Cowboy Country HDT 6/4-6/5/16 - Dressage and Cones

Doing back-to-back shows is insanely exhausting. I've done it a few times in my showing career, but it always leaves me feeling like I have a million loose ends at home and at work that I haven't gotten done on any kind of timely basis, which I don't like. As we have a limited amount of shows in our area, we don't have a lot in the way of choices, so when there is a big show and then another big show right after it - well, that's what we do. Immediately after getting home from Pine Hill - the very next day - I set to work prepping everything all over again, washing all of my show clothes and O's boots, cleaning my carriage, washing harness, remembering tests and courses, getting hay and feed, and all the rest of the song and dance that comes before a show, on top of working basically nonstop all week. 

Friday arrived in no time, and before I knew it I was loading up my carriage and getting ready to hit the road. One downside to driving is that it's basically the biggest song and dance production you've ever seen in terms of getting gear ready for a show. You think it's a pain in the butt to clean a couple of bridles? Try scrubbing down a marathon carriage. Sometimes people bring TWO carriages. And two harnesses. And two horses, or four horses! Can you imagine? Four horses plus a spare horse, eight plus sets of harness, and two big carriages? It's hard enough to me to wrangle just one carriage, one harness, and one horse - especially since I do it all myself. It's such a process to get ready - the carriage has to be cleaned, then it has to be winched carefully into the bed of my truck and strapped in securely, then the trailer has to be hitched, and THEN the horse gets loaded. THEN we can get on the road.

Naturally, as is apparently my curse when going to shows, I had YET ANOTHER flat on the way up.

Again!!

I had replaced the spare on the way down to Pine Hill after the other blowout, so I had my brand new spare ready to go (hell, the spare I put on for Pine Hill was also literally brand new). I didn't replace the spare on the continuing trip this time for some reason - I don't know why, but I just knew I wasn't going to get another flat. And, I didn't. Although relying on a feeling like that isn't exactly recommended most of the time.

Oklahoma is pretty

We arrived in Stillwater after an otherwise uneventful drive, if you don't count the tire blowing and driving through yet another small town completely decimated by a huge tornado. Apparently that is also something that happens when I go to horse shows? 

Because the world is really small, my favorite college professor who taught me for four years when we were both in Ohio now lives in Stillwater. As such, I had an extra set of hands and a soft squashy local bed to crash in all weekend - what are the odds! I love Dr. G dearly and am always glad to see her, and still shake my head in wonder over the fact that we both ended up way down here, far away from the chilly crap winters of Ohio. Dr. G met me at the showgrounds and helped me set up O's stall and tuck her in for the night, and we also picked up my packet. After unloading my carriage, we went and walked the cones course, which made me feel itchy just looking at it. The thing was the most horribly cranker of a course that I've ever seen, and I'm pretty sure the turns were all set for VSEs. It was also on a bit of terrain, which was not something we've practiced much with. I was feeling very confident coming off of my clean cones at Pine Hill, so I wasn't terribly worried about it at the time. 

I also got to meet Bumblebee when Dr. G and I went to dinner.... Optimus Prime was on the other side of town. Who knew?

The morning came WAY too early, and after staggering out of bed and making my way back to the showgrounds, I did my usual morning ritual of feeding the mare, cleaning her stall, taking her for a handgraze, and then going to walk the cones again. O was AWFUL about eating all weekend long. She's a good eater at home, but horrible when she is at shows. She lives on Ulcergard and ProCMC when we go away on overnights, which is probably the only thing that saves her from being eaten alive with ulcers. Over the entire course of the weekend, I don't think she ate more than two flakes of hay total, if that. She also managed to eat one of her grain meals, but only one - it took her the entire weekend to finish it. Granted, I had put some electrolytes in there, which she doesn't like taste of, but still. She grazed whenever I'd take her out, and here and there I would catch her eating, but she did not eat much. She doesn't act concerned, or nervous, or anxious in any way - she just stands in her stall and looks around, or stands in her stall and naps. It drives me completely nuts, but as long as she is on her ulcer preventative, and is at least eating some cookies and grass, that's something. 

I watched three VSEs (mini horses) eliminate out in a row on the cones course, and started to feel a little more anxious about it. Even they were having hard times making those tight turns. How was my big horse going to handle it?

