Eventing Derby recap Part 1 - TWH

I woke up on Sunday feeling hopeful and positive.  Up at 6a, I went out and started preparing for the day which included finding a newly spotted horse where a clean horse was last night.  Just what I needed, I broke out the washing supplies and gave the TWH a quick bath.  Got everyone fed and wrapped before I realized I was running almost 15 minutes behind schedule, I was supposed to have hauled out at 645 and it was already 7a.  Loaded up and headed out and got to the show with only 25 minutes before my first ride of the day. 

I warmed the TWH up and was quite impressed that he still had his canter-trot button installed, this would make my day much easier I thought!  The warm up was quite uneventful and we went in the arena feeling pretty prepared despite the lack of time we had.  The entry down the centerline was a little off but not too bad, the rest of the test rode very well.  That is, until the end.  The very last piece of the test.  The last sequence of events requires a canter of a 20m circle in front of the judge, down the side of the arena into a trot before B then turn up the centerline and halt at X.  Pretty easy right?  It looked good on paper anyway.  TWH decided his canter-trot button was broken at this very inopportune moment, we paced down  3/4 of the length of the arena before he finally picked up a trot .  We had about 3 strides to our turn so I asked for the turn and got nothing.  I widened my hands and asked for a turn again, this time with a little more outside leg and I got a turn.  With a canter.  The funny side of this is after a stride and a half he went back down and picked up a trot immediately.  Of course he did, when it didn't count so much.  We finished our test and though I was happy overall, I was disappointed we blew such an important piece of the test.  

Our dressage scores were really nice until the end.  6's, 7's and even an 8 were on the sheet until the last 2 boxes.  The "trot" down the side rated a 3 with a note of PACING and the turn got a 4 with NOT RHYTHMICAL. And she gave us a 4 on the collective gait marks.  So out of 30 points we got 11 which blew us out of the top placings.  She did say really nice job on my transitions and willingness to move forward, nice relaxation.  So there was that.  Up next though was cross country.

I saddled up and spent very little time warming up, I didn't want him to get too tired so I walked for about 5 mins and then put in 2 laps of trot and 2 laps of canter.  I jumped the biggest warm up fence a couple of times and went and waited by the start box.  Optimum time was 3:27 and I hoped to hit close to the mark.  Off we went and had a great time.  The first 3 fences were simple crossrails and the rest were little logs until the end.  We went over fences 1-4 without any issues and we walked down the big hill to try to eat up time when I realized we were going much too fast.  We finished the course in 2:51 and it felt great.  Much to my  amazement we placed 4th of 14 thanks to a higher placing taking a rail somewhere.  Go us!  TWH got a good walk and sponge bath to cool down and SO let him graze while I got to work on the App.