Rileigh and I attempted our first Novice this weekend ...key word being "attempted."
We also did a Beginner Novice 2 weeks ago and we're doing the Area III YR Camp next week.
I had a super fun weekend, regardless. I went up to my friend's barn Thursday afternoon, and left early Friday morning with a convoy of 3 vehicles to go XC schooling with her trainer and then head to a little event. Our XC school was almost rained out, but it cleared up just as we were getting on. Rileigh was very good; my friend's trainer had never seen me ride before, but she loved him and asked if we wanted to show at Training level, because we looked like we were ready for it. That made me so happy, because I've had people tell me that Riles will never be able to go Training. We're definitely not near ready yet though! We schooled all the Training stuff -- double banks, 2 corners in a 1 stride combination(that may have be Prelim actually), banks and jumps into water, etc. Riles was great.
After schooling we headed up another hour and a half to the show venue, got the horses settled in, walked courses, and all that.
I immediately had reservations about the water ...it was very, very unfriendly. Basically looked like an enormous puddle in a low spot, shady and surrounded by trees, filled w/ algae and little rocks; and it was shaped like a tight "L" and necessitated an extremely sharp turn in the middle of the water. We were supposed to enter the deep end: over a foot deep, but looked like a mud puddle. Last week I inadvertently traumatized Rileigh of water when I took him in a lake that I had been assured was safe for horses to swim in, but it was not and he fell and got stuck in the mud, no physical damage though. I'm sure you see where this is going ...Anyway, I thought that maybe since he was so good schooling yesterday(very inviting water that he'd seen many times before) I could push him into the water. Honestly, had I ever seen the water before arriving there I never would have entered him in the event, but I certainly wasn't backing out at that point.
I was positively terrified for dressage, I hyperventilated and nearly passed out before going in the ring. Our test could have been a lot better, but it wasn't truly horrendous. We got a 43, nothing to be proud of in most circumstances, but it's our lowest score yet, so I know we're at least heading in the right direction. I have a new dressage saddle that definitely fits Riles much better than the County - a Duett Encore with a 34cm hoop tree. I think the hoop tree is key.
Rileigh was amazing for stadium, took almost every distance I asked him for, even the slightly long ones, and was game for everything. We went clean. I was so proud of him.
XC started out really well, we had a maxed out rolltop as the first jump, then a small log pile, up an extremely steep hill (at least the way we went up was super steep), jump a little floating log thing on top of the hill, down the hill to maxed out chevrons, then WATER. He wouldn't even go near the water and we were eliminated. I was incredibly disappointed. He'd been going so fantastically up until that point, we were hoping for a 3rd or 4th place if we'd gone clean XC. He was going so well though that I honestly can't be too upset w/ him; I wouldn't have gone in the water either. We will definitely be working on scary swamps all summer and will be ready to kick some tookus at Novice next season!
