Well, not to beat around the bush, it was a bad day!
It appeared to start off well with the Dressage. He was warming up well (even though we had a massive trek through a bog to get to the warm up!) and he was very (for him) soft and supple in his jaw and poll. For a few minutes we also did some fantastic work. Went into the arena, and he did a very nice test, he was flexed in the poll, had the correct bend and was very genuine. The rein back didn’t really happen, one good step and then he froze and ran off. Ah well, that never goes well. Then the final counter canter, I lost the bend to the leading leg and accidentally asked for a flying change, which he very kindly obliged! But other than that it was a very pleasing test, and very similar to Kelsall JRN, where we got 33 (even with a 2 for the rein back). I knew at this stage that it would be in the 30's and was sure it would definitely not be any worse than 36. You can imagine my horror then when I went to the score boards and saw that we had a score of 44 which was very disappointing! Hey ho...
Onto the Show jumping, well after the huge show jumping at Chatsworth IN I was hoping that Arley would look and feel small and easy, and that we would continue our SJ pattern of poles, then clear, then poles then clear. Indeed it didn't look very big (apart from one massive upright, that was clearly way over novice height!) but it was Chatsworth’s very small thin light poles, which was slightly concerning. The warm up was atrocious, and he wasn’t jumping well. However, went in, jumped one and two well. Came round to three, a tiny upright, and I lost my head, couldn’t see a stride, so just hooked, ended up too deep with no impulsion so had a stupid stop. Carried on, he was very careful until a double of uprights, had the first element down. Then we also had the massive upright down. So two down (the only two he hit) which in itself was disappointing as I was really aiming for a clear, but not too bad. But then because I made a silly error, we had 4 for the stop, so we ended up on 12. Which I was very disappointed with.
I was feeling very down for the Cross Country, but mum told me to just get on with it, so apart from nearly falling off leaving the start box (he was leaping about, I was trying to start my watch then we went, and I nearly went out the side door) we had a fantastic round. Although, we nearly came a cropper at fence four as we met it on a bit of a misser. However, the rest of the course was super, with many ABC turning combinations which he was foot perfect in. We also finished incredibly well up on the clock.
So all in all, very very dissapointing, and finished on a pretty rubbish score. However, I did get permission from the JRN co-ordinator to do Hartpury CCI* and she also felt that doing the OIU21 at Knaptoft would be a good idea.
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