We were in the warm up.
FoxxyCleopatra is what many call a bit “sharp”
It takes her a little while for her to chill the F out relax and get her wits about her. So we have a fairly deliberate warm up.
We do quite a few serpentines,
bend this way
bend that way
lots of transitions
and it takes her a good 10 minutes before we can do some version of canter
that isn’t completely jackhammer like
I’m used to losing my mind all on my own warming up myself. I have “a zone.”
This show was different.
This was the big one, and The Fearless Leader was there to help.
6 minutes in he suggested I counter canter.
I knew this was a bad idea.
Miss tightpants wasn’t loose enough and it was not going to go well.
I had this little mental fight where I thought, “she’s not ready, she’s going to swap leads and this will be a thing, the last thing I want her to do is swap leads before we go in for our FEI test……….”
And then I decided to just do it.
She swapped.
And I had an immediate nervous breakdown. I rode over to the Fearless Leader and said,
“SHE’S NOT READY YET!!!!!!”
So we did some more warm up and may have settled down a bit.
Unfortunately, when I went to enter the ring someone getting a vendor tent ready dropped what sounded like a bucket full of chains right behind my sharp little thing and we BOLTED into the ring at A.
And it pretty much went downhill from there.
When we got to the counter canter, no surprise, she swapped.
Ever to form…… the comment was, “I guess she wasn’t ready.”
