The beginning of the season for myself and my team at NLE has been unbelievable. Several wins at multiple competitions is what makes this all so much fun. But what goes up....must come down. