While speed walking our ponies up to the warm up area, OR asked if I had brought my packet. Um. No. She raised a valid concern about memorizing the jump course, which I brushed off because they had allotted roughly forty-five minutes between being dressage queens and jumper ponies.
And then dressage was running behind.
Immediately after I completed my test, I veered right and trotted Archie back to the trailer. He screamed the entire way. At the trailer, I dismounted, grabbed his boots, wiped the red clay sand off his legs and applied said boots. I found my packet and attempted to find OR's horse's boots, but couldn't. Then I stuck my paperwork in my mouth, pulled Archie to the trailer, and remounted. As I was trotting back towards the jump ring, a woman watching shouted a "Good luck!" to me. I mumbled my thanks with a mouth full of paper.
I gotta say, this might not be a big deal to other people, but my horse super fucking impressed me. He screamed the entire time, but he listened.
Fortunately, every course was the same, so we were able to watch Tadpole jump. Unfortunately, we'd just had a spell of about a week of rain (oh yeah, Archie was ridden the day prior for fifteen minutes and then had the two days prior to that off because of rain) and the ring was sloppy.
OR made friends with a woman on a paint horse who was in the same division. She asked all the polite sort of questions about our ponies and made me laugh at one.
Her: How long have you owned him?
Me: Oh, eight years.
Her: And what did you do before? (Because Amoeba is obviously the starting point.)
Me: ....uh... Nothing?
In exchange for that, I asked her questions about the competition. Like, did it matter if I went back and forth between trot and canter? The response finally shined some light on one of those damn jumper/eventer phrases that I never really grasped: just get over it. Sort of surprising that I could look sloppy as hell, fuck up all my leads, trot randomly even when I wasn't doing a simple change, and still be okay.
I took this concept to heart.
Pink Chick from yesterday's post? I expected her to go first, because she had in dressage. So I'm lounging about with OR, chatting with this eventing chick, and then I see a steward clamoring about, looking for my number. Um. Oops.
I walked Wonder Pony to the gate, went in sorta trotting, and asked him to pick up a canter on the far side.
Then we headed to our first fence.
Where Wonder Pony promptly (or slowly, to be honest) tapped the brakes and broke into a trot.
And then a walk.
And then I said, hey, dude, you still have to go over this thing.
I zoomed into this because I thought this shit was hilarious. I had no idea if I would be penalized for my pony walking over one of the jumps.
And then I got Goober back on track and we managed to at least trot over every remaining fence.
Just sorta shits and giggles here.
With my very own Superman-esque leg.
Here's the video. Thank you, random stranger's friend's pregnant wife for taking it.
And, finally the grand results:
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