Cross Country and the Ordeal

This post is only a week late, so I'm sort of on top of things, right?

Also, quick unrelated note - this is my last finals week ever!! I can't believe I will be starting 4th year in less than a week. Starting first year, this seemed so far away and I can't believe I made it. 4th year is going to be crazy hard, exhausting, tons of long hours and of course studying for the NAVLE. But I am getting so close to reaching my DVM!

Anyways, we had Memorial Day off of school and PR (another vet student) invited me to go cross country schooling. It was the last weekend for schooling before several shows, so it was crazy busy. We rolled in fairly early at 9am and I'm glad we got up early for it!

Sadly, I have NO pictures, so I apologize for the media-less post.

I was pretty nervous actually to take Jetta. She hasn't been jumped (except for one time over a month ago at <2') in at least a year and a half. We've been to this place a ton so I wasn't worried about the venue part of it. We did a short trail ride around the property and then warmed up in part of the field that had very few jumps in it and everyone else was schooling elsewhere. Jetta was AMPED. A girl I know from when I used to take jumping and eventing lessons was there with a training group and she commented "Jetta looks so fancy!". Not a sentence I would have ever thought to be associated with Jetta lol. Basically we pranced around with very little braking capacity. We did lots of circling like we've been doing for dressage, changing direction often at the trot and that helped. Our canter was another story and I think while it looked controlled, I really didn't have any control for stopping!

We went to a section with some small jumps and warmed up over a couple little logs and a small coop. Jetta didn't blink about either one but she really wanted to gallop after every jump. We went to school the ditch (usually not a problem) and Jetta apparently didn't remember how to step over a ditch. It's the tiniest little thing but she was not having it. Eventually I got off and borrowed a crop and she finally leaped over it. Such a dork.

After that we went over to a field with some bigger stuff. I wasn't really sure about jumping any of the stuff in this field - the blue barn coop and rolltop coop, even though they were BN height looked HUGE to me. Finally I mustered up the courage and trotted up to the coop and Jetta easily jumped it with hardly any effort. I sometimes forget that she can jump! From there we came around again and took it at a canter then cantered up to the blue barn and she didn't even glance at it. I was estatic. The blue barn can sketch out a lot of horses because it has empty space beneath it. I was standing around watching another lady in our group jump the trakehner when a rider from another group brought her balky horse up to the blue barn... and promptly got lawn darted into the ground. I was SO glad I had already jumped it because after seeing her horse pull a dirty stop into the fence, I definitely didn't want to try it!

From there we ended on playing in the water. One thing I love about Jetta is that she has no qualms about water! She might not always want to canter into it, but she will never refuse it. We jumped a large skinny log into the water (I think it was a Novice height fence) and then popped over a stadium fence on the other side. At the very end we cooled off in the water, PR's horse Bailey likes to paw in the water which was cracking us up, splashing water everywhere. Then the other lady's horse started to paw. This whole time Jetta was just standing there looking at the other horses like they were crazy... then she started pawing and all of the horses were going to town in the water. Pretty cute, but I hope she hasn't learned a bad habit now!

Waiting for the tow...

And now the ordeal portion... I got Jetta untacked and loaded in the trailer, started the truck and was driving away... when the truck died. In motion. It refused to restart. I thought maybe it needed a jump, so we did that. No effect. A handful of people looked at it and tweaked a few things. It started and we let it run for a while, but I wasn't wanting to drive it with a horse trailer if it was going to die while driving. Not fun with a horse trailer when you lose power steering and braking... I called a couple friends and finally found one with a truck that was semi-ok to haul a trailer (one friend had been rear-ended recently and truck was in the shop, other had a lifted truck with no drop hitch, other one was currently using their trailer at another location). The truck was slightly disassembled from installing a flat bed, but was road worthy and would haul my trailer ok. It just couldn't hook up the trailer lights for whatever reason. He had been meaning to replace the plug for the trailer, but hadn't gotten to it and we couldn't get all of the trailer lights to work. Eventually he just hotwired the lights. But half of my lights still wouldn't work... only to find out I had 2 bulbs burnt out on the same side. Ugh.

Jetta finally made it home to the barn and I called a tow truck for my truck. I meant to drive it home, but even though it started and drove off fine twice, the third time it wouldn't start. Poor Freddy the Ford. Not sure what's wrong and of course don't have the money to fix it at this time, so it's been sadly sitting in the driveway. So of course here's another plug for the stuff I'm trying to sell... buy my things pretty please! I'll take reasonable offers on things. I have to pay for my NAVLE next week which holy smokes is spendy, so the poor truck is not going to get fixed for quite a while.

Getting dropped off at home :(

It's super hard not having my independence with my horses. I was planning on a trail ride and taking Maisie to the barn to learn to pony last week, so I was pretty bummed at the wrench in those plans. I've been driving my horse places by myself since I was 16 so this is going to be a weird non-mobile time for a while! I'm just super glad I board at a barn that has access to trails so at least I can get my trail riding in still!