Gulfport Day 4

Having arrived safely to Gulfport the night before, I awoke on Friday with a somewhat bittersweet feeling about the weekend.  After so many weeks on the road, I was ready to go home and try to get some things done on the home front that didn’t involve horses or horse showing.  But, as a self-proclaimed horse show addict, I was sad to see my winter horse show experience coming to a close.  

The VERY BEST THING about Friday was that I was able to “sleep in”.  I didn’t need to get to the horse show until 10, and my exhaustion was very much in appreciation of the extra hours of sleep.  The VERY WORST THING about Friday was that when I arrived they were walking for the National Hunter Derby.  I walk up to Matt and almost simultaneously we said together. “Why isn’t DC doing this class?????”  

I personally didn’t know they were having a national that day, I thought it was an international only, and Matt didn’t even think about it.   Thus, opportunity to go in the big field lost.  I was honestly sooooo saddddd about this.  I would have loved to go in the Grand Prix field, and what a fun way to cap off showing?  Oh well, such is life.  

When I arrived to DC’s stall to say good morning, I witnessed that a murder had taken place over night. 

 

Or would that be manslaughter?

My brand new, beautiful baker sheet had met its maker at the hand (hoof) of one gray distructodinosaur.  He didn’t even have it in him to look guilty, and just had a gleam in his eye that said “I am my own horse.”  

After shedding a tear about my sheet, I headed over to the Grand Prix ring to watch the National run.  It was a very fun course that was both challenging and interesting.  Many had nice trips, but many also fell victim to the scary grass ring, very entertaining indeed.

Unfortunately before I could go ride, I had to do a series of enthralling conference calls and an outline for a work plan.  Way to interrupt a fantastic day work.  

Earlier in the week, Matt had done DC in a single red/blue hunter, in which he had received a blue.  Since DC was so on his game, and was being amazing, the idea was to keep it simple and sane (I dubbed this methodology KISS).  We just simply didn’t want to overdo his prep and make him soured to showing and his experience.  

Since we had no sense to enter DC into the National Derby, we had some exciting red/blue 3’3 non pro hunters planned again.  We moseyed on down to the ring, DC feeling great and super confident.  Our first trip was really quite beautiful.  After a line going down the hill we had a miscommunication about straightness vs turning (I believe in straightness, DC believes in a more interesting path), but other than that it was super.  Matt and I agreed to call it a day, and to save him for our division running over the weekend.  

The other exciting moment of the day was that DH was on his way from Austin to spend the weekend (drive to and from) Gulfport.  Unfortunately he had a bit of a late start, but he was trucking right along with an arrival time of approximately 8:30.  

With time to kill, and a DH still a few hours out, I finished my horse show day with watching the Grand Prix.  Once again, Matt and Caroline were both riding.  They both did very well with a couple of unfortunate rails.

My day concluded with DH’s eventual arrival in the grand city of Gulfport and an excellent dinner at Samurai sushi where I sushied my face off.