Solo’s performance at The Fork was way better than his last event. His dressage test was uneventful. It was not a great test, not one you keep in the back of your passport to pull out and show to all who are interested or not, he finds the confines of those little itty bitty dressage rings rather restricting, tightens himself up and holds his breath through every turn and corner. We are working on suppleness – sometimes Solo works on it with us…..
Cross country was very big and bold. I felt the size of the fences and the questions asked were more than we had asked the young horses to face. However, we had done all our homework and hoped that he would be able to cope with the course. He ate it up. The big bold fences, he charged up to and flew over and the trickier ones were smooth and confident. He looked at the water and came back almost to walk but kept his line and went in. He had to weave his way through some large carved ducks to get out the water and face his next jump. I was concerned that he would be spooking at the ducks and not focusing on his fence, I needn’t have worried about the ducks. He was too busy goggling at the spectators to see the ducks OR his fence. He saw his fence at the very last moment and skewed himself over it, leaving Selena’s knee cap on the side of the flag. Ouch!. I heard the ‘crack’ and thought it was Solo’s foot touching down on the jump. Selena’s knee was black and blue for days but Solo was still to busy showing off for the crowds to even notice the flag. He managed to do a nice clear round inside the time.
Solo’s best component of eventing is the stadium. Selena was really looking forward to it. She also hoped that she might claw herself up a few more places. After dressage he was 26th, moving up to 19th after cross country. His little buddy Waldo was kicking his butt, since Waldo was sitting in sixth place in his division. Both horses are good show jumpers and Selena was keen to have the opportunity to jump them in a strange ring. They need all the experience they can get at this time in their lives. Sadly the show made the decision to cancel the stadium and pin the classes on the cross country results of the previous day. A big storm was due to roll in bringing heavy rain. We were all disappointed but packed up quickly and decided to drive home.
We did great on the way home until we got to the Pennsylvania/New York border. Then we hit a huge snowstorm, in Mid April, I kid you not. It was so bad we had to get off the highway and pull into a truck stop where we were stranded for thirteen hours with the poor horses stuck in the trailer. And of course we ran out of hay. We went into the truck stop and asked if anyone had a friend with horses. One of the staff had a horse, it was her day off but they contacted her. She phoned another friend and the next thing we knew some Knight in Shining Dodge Truck was unloading 8 bales of hay for us at the truck stop. He told us we would not be able to go anywhere with the trailer that all the roads were impassable, so we fed the horses and had a nap. We made it home eventually with nobody the worse for wear. Solo has certainly seen a bit of the world this winter.
