Yes, yes, I was.

This weekend……..

I was THAT girl.

The one that cries at a horse show.

It actually began a long time ago…..this particular venue has far more bad memories for me than good.

In the fall, I really didn’t want to go……

I got a big lecture about how the next show was a huge “move up” course, and I needed a run before hand, so not going just wasn’t an option.

Guess what??

The Atlantic ocean was dropped on the show grounds, and I left with 3 withdrawals and no run before the next show……Why exactly was it that I HAD to go??

That combined with a series of events that wouldn’t be believed in the craziest TV drama (boy is that a story) left me with the firm conviction that I NEVER EVER needed to attend that show again.

There was a repeat of the same conversation this spring.

I don’t want to go to this one.

I REALLY don’t want to go.

No seriously, have I mentioned that I don’t want to go????

Same lecture.

You have to go, because you need a run before the next one……

But I really didnt want to go…..I even waited until AFTER closing date…..I thought I’d figured it out.

Oh well, missed the closing date, so sad, I guess I can’t go now.

Oh no, you can still enter………

Very unwillingly I entered.

Then this little nagging soreness that Wonder Pony had, seemed to get worse just a few days before the show.
I spent a solid day at the vet, and a solid morning with the farrier.

The vet said do dressage & stadium. The farrier said, go.

But when it came down to it, I just couldn’t…….

What if doing a combined test at the one place that I didn’t want to show anyway was the straw that turned something minor into something catastrophic?

So I scratched the day we arrived.

I’ve been lucky that I haven’t had to do that before. I’ve had lots of Es and RFs, and enough times that I fell off at the first jump that I definitely felt like I wasted time and money. But I’ve never had to just………. scratch.

Ouch.

That’s expensive.

So here I was without the Wonder Pony to ride, instead I was only riding the Evil Twin.

My relationship with this horse has been the most challenging one I’ve ever had. If he were a boyfriend I would have kicked him to the curb a long time ago…….

So I’m warming up at the show, and I…….. lost it.

I tried really hard not to cry. But I just

couldn’t

help

it.

Here I was, crying at a horse show.

I tried to tell myself there were people starving in the world, living in war zones, there are places where women can’t own property or even drive cars……….

It didn’t help, I was still the girl sitting on a horse crying at a horse show.

I decided to pull myself together and get this done.

Then.

A water pipe broke and flooded Wonder Pony’s stall. I found him clinging to the wall like SpiderMan…..yes, yes, he’s a princess at times.

Then.

The Bad Event groom found herself 1/2 way there without her wallet and with a 102 fever.

At that point I told her the eventing gods had spoken and she needed to GO HOME AND STAY HOME.

I considered going home at that point myself…..sometimes that’s just the best decision.

But I stayed.

We had a lovely dressage test.

MUCH better than the total run away he was last time.

We had our best stadium to date, 1 rail, oh yeah.

Things were looking up…… but I had a bad feeling about cross country.

You see.

The Evil Twin has always considered skinnies “optional”.

He really doesn’t understand why you would jump something that is so easy to just bypass.

We were really just lucky at the last show that he jumped the skinny coming out of the water. It was the only truly skinny jump on the course, and next to last so by then he was rocking and rolling and jumping great.

But this course………….. this one had 7 REAL skinnies.

And the first one was jump 4.

Here’s how it went.

He really didn’t want to go out of the start box and he has this thing he does where he runs SIDEWAYS. He is objecting to my chosen direction so he just points his body the way he wants to go (with his head the other way.) We jumped jump one pretty much…..sideways. Then jump 2 surprised him. He was arguing all the way to it so he got a little close because he wasn’t looking. It was a little awkward and I felt him lose some confidence.

Jump 3 was the biggest jump on course and we got a little long to it. He jumped in the air but had to reach to make the spread and that took even more money out of the bank.

Then jump 4 was a U turn combination of 2 super vertical skinnies. We were too fast, and got too close to the first one and he kind of flopped over it. We skidded past our turn to the B element. (Steering has never been our thing.) And then we “s-curved” back to the jump.

By then he’d had enough.

I’d given him enough of a bad ride at jump 1, 2, 3, and 4a that he was not in the mood to be generous.

We had our FIRST drive by at jump 4.

Next we cleared both trakehners (the next 2 jumps) no problem. By the way, WHO puts 2 trakehners in a row??? Our strategy was to go a little faster-than-you-are-brave. That works well for smallish galloping jumps with ditches under them.

Not so much for skinnies.

We had our next drive by at a bending chevron coming off a mound.
This one he saw. But I’d done enough damage early on that he wasn’t in the mood, and said, “No”.

Our approach to skinnies has typically been to………. trot them.

Yes, Bad Eventer often trots things at Prelim.

He’s scopey and powerful, and there is nothing on a prelim course this horse can’t trot over.

However, you can’t TROT fences forever, and the coach’s goal for us this weekend was to actually canter the skinnies. (About that……) Bad Eventer’s goal was not to crash test her air vest.

Pretty much everything we tried to canter, we had to circle back and trot over.

We had 3 drive-bys, at 3 different skinnies.

In spite of it all, we did finish.

I did NOT crash test my air vest, and I finished with a number (even if it was a 3 digit one………)

Bad Eventer was definitely on the scene.

In the end, a number is ALWAYS better than a letter.

And I did NOT cry about that.