We are on the 8.30pm ferry on our way home as I type this!
Aspen is an amazing beautiful facility and we feel honored to ride there!
Zoe rode Puding, his show name Jumping Jack. His first recognized event. I rode Paktaly.
It rained on Friday and the warm up was quite slippery and Paktaly slipped and did not want to pick up canter anymore...
Then when it was our time to do our dressage test the arena was even wetter and he wasn't very found of the canter...
We did our test, but our score was 44.3
To be barefoot or not...I walked the XC course and it was clear to me I needed more traction...
Zoe and pudding had some trouble settling down, his first show and he was quite excited at first but they had a good test.
After taking care of the horses I made an appointment with the farrier on sight and paktaly got shoes all around and studs in the rear.
We had stadium on Saturday and warm up Watson the grass, freshly rained on so I tried the studs and I must say Paktaly jumped better!
We had a clear jump round, except that I made him trot to change canter lead and we got 3 time faults.
Zoe had a double clear round! She did have to work for it! Pudding took a good look at one of the color ful fillings..
Sunday cross country! I rode first again, and we had quite a few jumps either on a down hill slope or simply down hill...
We had a great warm up and we had a good run, I should have slowed Paktaly down to a trot coming up to the log TM front of the water...we had a refusal there, we had another refusal for the barrel of the army tank,...
After that was about of a gallop to a maximum vertical fence with brush on top I measured the brush where I have my "markers" on my body and it seemed 4foot tall, horses are supposed to brush through, ha ha,...my Paktaly would never do that...so I had my concerns about it, but he jumped it with room to spare.
Next was the jump down hill and by then he was getting used to his new traction and jumped it well.
Then the pirateship, a jump he would prefer to take a look at since it is big, canons stilling out and all, it is wide and the landing down hill, over the speaker I had heard horses had refused it but we went clear! Off to the next water where my next concern was, the up bank to a sharp left turn to a big sushi looking coop going down hill, I had debated circling right if we had a bad landing out of the water but we did well so I did the turn and we cleared it.
We weren't done yet with my concerns on course...the log over the ditch, the ditch to the coop, and the corner and 2 strides to the silver painted wood saw,...but he was such a good boy!!!
We finished 13th.
Zoe had agreat warm up, people were all commenting how cute her pony is!!!
For his first XC competition it is hard to know what to expect, and he did not expect to see jump judges all over the place!!!
Zoe did a fabulous job getting him around the course! Keeping him balanced.
She did get a refusal by the barrels, he spooked at the jump judge! Then she got a refusal at the 2nd water...it is down hill, if she would have trotted...but he's been so good with water...
She got him right in and finished without time faults!!!
We are both happy and learned and will do better next time!
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