CVES Horse Trials; Final Day

By day 4, I was completely sleep deprived, exhausted, and oh yeah, super ill. I think now I probably was struggling with heatstroke all weekend...either that or I caught a nasty flu bug that is scared of shade and air conditioning :)


My ride time wasn't until 4pm, so I basically just slept in the shade when I wasn't looking after the pony. Sorry, barn mates, I know my contributions to the day were essentially nil!

By the time I tacked up I felt extra special awful. Still, show jumping was only like a 90 second course and I was supposed be channeling that inner 7 year old, right?

I kept in mind the specific 7 year old I was emulating somehow managed to fall out of a tree this weekend and get a piece of metal embedded in his eye. This resulted in a trip to the emergency room, where they froze his eye and then used a dremel tool to drill out the area around the metal. He came back complete with pirate patch and apparently zero tears, off to race bikes with the other kids. I bowed out then and there of our 'who's tougher?' competition because that's just beyond bad ass. Not to mention this is the second show in a row that he has needed a trip to the ER...lol life as a 7 year old is apparently quite hazardous to your health.

I tacked up Midge, started to warm up, and felt so nauseous I had to get right back off. I'll spare you the details, just advise you to never be ill in extreme heat where your only option of privacy is a 4 day old port a potty.

I told EC I was scratching, then went off to find some shade. The world's best barn kids walked Midge around and gave me water and poured even more water on my head.

EC did not scratch me, and about 5 minutes before our round, I felt well enough to hop back on, so that's the story of how I rode straight into show jumping without actually warming up over a single fence :)

Long story short, I rode terribly and Midge wanted to be done, but she still saved my butt numerous times. The arena was fenced of with flags which the horses thought were scary, and also had a lot of spooky jumps and signs. There were a few antics from even the Midge, but she somehow pulled through and honestly jumped everything I pointed her at, even with terribly planned approaches and a super floppy rider. Double clear. Pretty sure they must have made a scoring mistake there, even though the jumps were like 2'3" and easy, there should still be rider penalties for riding so awfully your pony has to basically cart you around the thing ;)

Sneak preview of the only show jumping pic I'm buying...I look like an idiot but Midge is so cool she can jump and pose at the same time ;)

We moved up two spots and finished 9th/24 overall, and two tenths of a point out of the ribbons. Good thing I wasn't checking scores, would have been so sad to be so close to satin on our first outing!

No worries about the ribbon, that's exactly what MS Paint is for ;)

Final thoughts:

- My pony is amazing
- I can't believe how grown up she was for just turning 7, looking after me so carefully in the show jumping
- I don't often get the feels, but I might have actually cried I was so proud of her.
- I'm not sure this was Midge's favorite weekend ever. She was a super good sport about it all, but we might stick to one "big" event a year more for my own fun and otherwise focus on the dressage she seems to enjoy more.
- That being said, I think we'd be fine to move up to pre-entry, the show jumps and the course XC felt a little tiny and boring. No regrets though, a super positive first event for us both and successfully completing something I've wanted to do forever feels pretty good!