Success!

 I'm very proud of Funny bunny. And me too, honestly.. a little bit. 

 

We had a long day today but a fun day. Luckily I didn't have to get up tooooo early. We left for Poplar around 8 am. No bath, but... she makes it easy to be dirty and hide it. :) We had a great drive and got there right around 10:15. I timed it where we didn't have too much time to kill but weren't rushed before dressage. And she got a little bit of time to settle and graze a tiny bit. 

I tacked up and we hacked around for one lap before we headed down to warm up. She was a bit spicy but not terrible. She was a bit looky on the hedges side of the arena, and the XC side of the arena. And also, the other side of the arena towards trailer parking... she spooked hard at someone leading a gray horse. Like hard enough she made another horse spook too. Sorry! ha ha. I didn't ever get her really settled down but we got much better. And we ran into a few friends which was nice, including one I haven't seen in forever! Unfortunately that meant that I got a bit distracted and wasn't quite ready like I wanted just before going in. Plus, they didn't send me over until the judge was "waiting on me". Which... totally not their responsibility but... she was sending everyone over so I sort of assumed she was sending us as they wanted us. But again, my fault, I should have been proactice. Plus Funny and I were sitting and chatting instead of trotting and getting soft again when she called us. Dang. And then, I was stressed because "the judge was waiting on us" so we tried trotting over to the third arena. But had to walk so I didn't interfere with another girls test. And then... I forgot. The jump warm up ring was down below the third arena behind the tree line. And some of them had costumes on. So... Funny spooked hard at it! Hard enough she almost spun and bolted. Oh geesh! And of course, because they were waiting on me... they rang the bell as soon as I rounded the corner. Ugh... I tried my best to take almost all of the 6- seconds I was allotted but it wasn't enough. Ugh... She was braced and quick and not soft at all. Especially on that side of the arena. But, she was cooperative enough to do the test. We did all the things at the right places, although our circles may have been a bit oval or large in spots. And we weren't soft or supple at all. Or slow and lofty. But, our free walk was nice as was our stretchy trot! And our halt was decent too. But dang... I was really hoping to get a more accurate representation of where we were at. And.. this wasn't it. Or maybe it is... maybe there's always some tension in the show ring, whether it's from the jump warm up next door or me creating tension...But oh well. We ended up with a 36.something. Which.. isn't that much worse than we sometimes score anyways. But I was still mad at myself. Oh well. Carry on! We did go back into the warm up and got a nice soft trot both directions fairly quickly. And then we headed back to the trailer.

  

I untacked her and rubbed her down and let her graze for about 10 minutes. Then I put her back in the trailer while I ebiked down to my cross country course. I didn't see a map, so I just had to wing it. But luckily I managed to find the course fairly easily and it was pretty straightforward. The only really worrisome jumps were two very downhill ones, one off a blind curve, and then... on a downhill slope a fairly substantial staircase fence with a few strides after to a drop. A small drop, but a related line (A and B, not 7 and 8) and then on landing a sharp turn to a wedge. Ooof. Okay, so.. my plan was to come down the hill and if I didn't get a good balanced half halt, make a circle and trot. And then trot into the staircase jump and hope she didn't slam on the brakes for the drop. Then depending on how the drop went.. either circle before the wedge or just go straight to it. The rest was pretty straight forward with lots of long galloping stretches. Nothing was super big or wide but they weren't tiny. Some of the training fences looked like a lot of fun. And not that big or scary! Then I biked back up to stadium and watched that course and walked it. It wasn't an easy course. Some of those fences came up quick with some tricky turns. But it walked better than it looked. Then I stopped at the tack shop and looked at stock ties, pins and belts. But nothing seemed worth buying. There were one or two that were cute but nothing that was like "Ooooh perfect". Then I headed back to Funny. I pulled her back off and let her graze for a good bit since we still had time. 

 

We tacked up for stadium and headed over. I wanted her to have time to look at the tarps on the tack store up on the hill and watch a few people ride the course. We did that and warmed up. She warmed up pretty decently although we couldn't quite get our distance to a giant oxer. We took a huge flyer the first time, then chipped in, but finally on the third attempt we got it pretty nicely. We headed over to stadium and watched two rounds and then it was our turn. She was ready to go! The first fence was good but fence two she took a massive flyer too. I may have gunned her at it and asked for it too. Or maybe not cause I'm pretty sure I caught her in the mouth getting left behind. So then I over rode fence 3 and we chipped in. But she heard me and added. Maybe not the best choice but I think we were just too strung out and flat to do anything else. I told her "I'm sorry, I'm gonna get it together now"... and I did! The rest of the course was quite nice! Yay! We ended up double clear. Whooo hooo.

I debated staying on and just hacking her until cross country to sort of stimulate roads and tracks, but... decided not to. I didn't want to make her sore/lame. Plus, she had a 2 hour haul to get there, had dressaged already too, and we still had a 2 hour haul home. So I untacked and let her graze again for a bit. I sat and tried to eat something. And.. ha ha.. she casually backed up for butt scratches. Weirdo!! ha ha..  I still ended up getting on too early again so we did a lot of walking and then sat under the tree in the shade and chatted some too. 

 

Finally it was time to warm up. I trotted the starter fence and then cantered the beginner novice fence and then trotted the novice fence. And then we cantered the novice fence and then we were ready. We headed over and the guy told us we could have 15 seconds or 1 minute and 15 seconds. I said "let's go" and we ended up entering the start box at "have a nice ride" but it was fine. She was SUPER! The first fence was a weird question just because of terrain but she locked on and was good. The second fence was easy and then she flew up the hill and went a little wider than I had intented. But I was able to get her back to the trot and we trotted down the hill around the blind curve and then once she was balanced we cantered and went over the third cabin. Then up the hill and skipped over fence 4 and then flew to fence 5, which we chipped a bit because she needed to simmer down. Fence 6 was lovely and then we went down the steep hill. I probably had a balanced enough canter but I opted to circle and get the trot to the staircase and drop. And it worked great! She saw the staircase and then picked up the canter. I am hoping I told her "BANK" as I've been trying to give her words for some of the trickier fences, but regardless, she was moving but not too fast for her brain. So she saw the drop and just cantered off it bravely. Not a launch! Just a nice normal big canter off it. We were even able to make the turn to the wedge. Whooo hooo! Then we cantered over the cabin, then up the hill and steeplechased the upright coop. Then down the steep little hill and back up, in which she let out a giant buck! ha ha. Silly! Then over the next coopy thing and then bravely forward into the water and out the canoe. Then we flew down the hill but balanced and took a little bit of a flyer to the coop but it was there. She cantered boldly up the hill and jumped the next jump fine. Then a long stretch to the train, which she jumped nicely. Then a little hop over a shared BN/N fence, then down the hill, up a hill on an angle to get straight to the skinny, which... I totally jumped up her neck over. Whoops. Sorry girl. Thank you for jumping it anyways. Then we finished nicely over the last fence and through the finish flags!! I was expecting speeding tickets given how big her stride felt but we did trot in those two spots with the one circle, so.. no speeding tickets! yahoo!! I was so proud of her for being brave over the drop and into the water. We jumped that course "blind" in the sense that we didn't school the day before, so it was a good test. Yay! And it felt tiny. So feeling much better about Ocala!

 

GOOD PONY! She got to graze some more and then lapped some water. Ha ha. What a weirdo. But hey.. at least she's getting some water! I rinsed her off and let her dry while I cleaned tack and picked up all my stuff and loaded up. A tiny bit of grazing and then we headed home. We ended up moving up to 2nd in our division. We were no where near the first place girls dressage score (27) but we at least moved up to 2nd. Now to just figure out how to settle both of us in the dressage test so we don't have to start off so low in the rankings. 

Sleep well baby girl. You were a rockstar today! We'll see if we feel like trail riding tomorrow. If we do, it'll be leisurely!