I bathed the mare, readied all my gear, and hitched up for dressage. I felt that I had warmed up for too long at both Sunrise Ridge and at Pine Hill, so I shortened my warmup quite a lot. While I think it was a decent move to do, I still had a blazing hot horse when coming down the centerline. In some ways, this was good, because I had all the forward I needed - I got tagged at Pine Hill for not being forward enough. This time, we were *too* forward, and I got a few comments that we were rushed here and there. I also lost a whole lot in the way of relaxation and submission, because I basically had no submission whatsoever. O overshot all of her transitions and fought me through nearly all of them - she wanted to trot, and trot NOW, and trot fast. She chucked her head in the air a few times in both the downward and upward transitions, although they must not have looked quite as horrible as they felt because the judge did not hammer me on them. The test scored mostly 6s all the way down the line, which I felt was fair. We ended up with a 62.0, which was actually only one point worse than our score at Pine Hill. 

I think this was an effort to keep her straight on the centerline, and failing to do so

I definitely need to learn to SIT UP when I am in the box seat. Why do I always hunch over?
I'm also starting to dislike my outfit. I don't actually think the color goes with O as much as I had originally thought it did. Ah well... lots of time to think about that, for the future.

We were in 3rd after dressage - not last for once!!

In the cones, however, things got all kinds of interesting. And by interesting, I mean they were terrible. O just was on the muscle from the first turn, which was this horrible cranker to the right. I creamed the very first cone, and had a firebreathing dragon on my hands all of a sudden - head tossing, snarling, no steering and no brakes. And then suddenly, too many brakes, when she nearly stopped dead in the middle of the combination.

So angry

SO SUPER ANGRY!

  

Really? I hit the first one? Really?

Angryyyyyyy

Less angry

A lot less angry

Me looking down at the ball I am knocking over... damnit all

Overall, I had three knockdowns but quite amazingly no time faults. I had to spend a few minutes schooling the mare in the warmup on how we listen to turning aids and how we don't just thrash around angrily whenever we don't want to do something. I think she could very well be out again chiropractically after Pine Hill - she's not normally THAT disagreeable. Had I thought of it, I would have gotten her adjusted this past week, but... she could also just have been being her red self, which she does whenever you make her mad with too tight of a turn when she didn't expect it. I have to be careful in how I set her up so as not to fluster her little brain beyond capacity.

We were in 3rd again in the cones, so solidly we were in 3rd overall. The cones course was truthful carnage - not ONE horse or pony went clean, not anybody. A few VSEs went clean, but not any of the large horses. I also feel strongly that some of my cones were awfully narrow - they didn't all appear to be measured the same, but I didn't say anything to show management as I wasn't sure if it was just my imagination or not. Several other people said the same thing to me later though, so it's hard to say.

After dressage, I washed the mare, cleaned the harness and carriage, and got ready for the next day....

NTW Sunrise Ridge 4/3/2016 - Marathon and Final Results

What a weekend we had. We obviously had some serious lows, which you've already heard about, but we finished on an extremely high note on Sunday with an amazing trip on the marathon!

Drama posing mare and B2, ready to hitch up and get on with marathon!

O was really into the dramatic poses all weekend

B2, R (her husband and also our comedic relief for the weekend) and I walked the marathon course on Saturday after we were done with dressage and cones. Since this post is already going to be extremely picture-heavy, I'm not going to waste more space with individual pictures of the obstacles on course - but you can see them all listed here! You can also see the competitor list, omnibus listing, cones course map, times, and other things there. It's a great resource for us competitors to have ahead of time! B2 has never done a marathon before and this was only my second one ever, so while we knew what was going on and how we were going to approach every obstacle, there was still an element of, "ok let's not kill ourselves today." We just wanted to get through alive without messing up!

As a recap, Saturday just sucked. It was awful. O was not playing the game, there was all the stupid drama with people going nuts with rumors, and the like. We were in 6th after our crappy dressage, then moved up to 3rd after cones - but despite that, I couldn't let everything that had happened go. I was so upset by it that I stewed about it all night long. I'll be the first to admit that I'm kind of an emotional cripple who doesn't handle these kinds of situations well inside my head - it's just part of who I am. I was still so bothered by it still in the morning that I very nearly scratched from the show and stayed home. I didn't even want to go. I was really and truly that upset by it. (Caveat: since I don't think I was clear before, I am *totally* okay with the TD coming over to check a horse with a rumored injury - that's their job and what they are supposed to do! That part is totally fine. It's just the fact that someone started the rumor, and the fact that the whole thing was inappropriately handled and information was allowed to leak out all over the place... those were the problems.)

