Stadium Day

Thank you Mom for guest blogging! Yes, as Mom pointed out, I think of Jet as "my boy" and my nickname for him is "Kid." Although I have trained horses from prelim through advanced before and from novice through intermediate, this is the first horse that has spent his entire competitive eventing career in my hands. He is very special to me. Brian bought him off of the track as a resale project and sent him to me just over two and a half years ago in the spring of 2007. In just that short period of time Jet has turned himself into a two star horse, and I am proud of him.

After having Jet for about a year I put him up for sale, which was the original plan. Although eight people came to try him, he wasn't the right match for any of them. In May of 2008 we lost the nice young grey thoroughbred called Blue Max that Mr. Wetherill owned. Max was getting ready for his first one star. Jet was just moving up to preliminary at the time, and he was already in the barn. Mr. Wetherill asked if he could buy him from us. Although Jet is not the fanciest horse I have ever ridden, I was very pleased with the idea because then I would be able to continue to work with him and I certainly had a fondness for him.

Jet has a great work ethic and he comes out every day ready to try. Since last November, he has completed two CCI*'s, a CIC** and now the CCI** this weekend at Fair Hill. He is incredibly consistent in his record and is a tough guy. He ran around two cross country courses this summer missing a front shoe and I didn't even realize it either time until we pulled up. In one of the cases when I went back and looked at the photos I realized he must have pulled the shoe on the second or third jump. He never let it get in his way, though. His mind was completely on the job at hand. Knowing all of this made it easier to decide to run him yesterday in the very difficult conditions. We have been working hard towards this goal and every time I have challenged him since I have had him, Jet has stepped up to the plate. I knew he would yesterday, too.

Unfortunately today was a little bit of a let down after our strong showings on the first two days. Jet passed the trot up in front of the vet panel with no problem. He was very sound today and even felt limber when I got on to warm him up for stadium jumping. Dr. Pat worked on him yesterday after cross country and I think our fitness regime at Chesterland really helped us this weekend. Jet was slightly tired, but still peppy and going well to the jumps. We have had issues with stadium since we moved up to intermediate in May. Jet is very careful up front but not as careful behind. I have been working with Bruce on this issue, but in the past four weeks I have predominantly focused on improving our dressage ride, our other weak link. Jet also jumped a clean round at the CIC** at Plantation Field in September, so I felt we were on our way through the issue. Unfortunately, though, the demons came back to haunt us today! We had three rails down in stadium. Jet actually jumped very nicely, he just jumped by brail. He tipped many rails with his hind toes and three of them he tipped too hard. This is one of the training issues with event horses. You want to teach them not to be too careful on cross country, but then to be careful in stadium. Jet has the cross country part down. Now we will have to put more focus on the stadium.

At the end of the day we finished 14th out of the 72 starters and 10th nationally, which garnered us a ribbon. Although I would have loved to have had a better showing today, I really can't be anything but pleased with Jet. He is blossoming and he was one of the youngest and least experienced horses to finish in the top tier. He is a hard worker and he will figure out his feet in the stadium. I was also pleased that Mr. Wetherill and Babbie were able to come see his rides all three days. They really enjoyed being able to watch him go, especially his heroic effort yesterday.

Today when we got home I put Jet out in the field with Doc to relax. He will now have five weeks off to just be a horse. We will start back to work in December. Tomorrow Monte, Doc, and Jasper are eagerly awaiting being ridden, and I have a truck to wash! Of course the moment I got back to the barn at Fair Hill after we finished, the sun peaked through the clouds. It was the first time I had seen it in four days! What luck! Anyway, we survived the weekend at the S.S. Fair Hill.