I'm No Good at Updates! Stanton Completion

Jump number 1!

I'm sorry. I got stuck in the mental sinkhole and couldn't pull it together to even write a blog. You would think it would be simple enough to just write a show wrap up. But even that takes too much out of me sometimes. I apologize.

Being strong.

We last left off with a very poor dressage round. One that I knew had left us in last place, a place we were particularly familiar with by this point. I didn't even bother to look at the score, as I usually don't anyways until after cross country. It wasn't long before I needed to tack up for xc, so we switched gears and made the changes. Bacon didn't seem too confused and was ready to head out to her favorite event. Except the vet was late by 30 minutes, so that put us behind schedule. Finally, we got on, and then a prelim rider went down hard and that put a hold on course for about 30 minutes.

The coffin.

It was our turn to go out of the start box and someone felt a tad bit distracted. As we were headed towards our sizable first jump, a horse was going over the last and Bacon thought that looked very interesting. I was finally able to grab her attention and she jumped it fine. Turd. I kicked on and we started to cruise. I had a feeling she might take a peek at the ditches because they put tan gravel in them and I was right. Halfway through our coffin combo she gawked hard at our ditched and continued to do so up and over it. Much of the course is full of terrain, which I quite like, and tables, which were fine. I did not have her drilled and tapped for studs though, and the long dry grass made areas quite slick so I tried to keep her balanced and not too fast.

Oh geez

We usually like up banks

Again, the trakhener's ditch was filled with tan gravel and I had a feeling she might take a peak. Once more she was distracted by another horse on course, and then down the hill we went to the trakhener. All felt normal until the last second when she realized it was a funky color down there, took a hard gander, then hucked herself over it. I was not impressed. But we pressed on. The rest of the jumps were easy, though she slipped coming down the hill towards the combo I was worried about. A double down bank into the water with an upbank out. Again, she saw another horse, then realized there was a bank in front of her. The water is very very dark here and she took a good hard look at it, creeping to the right at the second bank before awkwardly launching off into the black hole. I transformed into a turtle, because somehow that makes me stay on, as she rocketed out of it for the extra long spot on the way out. It felt wonderful, let me tell you. True beauty. Old man George Morris would have given me a gold star.

The rest of the course was smooth sailing. Thank god. I think I ended up with some time maybe. I do not remember. I would not have wanted to push her any faster than we went because of how slippery it was without studs, so I am perfectly ok with that. But normally I come off of xc feeling great, and that one had me feeling funky. But I was not the only one. The water proved to be exceptionally tough for almost every horse out there, and there were a great number of stops, even for horses who have never had a stop. So that made me feel a little better.

Oh look, a normal jump

She just has fun.

Stadium was later that afternoon. It took them a very long time to set it up, so we only had a brief moment to walk it before we had to be on and ride the thing. I knew it would be a little troubling for us, and it was. I was having difficulty riding Bacon straight and seeing any sort of a distance. She would throw her ass around, be totally distracted by who knows what, and I would not do her any justice. We had two rails, and we were lucky we didn't have more. Thanks to the carnage in xc, we managed to move up to fourth place. But this wasn't a show that left me feeling super great.