Preparation

We are five days from leaving for Bromont. The past two weeks I have had Jet at Bruce Davidson's Chesterland Farm in Unionville, PA. Unionville is still a small slice of heaven if you are a horse person. There are thousands of acres of interconnected farms, rolling hills, and lush green grass. The clover and honeysuckle are almost intoxicating. It is nice to know that a place like that still exists, and it is due to the very hard work of a small group of landowners who banded together to keep development out.

Jet is happy there. He started as a racehorse and he finds comfort in a routine of hard work. He is fit and muscular and the goal for the next five days is to maintain what we have.

Preparing for a major three day is a big endeavor. There are the logistics of entry forms and working through the national federation to gain permission to compete abroad. There are passports and health certificates and hotel reservations. There is the matter of coordinating help at the farms in Pennsylvania and Florida and help at the event, airplane tickets in this case, and more hotel reservations. Then plans change slightly and some things need to be reshuffled. There is also the necessity for Jet's "team" to see him in perfect timing with his pending schedule. The vet comes two weeks before leaving to go over him and make sure I am not missing any red flags in terms of his well being. The farrier comes in the same time frame so that the shoes are new, but not so new as to risk making him foot sore. The chiropractor and massage therapist have seen him several times this past month to aid in keeping him injury free as his fitness and work load increase. Jet's feed increases during this time frame and so does his risk of colicing or developing ulcers. He is on two types of ulcer prevention medicine daily. He is in a stall more to rest and to keep him from using his newfound fitness to hurt himself in the field, so I have to make sure he is eating his hay (a difficult feat for a thoroughbred) and not getting dehydrated in this heat. My own routine with Jet has intensified as well. He gets ridden seven days a week. Every day I have to give 100% during the hour or more that I am on his back, and so does he.

I have been through this process many times getting ready for three day events. The bigger the event, the more intense the process is. I also know that there are a hundred different things that can keep you from competing. It not only takes the skills of competing to get through a three day event, but good management skills as well. It also takes luck, as we saw when we got to Rolex four star last spring. At that event, perhaps luck was against us.

I was up at 5:30 am and it is now 6:25. It is going to be hot today, so I am leaving now to make the hour drive to Unionville to get Jet out on those hills early, before the heat of the day. Sitting on him I will feel a refined machine underneath me. We will do cardiovascular work first and then go right into working on our skills. Today it is going to be flying changes. We have five days to go, and I need to make sure that each one is a day like any other.