In Conclusion

Day 2 of Jetta's first recognized horse trial:

Went out early to feed and found Jetta's hind feet a little stocked up. I was a little worried about them but she was sound, so I wrapped her then went to clean stalls at the barn. Came back and the swelling had gone down a bit and she was sound. I grazed her for an hour while my mom cleaned the stall (so, so glad my mom came!).

I walked the stadium course - it was a pretty good course. Not overly difficult, but I could see that we might have a couple issues. Specifically I was worried about fence 4 and 5. Fence 4 was an angled fence that you took on a turn so it would be easy for your horse to pop their shoulder out and avoid it. Fence 5 was a combination that was rather scary (it was the safari jump, all Inavale jumps are over the top, but this one is one of the more spooky ones) also taken on a bit of a turn.

Tacked up and got on way too early. Oops. Luckily though it was a tad bit cooler than the day before (only 91 degrees! lol) and walking around was better than staying in those hot temporary stalls. I popped over each of the warm up fences and Jetta was very good so we went back to walking to preserve our energy. Closer to our division I popped over them again and Jetta wasn't quite so good and didn't get the right distance, chipping in or jumping from a long spot, but it was way too hot to school them and still have energy for our actual round.

When it was our turn we went in and did our opening circle. Jetta spooked pretty hard at the first jump, the carrot themed one. She went over it from a very small trot though. Turned to take on fence two, a white and shiny gold fence. She sucked back really hard but went over it. Fence three she chipped in to, it wasn't pretty. And then came fence four. She refused it. Twice. We really need to work on controlling the shoulders obviously at home, because it really wasn't that scary of a jump. Then came the safari combo and Jetta refused the first one, knocking off a rail. The judge blew the whistle and I thought we were done, so I left and the next person went in, only to hear the announcer calling me back and telling the other girl to leave and that they were just resetting our fence. We weren't finished yet!

The rest of it definitely wasn't pretty, but we made it over everything with no more refusals or rails and made it exactly on optimum time at 1:14. I obviously wasn't happy with our round, but at least I was glad that I didn't get eliminated. And I wasn't the only one with a slightly scary round, nor did I rack up the most penalties as the girl that went after me had 16 jump faults, whereas I had 12. Anyways, it meant that our placing did not change and we stayed in ninth place, meaning no pretty ribbon for us. I have never wanted a brown ribbon so badly.

Overall, we at least achieved one of the goals that I set (out of three, being: place in top three for dressage, no refusals cross country and double clear stadium) and improved drastically in the cross country department from our last show.

No pictures from stadium since my mom wasn't able to stay to play photographer but I think I may actually buy some pictures from the professionals. I'm always disappointed in the pictures that this photographer takes, over half of the shots they got were blurry or timed wrong, but they did get a couple that I seriously think are worth getting, so once I receive them I will upload those!

I used my fancy-schmancy new "ice boots" (ice cells from Bed, Bath & Beyond for a $1.50 each) on Jetta while I packed the trailer, then we headed home! Not a bad weekend. In my competitiveness I was disappointed in not getting a ribbon, BUT it was a good experience which is way more valuable. I know that if we put in a lot of hard work over the next year we will be awesome when this show rolls around again. Next year I have my sights set on getting in the top three :)