Rocking Horse Spring Horse Trials

This past weekend I ran four horses at the Rocking Horse Spring Horse Trials -- Jet, Doc, Gavin, and Monte. On our first outing together since the CCI** at Fair Hill in October, Jet placed fourth in the open intermediate division. We had a strong weekend from start to finish. He scored a 38.4 in dressage putting him in eight place. On Saturday we were the first horse on cross country. Jet jumped one of his signature rounds. He was clever, tidy, and confident. Even though I felt we were moving at a good speed, we were ten seconds slow on the clock which added four faults. At the end of the day, however, only two horses made the time and our round was still one of the fastest ones. We moved up to fifth. On Sunday we show jumped. Show jumping is Jet's weakest phase right now and we have been working on it all winter. He can be a little too tight in his back which causes him to take rails behind. At Fair Hill in the fall we had three rails on Sunday and it cost us several places. This weekend Jet felt better overall, but he still had one rail down. Other riders had rails as well, though, so even with one rail down we moved up to fourth place. It felt great to be back in the irons with Jet. He felt so good, in fact, that I plan to move him up to advanced in a few weeks at The Fork.

Doc and my mom's horse Gavin both had solid weekends. I took Doc to the show for fun and to keep him in the game, even though he is now in semi-retirement. We competed in the preliminary division. He scored a 37 in dressage and jumped clean cross country and in stadium. If we hadn't had any time faults on cross country he would have finished third. I went out on cross country on Saturday, however, with the intention of taking it easy. Doc has a certain amount of mileage on him now and my main goal is to have fun with him. I don't want him to sustain another injury. With that in mind, I did not go terribly fast and we had time faults. In the end we finished in the middle of the pack. Doc's quirks need constant management, but it really is a great pleasure to still be able to compete this fantastic little horse.

Gavin ran in the novice horse division. He scored a 34.5 in dressage, was double clear on cross country and had one rail in stadium leaving him in 11th place in a very competitive division. His placing betrays what a good boy he was all weekend. He felt good both physically and mentally in all three phases and I was very pleased with him. We plan to move him up to training level at his next show.

Last but not least there was Monte. Jimmy Wofford has this saying, "Don't be a statistic." What he means is that at any event there will be a certain percentage of riders who have refusals on cross country and a certain percentage of riders who do not finish. If you are one of these riders you become "a statistic." This weekend Monte was my statistic. Cross country day was very windy. Monte was my last ride of the day. He spent the day on the trailer waiting as his stable mates one by one left him. I could tell when I got on him that his brain was not engaged. On the hack to cross country he stopped and spooked many times at the blowing tents and other wind demons. In the warm up he was very strong and he also tried to buck me off. I almost withdrew him right then and there, but I decided to go slowly and try to give him experience. We made it through a couple of spooky jump combinations, but our day ended at jump ten. It was a combination where you jump up onto a bank, take one stride, and then jump across a ditch to another bank. Monte has never seen anything like this. As he jumped up onto the bank his head was low and he looked right into the ditch. He didn't like what he saw! He stopped. I jumped him off the bank and represented and he stopped again. At that point I retired him. That bank is the type of exercise that, with Monte, will go one of two ways. I could make a big deal out of it and fight with him about jumping it, or I could school it with less pressure and let him figure out for himself that it is no big deal to hop across to the other bank. Especially with his brain where it was on Saturday, I chose option two. We will be back at Rocking Horse this week to master it! In the mean time, I have been reminded that as mature at Monte seems at times, he still needs a lot of mileage.

Until the next time!

Ashley