Colorado Day 7 – Rain rain go away!

In my last blog I mentioned an evening of winding down at a campfire in the camper park.  By winding down what I really meant was sipping on wine until 1 am swapping stories about showing in days of yore.  It was a good time, and sooooo worth it to get my mind off my aforementioned awful riding. 

However.

The next morning my 7am to the show call did not look so good on me.

That is officially my “I’m the luckiest girl in the world and I wouldn’t trade what I’m doing for anything else” look.  I swear that was exactly what was on my mind.  You might ask where exactly I took this picture.  Well I couldn’t bear the idea of going straight to the show without a morning wake me up chai, so I stopped at Panera.  My stop at Panera ended up being an hour long pep talk of how much I love doing this, and how I needed to get my butt to the show.  It took a while, but it worked. 

First order of priority that morning was to purchase Himalayan salt blocks for my boys.  Yes. They are spoiled.  Yes. I bought them salt blocks for their show stalls.  No. I don’t mind the fact that I was hanging DC’s in his stall he just about pushed me down in excitement to get to his precious block of salt.

He has a serious obsession.

I spent some time at the show watching a few rounds, looking at my photos (the photog got some GREAT ones), and finally going up to the jumper ring to watch the group of Junior jumpers from my barn go.  Since Matt had a little down time in between the Junior Class and the Low A/Os, I took the opportunity to pick his brain on my anxiety and riding issues from the day before.  I think that being a trainer must be one of the more complicated jobs in the world.  Human emotions, horse emotions, equine welfare, sports psychology, and riding all rolled into one. 

Unfortunately the break in time between classes meant that Matt had a direct conflict with my division.  The “plan” went something like this.

Go first go first in the division! HURRY GET ON NOW.

No, wait, he can’t make it down, go back to the barn.

OMG he has a break HURRY GO BACK TO THE ARENA.

Nope, sorry not going to happen, you’re on the list for last now.

With as many back and forths, I had plenty of time to snap a pic of his adorable blue braids and head puff.  Who says hunters can’t have fun?

Hurry up and wait is a particular specialty of mine.  Fortunately, my friend Zheila came to watch and keep me company.  We chatted for a bit, when she said to me, “you know that storm behind you, it looks kind of nasty.”  Um, what storm?  I turn around.  Oh THAT storm.  As we the division was winding down, the wind started picking up and things started to look really bad. 

I hopped on DC and got exactly 4 warm up jumps done when they called the show for a weather break.  UGHHHHHHHH  This was the third time I took my horse back to the barn in one day!  Poor DC.  On the bright side he sure did look pretty with the stormy background.

Sooooo I hung out at the barn for another eon (hour) before the storm passed and we were able to start again.

DC felt really pretty good in the warm up, considering all of the back and forth and waiting, I was honestly fairly pleased.  For the show I had two hunters and a second classic round.  It was one of those days where simply SOMETHING happened on each course.  Our first course we had a smashing round going and then on the long approach to the oxer a banner flapped right as we were at the base of the jump and DC jumped more sideways than straight and over.  On our second course a girl fell off in the ring next to us with a whole lot of yelling and people screaming whoa, I can only imagine the horse was running around wildly never to be caught.  It distracted BOTH of us (concentration is key) and left a meh of a line, scoring a 76.  The last course the line closest to the gate DC somewhat decided an early exit might be the key to being the winner.  This gave us a huge drift to the left and a crooked jump coming in, and scoring a 78.  So, we ended up with blah, bleck, and blah. 

It’s not to say that those weren’t respectable scores, just nothing that’s going to leave me with blue ribbons raining down in a parade like setting. 

I WANT A PARADE LIKE SETTING.

Spoiled?  Nah. 

So, the second week of Colorado wrapped with some good, some bad, some really not good, but overall still the most fun show I’ve attended.