If you haven’t read part 1 of this Tale yet, hit that left arrow at the bottom and check out Part 1 first.
We had arrived in Mississippi and on Wednesday The Zebrasaurus and I had done one of our best rounds to date, in the 1.20 meter. The photographer even caught me smiling, for the first time in ages.
Let’s be real. My facial expression usually looks more like this.
Or this…..
The first class had gone so well on Wednesday, that the unicorn got the day off on Thursday to do a light flat so he’d be fresh for the BIGGEST CLASS OF MY LIFE the Welcome Stakes on Friday.
Friday morning I did my first round of the week on the newest kiddo.
The Zebaysaurus, who believe it or not is 3 inches TALLER than the Zebrasaurus. We actually got him because he’s essentially a bay version of the other one. So now I have a matched set of nice, kind, HUGE, forgiving geldings.
Zee-bay one and Zee- gray one.
Hee hee hee hee.
Yes, really. That’s actually why I named him Zebay.
So the Zebaysaurus and I did the 1.0 meter and it went pretty darn perfectly. I just got him a few weeks ago and the week he arrived we started at 90cm right at the show…… with a bit of a stutter. And then after smoothing that out we had moved up to 1 meter in Wellington but we had not been making that look very easy.
Here’s one of those rough rounds. And for the record, those combinations are ONE stride, not TWO. Don’t even ask how you do 2 strides in a 1 stride on a 17.2 hand horse. Needless to say, the fearless leader was simply aghast.
But that was in Wellington a few weeks ago, and we’d gotten around a couple times after that with no issues, and we had a good lesson last week.
I honestly wasn’t worried.
So when we started off Gulfport with a perfect enough go in the 1.0 meter, I said, “We should do the 1.10 meter tomorrow!”
#MovinOnUp
Here’s the 1.0 meter round.
Next on Friday was the Welcome Stakes. This would be the biggest course I had ever done. But not necessarily by a huge amount. We’ve jumped a few 1.25 meter rounds,
and done them in locations that like to “stretch” the rules a bit where they’re all at “least” 1.25 meters.
And after such a good round on Ze-gray Wednesday and such a good round on Ze-bay Friday morning.
By Friday afternoon I was actually feeling pretty invincible.
And for the first time in my riding career I walked a “move up” course and actually didn’t want to vomit didn’t think it looked too big or too impossible.
Here I am posing with one of the jumps on the course.
So the time came and I headed to the warm up with my freshly braided horse.
And let’s be real. Show jumpers are typically pretty lax about braiding. And if you recall, back in our eventing days, his mane was roached, so it’s been a long time since he had braids.
One of the strange things that has happened lately, is I’ve been
“winning” the warm up.
I used to have the absolute WORST warm ups. It was a regular occurance that I took an entire jump to the ground in the warm up, standards and all. There are probably a dozen Tales from a BadEventer blogs dedicated to warm up fiascos…….
But not lately.
Lately, I go in. I jump every warm up jump nearly perfect, and head to the ring feeling like, for possibly the first time in my life, I feel like I know what I’m doing.
The warm up for the Welcome, went BEAUTIFULLY.
He felt great.
I was confident.
I actually liked the course and didn’t think I was going to get into trouble anywhere.
And feeling like I was totally ready to make this look easy, I headed for the ring.
Now the Zebrasaurus is on the laze lackadaisical side. So the plan was to GALLOP in, rev him up a bit. Then settle down, halt, and then get ready to go to jump one.
So I galloped in. And as I was starting to slow down the judge rang the bell.
And I thought, “HOLY SH*T! That was fast!” The horse in front of me was still in the middle of the ring!
And so I’m trying to pull him up, but now he’s turned from lazy into a fire breathing dragon.
And while I’m wrestling him, I’m trying to do the math in my head on how long it’s going to take to pull him up, start over, get a good canter, and head to jump one.
And I decide not – to – do – it…………………
So instead of pulling up, I just try to settle him into the canter and go ahead to jump one.
And now my normally lazy Dinosaur is instead a frigging freight train……..
………..in a snaffle.
And here’s exactly how that went.
It turns out,
Bad Eventer is also officially Bad Show Jumper.
To be continued………….
