Flora Lea June Unrecognized HTs

On xc, cruising between 7 and 8.

 I'm a little behind on this one.  Ok, weeks behind.  School and other stuff has been getting in the way of writing posts lately, but that's only temporary.

Klein and I competed in the Flora Lea Unrecognized June HTs at Novice.  That was the first unrecognized I went to there and to be honest, we should have done Training.  Next time...next time.  Flora Lea is a great place and their shows are very well organized and run.  Since we were there for the recognized I know they have a proper Novice course that is a good place to test out any adjustments in training, which is what we were there for.

I wanted to improve my dressage score and my stadium.  Unfortunately I don't have any pictures or video from dressage!  The Other Half was out of town that weekend so it was just Klein and I. Klein warmed up great and felt really, really good!  I knew we did well and had a feeling we would be pretty happy with our score, and we were.  We scored a 27.8, and that was in her french-link loose ring snaffle.  We had not used that bit in a show since 2011.

I have had that bit for years for her, it was one of the first ones I bought for her actually. She never did go great in it.  She would usually flip me the bird and run through it like it wasn't there.  Lately she's becoming so light I decided to give it a try one evening for a ride earlier that week and she went beautifully in it (the post last month with the video of the flying change was that ride).  I forgot I even had that bit in her mouth and not the Boucher.

Stadium came up and Klein warmed up great.  A couple jumps and she was ready to go in the ring like usual.  At the recognized I had two stops in the ring because I wasn't giving her my full attention.  I was not letting that happen this time.

She was great, though we did have one rail because we didn't get to 3 like we should have that set us up for a not so great approach to 4.

In hindsight (of course) and after a fantastic jumping lesson since that stadium, I realize if I would have just put some more leg on, we most likely wouldn't have taken that rail.  But, that stadium was still much better than the last and I was very happy with that.  I even remembered to turn my helmet cam on for stadium this time, so you'll see what happens at 4.

XC...

 XC warm-up.

I knew that XC would be a breeze for her.  The jumps were all very much Novice but there were only 11 that day, so a bit shorter than normal.  You can hear my little "hmph" after the first fence on the xc helmet cam.  That was my little sound effect to go along with my smug little smile to myself because of how she came to the first fence.  I could tell she was already enjoying herself.  Here's the course:

She was great!  We did have a little trip coming out of the water but we caught ourselves and didn't miss a beat.  It was an easy course, but a great fun-run, confidence boosting type course.  The next unrecognized we do there will be Training.

Here's the xc helmet cam:

 

At the end of the day my dumb mistake in stadium cost us 3rd place.  My rail put us from 3rd to 6th, but that didn't matter, we went out there to test some adjustments in our training and have a better day than we did last time we were there and we accomplished that! 

I couldn't have been happier with how she went that day, it was another fun day out with my Heart Horse!