better late than never!

Time has gotten away from me and I have not updated this blog to include our 2 most recent shows! Roxy and I completed her first Novice at FRVPC HT the third weekend of June. It was very hot and humid, making conditions less than ideal, but we managed to get through it. I thought she put in a nice steady test, but judge Cheryl Holekamp begged to differ, giving us a 36.1 which put us in a 3 way tie for 9th. The division was pretty large, but there were lots of fancy big moving warmbloods scoring in the 20's. The main comments on the test were to move more forward to cover more ground in the trot. We got all 6's and 7's, but many more 6's than the last test...I was not entirely pleased because I felt like it was a nice test.

Walking XC for the first time, I was surprised at the size of the first 4 fences as they were quite substantial and had tricky approaches for a Novice horse. Compared to the courses Rox has done in the past, it was definitely a bit harder than anything she had ever seen. The first fence was a max ramp going into the woods away from warmup, #2 was a max brush fence off a tight left hand turn going further into the woods, and #3 was a pretty vertical coop off another tight left hand turn. She jumped them all much better than I expected after being a big hot and naughty in the warmup. She jumped #4 well, a table with a downhill landing and then proceeded to take off down the hill to 5, the barrels that we jumped at the mini. She was going a bit quick by now and I wanted her to be in an organized canter because she tends to run past the distance and jump awkwardly. That happened here, and then we had to turn off the path out into the open by the water jump to #6. She was definitely looking around and not sure where we were heading as we turned to approach 6, a big ramped red barn jump. Her eye was on the big tent and spectators at the water jump after the fence, so she propped hard on the approach and I reacted too late to get her going again. We circled back and jumped it fine, making a circle afterward to get organized before going to the water. I was disappointed because I didn't think she would look and prop so hard so I didn't take enough time to prepare her. She jumped the rest of the course well, but felt un-rateable and disorganized in the pelham, like she was fighting it. We had some time penalties from the stop and circle, but I was happy that she jumped the first part of the course since it was a little outside our comfort zone. I was not happy that she was fighting and pulling on me during the entire course and I could not rate her at all...

The SJ walked nicely, it wasn't huge and I liked the flow for the most part. The one stride walked long, so Cathy advised marching down to it with authority, which we did and she jumped through it well. We lost a bit of focus on the line after it, a vertical to oxer heading towards the gate, and had the front rail on the oxer. She jumped the vertical quietly but landed strong and I didn't make a decision soon enough to balance her canter so she just tapped the rail. Otherwise I was very happy with how rideable she felt, especially compared to how she was at the mini in SJ.

Goals for the next HT are to ride a bigger trot in the dressage, have a good plan for XC if there are places that could back her off (spectators, etc), and react more quickly in the SJ to help her balance the canter.