Paul Frazer Memorial CT

Before I tell you all about our show debut yesterday, I just wanted to apologize for being such a terrible blogger lately, both in keeping up with my own blog and all of yours! This semester has been hell and I'm taking what will probably be the hardest class of my life (the dreaded organic chemistry), but there's a light at the end of the tunnel. I'm moving Limerick home for the summer on May 11th, which will officially signal the return of my life/livelihood/free time. Anyways, I'm sorry I again, and I'm asking you to please bear with me these last couple of weeks! Not like I'm counting down the days or anything... 

Anywho, I'll give everyone a recap of this weekend. Thursday, Hillary came to visit, ride Limerick for me, and help me memorize my dressage test :)! Friday, we went to Masterson and ran through our dressage test in the ring there, which was my first time riding Limmers in a dressage ring. He was pretty good and each time we practiced, it got better, but I left feeling less than prepared for the real thing. Hill and I got Lim settled in at the horse park and then headed back to the hotel to clean tack and sleep.

Saturday morning, I was shockingly calm and had a very specific set of goals in mind, all revolving around a good experience for both of us. Dressage was scheduled for 9:15, so we got down to the warmup at least 40 minutes before to give us both plenty of time to take in the sites and calm down before heading into the ring. Limerick was a total star and we had a fabulous and mostly uneventful warmup, despite some craziness from other horse+rider pairs. For example, as we trotted through one of the corners, a lady kicked her horse while mounting, fell to the ground, and proceeded to rip on his face, all of which made him start backing towards Limerick. Seeing this, poor Limmers jumped sideways and popped his head up, which simultaneously made me rock forward and hit my face against his neck... cue bloody nose :( However, we rallied and the rest of the warmup was even better, and I was slightly more careful to watch what was happening outside of the ring as well. Next, we headed into our test, both calm and feeling ready. It went better than any of the times we practiced it and we got great scores for our second time in a dressage ring and our first ever dressage test in competition, so I'm thrilled! Limerick was slightly distracted and we somehow either misread or found the wrong year's test when we learned it, so we had some slight errors at the beginning. Overall, it went very well and I remembered most of the things I wanted to remember, but also gave us plenty of things to work on! 

My jumping time was scheduled for 9:30 but dressage ran late, so we had to book it back to our stall and get all of Limerick's tack swapped out, then we headed up to the ring. We had a short warmup where we went FORWARD (another of our goals) before fences, and everything went so smoothly that I agreed to go ahead and do our round early. You can watch the second video to get a better idea, but everything started out relatively smooth and went downhill from there. Fences 1-5 were decent, though by the time I was headed to 5, I had no control whatsoever. Then, after 5 is where he really started to freight train and could not have cared less that I was begging him to slow down, so I made the decision to circle to collect both of our brains, which I'm still okay with given how uncomfortable I was. We jumped six and he got a little frisky afterwards, but this is where I made my second circle, which in retrospect I should not have done. He was actually balanced and going a reasonable speed, but at that point I was so shaken that all I wanted him to do was trot. I know, I'm somewhat crazy, but we had only practiced one canter course EVER, and it was in a lesson over a month ago. Basically, what I learned from this is that I needed a bit with more brakes, which was entirely my fault. I rode in the full-cheek snaffle, which might be enough for us eventually but was not enough in a show setting. 

TACK HO UPDATE: This experience led me to buy a "wonder bit" and a running martingale. The running martingale will hopefully stop him from throwing his head up after fences in that weird way he does, and the wonder bit should hopefully give us an effect similar to our three-ring, but with less curling. 

Shortly after jumping, Hillary and I went to grab lunch and then to check the scores, which showed that we were in 5th place after dressage :)! I was so beyond thrilled with this and so proud of Limerick for keeping his cool in a crazy warmup ring. I knew that jumping would change this rather significantly since we incurred 4 faults, but I was still happy and figured we would end up somewhere in the middle of the pack. We ended up in 8th place after jumping and got a (not-so-pretty) brown ribbon! We learned a ton, had a mostly positive experience, and accomplished all of the goals I had in mind :) Best of all, we had fun and I got to spend the entire weekend with my best friend! Major shout out to Hillary, I couldn't have done it without her <3 She is the reason I stayed calm and handled all of the ups and downs as well as I did! 

The videos: 

The pictures:

Once again, look at LF! His entire hoof-pastern is touching the ground! I know they're supposed to do that, but I've never seen his be so exaggerated

PLEASE JUST LOOK AT HIS LF.... WTF?! How is that possible? His hoof is literally toe down in the footing, in an absurdly unnatural position 

Trying so hard not to smile :)

Channeling my inner Reed Kessler. How'd I do?