goddessfarmer | May. 11th, 2015

Went to my first horse trials of the season yesterday. I was pretty nervous leading up to it, but once I got there, well, show nerves are show nerves and it wasn't any worse than usual. The weather was hot and not entirely unhumid, so I was drenched even before I put my clothes on for Dressage. Skip warmed up great, but as soon as we got onto the sand around the arena, he tightened up and felt like he had stones in his front feet. So I did the best I could with Skip behind my everything, and actually rode him during the test, as opposed to just riding the test. All I can say is that however not so great it felt, the judge really liked it because we came out of that with 26.8 penalty points (73.2%) and in second place. I had roughly an hour between getting done with that and Stadium Jumping, which I used to sponge Skip, sponge my face, and walk the stadium course again. I jumped exactly 5 jumps in the warm up, and then went in a rocked that course. It could have been a hunter equitation round. I really wish I had video. Given the way the rails were flying for others, it wasn't an easy course. I was still in second after that. Less that two hours later, I was warming up for cross country. I jumped 2 warm-up jumps, and walked until time.