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*

1. The blue barrels next to the arena
2. The green barrels next to the arena
3. The blue barrels in the arena
4. The white barrels in the arena
5. The red boxes
6. The white plastic jump
7. Two black tyres underneath the cross jump
8. Plank on ground under the plank jump
9. Petrus (my instructors helper) pulling weeds next to the arena
10. The water sprayer next to the arena
11. Petrus adjusting jumps
12. Tossy (my instructor) adjusting jumps
13. Tossy fetching a pole from outside the arena (She did well to keep me from wringing his scrawny little neck this morning)
14. The noise of the plank he knocked landing on the ground behind him
15. The equipment shed
16. Petrus standing next to the jump he was jumping

Once he’d settled he jumped quite well though. Bastard.

Those two words just about sum up my blogging activity lately. I’m not even gonna bother with excuses. I’m putting the bike trip tale on hold until I can finish all the reaming posts in that series and will now blog the random stuff that’s been happing recently.

My horse & I finally made some tangible progress in our show-jumping career. Three weekends ago we tried our first C-grade (previously jumping D-grade) competition. Nothing spectacular to report from that, we took down a few poles. That said, ‘nothing spectacular’ is a pretty good way for us to make the transition up a grade, in the past upgrades have meant an almost complete loss of confidence and several shows hoping back and forth between the new grade and the previous one.

Much more exciting to report: this past weekend when we tried 2 more C grade competitions, we really got it right. My boy finally showed off some of the talent my instructor and I have been witness to in our training sessions over the last couple of months. Yay! My faith in us is restored!

In other news, last night saw the reunion of the three wise men. Vin, Jay and Claus once again brought down the house. Well not quite. The house is still standing, but they sure did try hard. Jay & Vin are loooong time buddies of my Hunny (aka Claus – it’s a long story), and they haven’t all three been in the same place at the same time for a good while. Jay now lives on a tiny island off the coast of Madagascar (even if I could spell it’s name correctly you wouldn’t know it) and is back in SA for a brief visit and Hunny thought it’d be good to get them & their other halves & progeny round for dinner. And drinks. And general horsing around, wrestling on the kitchen floor and attempting to footprint the ceiling of our study with foot still in shoe.

There are some advantages to having three rampaging hooligans in your home though. You know those bottles of weird spirits that sit in your liquor cabinet for years because they taste so awful that no-one in their right mind would drink them, but you can’t just toss them out because they were probably gifts? There are 2 less of those bottles in my cupboard. The bottle of Madagascan Rum, the bottle of cinnamon brandy liqueur called Hot Sex, both gone. Sizeable dents also made in the grappa and tequila bottles, neither of which I’m too sad about, though I could have made Margaritas with the Jose Quervo.

Boys will be boys, but eventually the girls decided that enough fun had been had and took their other halves home to begin nursing their hangovers. Funny that when you put three guys in their early thirties together you end up with an average age of 18