With the cancellation of Surefire I had a bit of a gap between competitions, but we had a lovely schooling on July 4 at Surefire instead. It was pretty cool to just hack over, ride for an hour, then hack back, and I only wish I could have done that for the event. Sadly they’re not having a fall event this year 😦
I had a very long weekend at the Great Meadow Nations Cup, and somehow, after a horrible heat wave earlier in the week, the humidity dropped, and it was somewhat bearable for horses and humans.
The following weekend on Sunday as I was preparing for Loch Moy I just couldn’t get out of my head for some reason. I’d walked the course the day before and thought it was quite a big novice with a couple of really bad fences, one with a Man From Snowy River drop, and the other a nearly impossible line.
I’d had a lot of stuff on my mind that week; just stressed about money and other things, plus the course and competing in the heat, so by Sunday morning I just felt sick and nervous, which I haven’t felt for awhile.
It slowly started to go away as I warmed up for dressage. He put in another lovely, calm test for a 26.9 to lead my novice rider division. As I was getting him ready for jumping I kept telling myself, “It’s just novice, you’re both clearly able to do this. You had an amazing school at Surefire.”
Once I was on, I knew I had to let it all go, and luckily I did. Our show jumping was quite nice and forward. I think I tend to ride better when I’m hot and tired because I’m worrying about that and not the jumping!
We set out on course very positive and forward, and I actually kept that going the whole time for once! We met most fences right out of stride, and the scary drop at 5 to a chevron (at novice?!) was good, as was the drop log at 7 to a terrible line to a trakehner. He was kind of lining up the prelim ditch and wall, but I sat down and basically show jumped the trakehner.
There was a corner combination and a log on a mound as well; all things I don’t think I ever saw at novice back when we were at novice. I’m glad we had the challenge in the end though. It can get a bit boring just cantering single fences at novice.
We ended up winning; our third win in a row!
I’m so happy everything has come together this year finally. We’ve got two dressage shows coming up where I’m hoping to get our first and third level scores for our bronze medal, then I’ll look towards the fall with perhaps Seneca, Marlborough and Loch Moy and Waredaca.
Everything Eventing 
Congrats!