I knew something was wrong when I got a very STRANGE text message the day the show started.

I sent my coach a video of the practice jumper round I’d just done. I routinely sent him videos and always braced for the texted thrashing I typically got in reply.

However, this response wasn’t the normal critique………

Instead of “you look like a monkey humping a football” or

“LESS HAND OMG LESS HAND!”

It was something about being at the show to WIN….. not to PRACTICE……..and what was I doing in practice jumper rounds???!!

Um………for some reason my fearless leader seemed to have forgotten WHO I was.

Bad Eventer……….there to…………….. win??????

not so much.

I like to start with goals like “staying in the arena” and “not crash testing my air vest.”

Those are lofty enough goals for me.

Little did I know that was just the beginning……….of a weekend that unfolded in true movie fashion. We had………..

Mystery.

Intrigue.

Yellow Cards.

Pouring Rain.

Midnight Meltdowns.

Search Warrants.

Inappropriate Behavior.

Withdrawals.

And inches and inches of RAIN.

There was a very odd exchange over the practice jumper rounds…..We had planned for me to ride in them all week. Yet all of a sudden he didn’t seem to remember that was the plan.

Next came the Coach vs Veterinarian……. show down.

Another student’s horse has an old bow.

It’s been there since they bought the horse. It’s completely healed, years old and is just a BLEMISH.

The fearless leader suddenly decided it was new and they needed to……………. withdraw.

They asked me to take a look (um…..veterinarian and all), so I did a brief exam, watched the horse trot and agreed with the owners that it was old, and the trusty steed showed no signs of pain, swelling or lameness.

Upon relaying my expert opinion, he told me that he had a lot more experience than I did………..

and when the horse broke down on cross country it was going to be my fault. He then demonstrated how sensitive the horse was by cranking on the tendon with his fingernails.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’d jump if someone did that to one of my tendons too.

By this point I was sure an alien had taken over his body.

Little did I know………..

Next came the cross country walk. At some point in the first half of the course walk he started……………

skipping…………..

you know……like little red riding hood skipping through the woods………

When he SKIPPED from fence 6 to fence 7, I was certain the end was near.

When I told him I was concerned about fence 8………..that’s when the sky started falling.

He has a lot of rules. One of them is that his students absolutely MUST, every single time tell him if we are worried or scared of a particular jump. This was one of the most amazing things about him, that had helped make him the best coach I’d ever seen.

If you were worried, he would give you very specific, step by step things to do coming up to the jump. This was truly MASTERFUL because if you followed the directions, you didn’t have a chance to worry about your fears, and it always, A L W AY S worked. He was so experienced and so successful on cross country that he knew how every fence would ride, and not once, course after course, had he been wrong. He had earned my trust about XC completely.

We got to the fence I was worried about. I told him I was scared. And he …………………..

made fun of me.

I had been concerned about alien takeovers, impostors, some organic brain dysfunction, and when he started belittling me in front of other students, about the fence I was fearful of, after SKIPPING up to the fence………. I finally figured it out.

My fearless leader was WASTED.

My world fell apart, there in the rain.

There was so much more drama to the weekend I could write an entire mini series about it.

In the end, I withdrew and went home.

Later, I was telling my tale to a friend………… that ANOTHER coach had showed up for my cross country walk……………completely drunk………..

her response………..

“Um, seems this keeps happening……………..maybe…………. it’s YOU………………………………….. I wouldn’t want to coach Bad Eventer either!!”