First-Horse-Trial-Of-The-Year Eve

Well, this week was packed! Our first (unrecognized) event is tomorrow and we were able to do a lot to prepare, despite the weather trying to thwart us. (Shakes fist at sky) On Wednesday, it was raining (again), but my insanity held true and I saddled up anyway. Royal hates the rain, and especially hates being ridden in the rain, so I thought it would provide a learning opportunity. At least until the thunder started rolling. At first we were out in the field, going around our little "ring." You can see the pasture from the field and the ladies (Gabby and Xena) were calling for Royal, and he was very concerned about them. "My damsels are in distress!" he thought, and it was hard to get him to focus on even going straight. <sighs> Geldings.

Then it really started to rain, so we went to the little side street to practice some Game of Contact. This went surprisingly well, probably because he wanted to get out of the rain. I saw no reason to push him further, so we hurried back and I let him for back with the other horses.

Thursday, we ended up trailering to a local barn that allows people to rent out the indoor arena for an hour. We hadn't done any jumping since Carriage House, so we really needed the practice. The arena is a Cover-All, which tends to make creaking noises. Royal was concerned about the noise at first, but eventually got used to it. They had a pair of jump standards and some poles, plus some barrels, so I set up a cross-rail and the barrels on their sides. After warming up on the flat, we popped over the cross-rails with no problems, and the barrels went smoothly, so I put the poles up to about 2'7". The first jump over that was very deer-like, with his head straight up in the air, looking at the tarps on the other side of the arena. Okay, try again. The rest of the jumps were a lot smoother, so we called it a day. It's not too expensive to rent the arena, so I'll probably do it again if the weather goes insane again.

Friday, I took my brand new dressage cones out to the field and set up an approximate 20x40 meter arena. I don't have a meter tape or wheel (yet), so I had to use my 12' line to measure it. I think itwas close enough.

Royal says "I will be the judge of that."

I had memorized the Beginner Novice Test B and wanted to practice. At this point, we've been playing with GoC stage 3 for months now, and we've kind of stagnated. He'll take the contact, but it's inconsistent. So, I'm going to stop playing to RB-Royal with lots and lots of consistency, and focus on LB-Royal with getting provocative. So, on with the test, which he did really well. His mouth was fairly quiet, and while he had some trouble with canter transitions, he seemed to enjoy himself. Onwards and upwards.

Today, I cleaned my tack, polished my boots, packed the trailer, and am pumped. Who knows what will happen tomorrow, but it should be fun. Let's do it.