But, I didn't want to let it drag me down. I didn't want to throw away my 3rd place just because I'm a hyperemotional trainwreck, and I didn't want to let the old bats who were causing the drama to get any satisfaction out of the whole thing. So I got up, put my big girl panties on, pulled my mare in from the pasture, and headed out to the show.


O's specialties are her everlasting endurance, speed, and ability to turn on a dime easily. This is what is going to make her an exceptional marathon horse, and a good cones horse too if yours truly can actually steer properly some of the time. She doesn't have a lot of patience for intricate things, slow work, or anything involving a lot of aids coming from me. She would rather be left to do it on her own without a lot of input on my part. This makes dressage kind of a mental challenge for her - she might end up being like a lot of those event horses you see that kind of just fumble through their dressage but get out and eat the XC up. Moreso than in eventing (or at least it seems that way to me), you must have a horse that can handle the marathon and the cones and not just have a good dressage test - especially in the lower levels of eventing these days, you can have a killer dressage and as long as you can flop your way around a few jumps you'll win it every time. It's not quite that easy in combined driving, which was reflected in the way our placing lept from nearly last to nearly first by the end of the weekend!

B2, O, and myself all went for a nice walk before the marathon began. People were out there trotting around and getting all busy, but we just walked. Why waste energy? We had five hilly kilometers to tackle, no rush for us!

The countdown began.... I started my watch... off we went!


There were five hazards/obstacles to tackle along the way. She handled every one of them like a total champ, including the second one which I very nearly messed up - in each one of the obstacles, there is an enter/exit gate, and several lettered gates you have to go through in consecutive order. The gates are live until you cross them, then they are dead and you can double back through them as much as you like. Training level only does A, B, and C, but there are also gates D and E for the upper levels. You must go through them in order, otherwise you get eliminated. They try to trick you too - they'll put gate B in front of where A is to make you go around, and similar things. You as the driver must walk the course ahead of time and choose your route - and there are multiple ones to take. You play to your horse's strengths and the terrain, and while the obstacles aren't timed in Training level, they are timed at all the levels above it and you must get through them as fast as you safely can.
In the second obstacle, I flew right past A without even realizing it. The obstacle was full of trees and I got lost immediately - thankfully B2 yelled out that I had missed it! I managed to turn her around at the walk, get back through it, and continue on our way without further incident.

What a champ she was. She was just awesome. I didn't have to do anything, just sit back, steer, and enjoy it!

We can flying into the 300km-to-finish marker. We were coming in hot, so I had to slow her way down to make sure we didn't come in under our speed time of 20:05. Just like in eventing, there is a speed time and an obtimum time (which was 23:05 for us). You must come in that window, and if you go on either side of it you get time pentalties. I make very sure that my watch read more like 20:35 or thereabouts when I cross the line, just to play it safe. This will come into play soon.

She cooled out well, was checked by the vet at the finish, got a bath, and took a nap back at the trailer while we waited for results. B2 and R eventually went home, and I continued waiting.

The scores were posted. And... I had 7 time penalties, which means I had about 30-odd seconds of being over or under the time allowed. Since I had been watching my stopwatch so carefully. I knew it wasn't correct. The TD, who was gracious and kind all weekend, took me up to the office and we looked at the official scorecards. And it turns out we did catch a mistake made! It was truly an honest one - whoever handwrote my start time made a 6 look like a 5, which subtracted a whole minute from our time, landing us solidly below the speed fault time. This is why it's always important to check your watch and be sure! It was corrected, the penalties removed, and it landed us in 2nd place for the marathon. We moved up to 2nd overall!!!

Ready for a flood of pictures from dressage and cones? Brace yourselves...

My strategy for cones: go reallllllly slow

It had highs. It had low. It had drama. It had excitement. It had all the makings of a good Hollywood blockbuster. And it was only just the first show of the season!!

O has a well deserved bit of time off now, then our next show is on the 17th. Can't wait!!