“I LOVE trakehners!”

Yes, that was me.

I actually said that while walking the course at my first recognized event since the stone age in about a decade. We were looking at what I deemed to be a very small trakehner. The other riders on this particular course walk all made some indecipherable coughing & grumbling noises to my comments.

As the course continued the jumps seemed very small.

Small.

Even smaller.

Knee high to a grasshopper.

I had done 2 schooling Horse Trials and a Combined Test on my newly acquired Event Horse. The Combined Test at Training level had given me huge confidence that we were sooooooo ready for training level.

Afterall, I bought her “Ready to go Training”! (See my other posts for more on that topic!)

As each itty bitty jump went by on the course walk I started saying out loud “I wish I was going training.”

“I wish I was going training.”

“The training course looks much more fun.”

After a good 20 minutes of this, my instructor finally said, “If you want to move up to training, go ask them if you can change divisions.”

I was ELATED!!!!!!

I didn’t know you could do that!!

$35 later I was the proud owner of new ride times and I felt like such a GROWN UP riding TRAINING!

Our dressage was pretty spectacular. My new horse was part warmblood and she could really show off in the little box. We were FIRST after dressage.

See. I knew we should be going training!

Stadium jumping was before cross country. The course was on a grassy hill side, and the warm up was in a teensy tiny itty bitty microscopic ring.

Seriously this ring was smaller than a dressage ring with the warm up jumps wedged so close you could only go by them on one side with about a 4′ gap.

The teensy tiny warm up with 20 horses ZINGING around in it COMPLETELY unnerved me and my very unsocial steed. Every time a horse passed us, she pinned her ears and ducked sideways like the horse was going to attack her. This was happening every 4-5 seconds and I felt like I was in a washing machine. Wooshing one way and then wooshing the other!!!

I jumped the vertical a few times, and my instructor chastised me that I should have jumped the oxer by now. It was the biggest square oxer I had ever seen in my life. Someone had set it to max size for warm up which meant it was PRELIM size and as I approached it my eyes got bigger and my horses eyes EVEN BIGGER.

Not only did we NOT jump over the oxer, we actually SMASHED through it.

We smashed it down so badly that we BROKE THE JUMP!

This meant that I had no oxer to warm up over, and neither did anyone else!!

By the time replacement parts were found and the oxer was rebuilt it was time for me to enter the ring for my round!

My instructor said, “You have to WANT IT! Enter the ring and GALLOP! Gallop the first jump! WANT IT!!!”

So I did.

I entered the ring.

I galloped.

I pointed my frazzled horse at the first jump (which was down hill) at a gallop.
As I approached the jump I yelled, “I WANT IT!!!”

She very VERY gracefully sat down, slid into the jump, tore the entire thing to the ground, and I OH SO GRACEFULLY rode up her neck onto the remains of the jump.

The big E.

At the first jump.

And Bad Eventer was reborn!!

I wonder what would have happened if we’d made it to the trakehner.