Posted by: Alex
He does something to completely redeem himself. If you haven’t read my last two posts about my horse, Dartmoor, you should. It gives some perspective to this post.
I’m been pulling my hair about my horse for the last week. Over the course of 5 days he went from his usual state of partially freaked out into total freak-out overdrive mode. He was almost unworkable, I had to spend 70% of our sessions just trying to get him to calm down enough so we could continue with what we were actually supposed to be doing. I was close to the end of my tether, contemplating giving him 6 months off just so I could have a break from him.
Then today I took him to a three-phase event. It’s not his forte: he’s usually two tense for the dressage phase and the cross country really rattles his brain cell. He’s a definite ‘look-before-you-leap type, and cross country requires a brave horse that’s willing to do things like plunge into water without knowing how deep it might be or jump off a bank without being able to see the landing until the last stride.
Once a year I take him to one of these events because all the galloping across the countryside does make him a little braver when he gets to his usual competition style: show jumping. I also have a theory that it makes him grateful for the bigger but less scary looking jumps in the show-jumping ring.
Well today he totally outdid himself. We arrived late and unprepared: I’d left my boots at home. Hunny raced back home to fetch them for me while I completed a very hurried warm up. Hunny arrived back just in time for me to put my boots on and trot into the dressage arena. He stayed calm *very unusual for him* and did his best dressage test ever. The judge wrote on out comment sheet “What an obedient and willing horse” – that’s a first!
We went out into the country a penalty score of 43.6, lying in second place behind someone with a penalty score of 38, and with two score of 44 right behind me. We had a great cross country round, he started out good and just got better. He trotted straight into the two water complexes on the course, stayed focused and obedient into the skinny (narrow) jumps and really opened out his stride across the long distances between jumps. When I pulled up at the finish I know I was clear for jumping, but I didn’t know if I’d incurred any time penalties.
The third phase is show jumping – his forte – so I was pretty convinced he’d do okay at that, especially considering it was about half the height he normally jumps in dedicated show-jumping competitions. I learnt just before the show-jumping started that after the cross country points had been tallied we were in first place. We were inside the ideal time, so we got no time penalties, and the person who was beating me had a couple of stops in the country, incurring extra penalties.
After finding this out I was so nervous I could hardly bring myself to warm up! No worries, Dartmoor did his job and gave a lovely clear round. It was only afterwards that I learnt that the guy I had beaten into second was only 0.4 penalties behind me! But we won! Amazing! My timid little show-jumper won a three-phase event and totally redeemed himself.
I suppose the highs are as high as the lows are low. That’s my boy!
*okay, I’ll stop blogging about my horse now*
February 4th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Don’t stop horse blogging! that was a good story…