One Fish, Two Fish, Dressage Fish, Jumping Fish

So I'm mildly in love with Kate's lesson horse, Flounder. I mean, I have ridden him once (prior to this post), but I love him. He's hilarious. He's like TC but in a 15.1h quarter horse body. I want one just like him.

I'm an intrusive friend, so I'm on Kate's client email list, which means I get her show schedule so I can be nosy and butt myself into her work. It's awesome! It also means that I get a lot of FOMO when she goes and does fun things.

Like this kind of fun thing! 

I saw she was going to a schooling show in December and I asked her if it would be okay if I jumped Flounder a couple of times between now and then and entered one class on him. I haven't shown over fences since 2010! We agreed and then didn't really discuss when I should come ride him. Just whenever. I'm in the bay twice a month to teach.

I was in the bay last weekend but none of my clients were free, so I moved my teaching weekend to this coming weekend. I still had to come down for a family thing though, so I told Kate I wanted to stop in at the schooling show she was going to be at on Sunday while I was driving home. It's about half way between my parents' place and my house, so it'd be a nice stopover and I like hanging out with Kate and her barn.

Plus, my judge from the schooling show was going to be there (judging and she boards there). She had invited me over for a weekend to ride with my trainer friend (if you remember her) and go on a trail ride with judge friend! I said yes but then realized the drive fucking suuucks to that barn and so I wanted to drive it in my car first.

Cantering our course in stadium

I had told Kate all of that and somehow, Kate and I started talking about Flounder and she kind of joked that I should show him at that show. I'd already be going to the barn, I'd have all my riding stuff, she had a spot in her trailer. Why not?

Well, I haven't jumped since Thanksgiving last year, I haven't schooled cross country in over a year, I haven't jumped in a show since 2010, I have ridden the horse exactly once for like... five minutes. But yeah, sign me the FUCK up! And here are the results!

He is the best fish

Dressage

I stole Kate's excessive coffee order from her working student and brought her coffee and a breakfast sandwich in the morning. I think that almost kind of not quite made up for the fact that I met them at the show grounds rather than being a helpful person who loads their own horse or tack into the trailer...

Dressage was first, so I prepared for it by a) not learning my test until the last minute, b) being distracted watching Kate and her kids warm up for tests before me, c) braiding Flounder instead of warming him up, and d) literally trotting the horse for the first time exactly 1 minute AFTER my ride time as I was trotting around the outside of the court.

It was exactly what Flounder needed though, as he is in agreement with me that looking fabulous > actually preparing for a dressage test. We earned a 35 and were in first place in front of Kate's student on a firecracker, and Kate on a dinosaur. We were all within a rail of each other though, competition was fierce.

A carefully selected dressage shot

Time for jumping!

Stadium Jumping

For stadium warm up, my technique was this: stand in the shade because it was hot, poke Flounder's ear with the crop someone had handed me, and tell Kate how cute he was. Kate made me jump some fences though. As long as Flounder saw the fences and I was going fast enough (read: not fast, just not totally crawling), Flounder jumped them.

I told Kate that my plan for show jumping was to go fast, steer, and jump all the fences in the right order. I didn't go very fast, but I did steer mostly and we jumped all the fences in the correct order AND left them all up. Stadium was a success!

We are extremely graceful

Last fence!

Cross Country

For cross country, I decided that walking the course wasn't in the cards because there were more important things to do. During the break between stadium and cross country, I laughed while Flounder drank water in a hilarious way, pet a dog, and ate some brownies. Excellent cross country preparation if you ask me.

Due to not walking the course, I did not volunteer to go first since I didn't quite know where I'd be going. More than once trying to memorize the course while Kate was jumping her dinosaur over the jumps, I forgot what color my fences were. I figured that if I couldn't find the fences, I'd just go out and point Flounder at stuff that didn't look too big.

At the first fence, Flounder said maybe but still went and at the second fence, Flounder went to say NO. By this point I had it in my head that we were going to WIN the thing and I was not about to give that all away so I rode harder than I normally would as he went to stop and he plopped over it like the good fish he is. Then finally the last hamster had a moment of clarity and we were OFF to jump all the jumps.

We went super fast (read: an acceptable pace for intro, I really need to get my speedometer checked) and jumped all the things and we were double clear! Mostly because it wasn't timed.

Got a bit lost finding jump number 9, woops

Last fence!

Cross Country Schooling

After the event, Kate let us all jump some additional fences!

It was at this point that I felt like I had my groove back. Cross country is definitely my comfort zone over fences. Flounder was super game to school some of the beginner novice fences, though was a bit silly about the bank complex until he got a lead. We jumped a bunch of the logs, some hay bales, and a tube thing that Flounder wasn't a fan of.

At this point, my rustiness finally came out. I felt comfortable riding a horse over fences, but not training a horse over fences. So Kate hopped on and schooled Flounder over the scary jump and then over some of the Novice questions. What a good fish!

Hey I mean I stayed on

This is more my kind of cross country schooling

Hilarious

At the end of the day, we found out that Flounder and I had indeed WON the intro division! So I got a blue ribbon to hoard like a child. Hey, it's my first show over fences since running the little stallion around his first Novice at Galway Downs in November 2010... I am totally glad I got a ribbon.