The Ark HT - Bringing home the blue

So what an interesting weekend!

Pulling out of the driveway on Friday morning, we knew that rain was on its way, but there's always that hope that this will be the time that everyone talks about how wrong the weather forecast is -- WRONG.

On Friday, I was able to ride in the Continuing Education Clinic for dressage judges which allowed P-man to get acquainted with the dressage arena very well, i.e. he was falling asleep lazy. NOT something I expected for a horse that hates other species at a location with turkeys, llamas, zebra, alpacas, buffalo, pigs, cows, and many other things I'm sure I didn't see. The rain didn't hit until I was walking back to the stabling...

... and it didn't stop.

(Video note: There is music set to them now, because the commentary by John, although hilarious, was not appropriate for listening. If you do not want to hear the music, turn your mute on!)


Saturday mornings dressage test was a bit damp, and I had much better movements in the warm-up then in the ring, but overall I was very happy with his work. He allows me to ask a bit more every time, and I just need to actually force myself to ride him to his ability. I need to move past the thoughts of him still being a baby horse that I once knew.

With it still raining, I made the decision that I would see how he jumped around the show jump and most likely withdraw cross-country, seeing as the first 3 fences on the course were the biggest. Luckily I didn't have to make that decision as they decided to just run a combined test and the show jump footing was holding up well.

He jumped around the course great - minus not exactly wanting to canter through the puddles (and the whole arena was a puddle!). Once I faced him to a fence, he was all business and felt great! He totally put his big-boy pants on!

I hadn't looked at my dressage score before jumping, so I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that my big man had won his first event back in action! We were third after dressage and moved up with our double clear round.

Our excitement was short lived, however, when the trucks front left axle broke, leaving the truck half-way in and half-way out of four wheel drive. We had a very noisy drive from Monroe to Rockingham, where we parked the truck and trailer in John's parents driveway and John just took the axle off, leaving me with a custom 3 wheel drive Z71. So now operation find -another-truck-after-selling-this-one is ensuing as I have had more problems with it then I can count and am tired of it! :)

After a quick dinner with John's family, we set off back home, finally arriving 7 hours after leaving The Ark.

Even the rain and the broken axle can't dampen the winning feeling of C-Horse Eventing! P-man set the bar high for the 2009 season, so now we hope to be even more prepared when we start competing again in May (after World Cup and Rolex).