5:30 a.m. to head to Three Llakes horse trials near Orlando. Had the two Rather Well brothers on the trailer to compete in the Prelim division.
Zephyr went dressage first at 8:12 a.m. I zoomed around the cross country course while Anne Marie and Kelly (his owner) got him ready and lunged him for me. He was a very good boy in his test. Not as supple to the right as the left and the judge had a keen eye and noticed, but other than that I couldn’t have asked for more. He scored a 26.6.
It was Riley’s turn just after 9:00 a.m. He put his best foot forward and produced his best test at that level to date scoring a 27. He was in the sand arena and Zephyr was on grass, which suited them best. Always nice when it works out in your favor.
Show jumping and cross country times were only 20 minutes apart so I did my show jumping in my cross country gear. Zephyr did quite a good round. He rubbed a few, but none came down, which is unlike him as most of the time he doesn’t touch a thing. I put on his boots and headed to the start box for xc. He felt great out the box and was flying through the air over all the singles. At the first combination of brushes he jumped right over the brush without coming anywhere near it. Then we had a boat house bending to a right handed corner and he was perfect. Fence 8 A/B was a very tight 5 stride and he was very obedient. A few more galloping fences then a turn left to the water, which was a fairly small tree trunk into water across the water to a wood carved alligator on a bed of pine needles. The log in had a little gap on the left where you could see through to the water. The water itself was murky and the same colour as the sand it was on. The log in had the appearance of a decent drop into the water, but once you got close enough you could see there was no drop. I came around the corner trying to set him up a little, but also didn’t want to be caught riding backwards to the water so I sat down put my hands out in front of me and started riding forward to the log in. On the last few strides Zephyr decided he was not so trusting of the distance we were aiming for take-off and stopped. To be fair I was about a foot off where I ideally wanted to take off from, but for such a small fence and a horse with such experience I honestly thought he’d leap in. Horses keep you on your toes. He is making me into a very accurate rider I suppose???? He blasted around the rest of the course without hesitation and came home safe and sound. which is all that really matters.
Riley warmed up well, but the footing was starting to deteriorate in the warm up. Also the show jumping course was proving to be a challenge for many horses and riders. We had three rails altogether. Two of them I just got a bit too close in heavy going and the third was the last and it was a liverpool. I met it a bit quiet and deep also so I tried to sit still and just use my leg. Sadly he bumped it with his fronts and it stayed in the cups then he bumped it with his hinds and it fell down. I was still very pleased with how rideable he was and realized that the footing in there was getting a bit chewed up on take-off and landing which wasn’t helping gigantic Riley.
On cross country I had made up my mind not to go for time as there seemed to be problems on course and I had already had three rails. He was foot perfect from start to finish. There was a big coffin near the end of the course. I got in quite deep to the first element and he popped nicely over it with a hop skip and a jump we were over the ditch and out over the skinny. Second last jump was a big trakehner and he soared thru the air and galloped on to the last fence and place sixth overall!
The photo is:
One of our preliminary show jumps, and yes those are real oranges.
