TWH kicks butt

Pissed.  I was so pissed at myself for ruining the dressage ride, why, why, why!?!  TWH absolutely cannot have a rider check out, you have to be there for him and he will be there for you and I failed him.  I mumbled and grumbled until it was time to get ready for stadium, I think RB4 wanted to smack me lol.  Maybe I could still pull a decent placing, I mean I heard a lot of people were having issues and several had been eliminated.  Maybe they had been ahead of me?  

Looking like a pro going XC!

The announcer said it was time to walk the Novice course and that jackets were also waived.  Wahoo!  I HATE wearing the jacket when it is hot and it was getting steamy!  I started riding over when someone reminded me that even with jackets waived, you have to wear a white shirt.  Damn it!  There was no way I was wearing my skin tight dressage shirt, back to the trailer I went and put the damn coat on.  No worries, I just needed to sweat off a few more pounds anyway.  

Good pic to show the height we were jumping.  BIG!

The course walk was uneventful, nothing was particularly difficult except jump 4, it was literally jumping up a decent hill on a max height/width oxer.  Note to self, LOTS of leg at jump four!!  5 was a bending 4 stride and nothing else was of a concern so we settled in for our wait.  5 riders out I warmed up and had to wake TWH up as he was snoozing.  The first jump he knocked over before I gave him a good boot and made him pick up speed at which point he started jumping nicely.

We went into the ring without knowing the optimum time so that added pressure was gone, if I don't know what I have to hit, I don't have to worry about timing ourselves.  Just gotta go fast!  

Look, no grabbing poor TWH's face!

Jump one rode very well in fact!  A recently discovered "trick" I have learned is to not look at the pole at all.  Apparently I can't actually function like a normal person and will micromanage if I think the striding is even a little off.  This makes me jump ahead or behind, all while grabbing onto TWH's face and looking like a fool who needs to go back to crossrails.  By not looking at the fence at all, AT ALL, TWH is finding his spot and and is jumping much, much better.  Rider fault, who would have thought.  Ha!  Jump 2 and 3 were unremarkable though I really put on the afterburners up to fence 4.

Fence 4.  On a hill, max height, max width.  

TWH made fence 4 seem super easy, no reason I should have even cared!  Aside from my stirrup being "home" instead of at the ball of my foot, it made for an awesome picture.  Fence 5, 6 and 7 were easy

Ugh, equitation fail

Fence 8a rode nicely but apparently I blanked out at 8b (or something) b/c TWH met it wrong and we had a quite awkward jump that had me out of the saddle but I stayed on and shouted at him to GO as we sailed over nine to the finish.  I was so happy with TWH, not only was he double clear, he also jumped one of the best stadium rides ever.  YAY!!  My little gaited man is all grown up into an eventing horse.  I watched the rest of the class and rail after rail was falling, sitting there waiting I started to get my hopes up.  Maybe?

They finally called the riders back into the ring and they CALLED OUR NUMBER!  I was so excited, out of a class of 17 I was in the ribbons!  I didn't have to wait long before I was called, despite a horrible dressage score TWH jumped double clear in both XC and stadium and we took home 6th place ribbon.  While obviously I would have liked to have gotten higher, the fact that I went from 13th to 6th on jumping alone shows how much of a awesome horse TWH is.  And now that we seem to have stadium figured out, we actually look like we know what we are doing which is even better!  HA!

TWH got lots of treats and attention before being kicked out in a pasture for a week for his R&R.  Mia's first eventing show is Sept 7th and possibly Sept 21st, let's see what we can get done!