Flora Lea Horse Trials

Today Jet finished his third of four qualifying national horse trials to enable him to compete at the CCI* level in November in Florida.  We competed at the preliminary level at Flora Lea Horse Trials in Medford, NJ.  Flora Lea is a horse trials that I have competed at on and off for over twenty years.  

It rained all of last night and into today, so the day was very soggy and Jet has never competed in such deep and slippery footing.  He behaved admirably in the dressage, though for a horse without a lot of suspension in his movement, like he is, the mud in the dressage warm-up and ring was completely disconcerting for him.  He was much happier in the jumping phases and cruised easily around both the cross country and the stadium jumping courses.  We finished with about eighteen time faults on cross country but as this is his third weekend in a row competing and he compromised part of his hoof last weekend by throwing a shoe, I decided that having four shoes on at the end of cross country was the better part of valor.  I didn't push him for speed.  In the end we finished with a score of 68.3 and in 8th place out of 18 entries.  I am very pleased with his bravery and his progress all around.  In terms of his mental game and his athletic ability he is a very promising horse.

Brian is also back up North for the week and it is lovely to see him.  He came to the show today, rain and all, and was an extra set of hands.  Tonight we went on our first real date in about a month!

Next week Doc does the advanced combined test at Morven Park and then from the 15th to the 19th of October we will be competing at the Fair Hill International CCI***.