Mystic Valley Countdown: Four Days!

Four days until our second horse trial of the year! Who's excited? I'm excited!

I'm actually feeling pretty relaxed about this show. I'm not sure exactly why, but there are only 10 people in my division. I've never been in a division that small in all my life! I checked up on all the people running, and I thought Daun and Stacey might like to know there are two full drafts in the Novice Horse section with me - two Clydesdales, owned by two different people no less! I'll have to keep track of how they do.
The not fun part? I'm trailering in, and it's about an hour and a half away with a trailer, maybe a little less. I need about an hour to warm Gogo up before dressage, and so of course, guess what time I ride? Yep, you guessed it - first ride of the morning, 8:00am sharp. Which means I need to be on at about 7. Which means I need to get there at about 6. Which means I need to leave here at like... 4:30am. Awesome. So, I'll need to have EVERYTHING done before I leave - bathing, braiding, packing, etc. That's not a problem... but heaven forbid her braids come out overnight!! She doesn't rub them or anything, and I tie a pretty tight braid, but I always do the forelock braid the day of (because they don't stay under her Sleazy), and I'll need to factor in time to fix anything that goes awry. Blah!

So dressage is at 8:00am, and stadium goes at 10:30am. The other thing that I'm not all that hot about is that XC starts at 10:50am - so I have to ride stadium in my XC gear. In reality, doing my stadium as a sort of warmup and then riding over to XC to start there makes a lot of sense.... I just feel like a goob riding stadium in my XC gear, lol. It will make things easier for sure - one less thing to get dressed up for, considering I'll likely be alone for this one. Then again, I thought I'd be alone at the last one, and I had three people show up to watch and help and film, so you never know really!

There isn't much of a Virtual Ride coursewalk on the Area 1 website, but I do know we will be tackling this jump this weekend:



Her very first picture frame! Gogo grows up and up. By the way, she'll be 8 next Tuesday... time is flying by.



After a nice day off and a light hack yesterday, doing the rounds greeting little kids on a beautiful Memorial Day afternoon, we had a totally awesome dressage school today. Her canterwork was actually better than her trotwork for the first time... well, ever, I think. She even did some shallow loops in canter that were totally balanced and exquisite. She usually does them obediently, to be sure, but she tends to get near the centerline and sort of dive back towards the rail. These were smooth and totally balanced - no gravitating towards the outside. I was very impressed! We also did all sorts of serpentines, leg yields, and transitions, just to keep her mind relaxed and quiet and thinking. We worked on free walk too - our Achilles heel - and she actually did quite well. I have high hopes for Saturday! Let's hope we can hold it together!

Two more days of dressage, and then we take a day off to get ready on Friday. And Saturday, we PARTY! And by party, I mean we are not going to have a rumba butt repeat performance, but instead we are going to have such a square halt-salute that I drop the reins and give her a big crushing hug at the end of the test!

Lots of things to do to get ready, lots and lots of things. This being the second show of the year, I'm feeling way less nervous and way more excited. This is going to be a blast!!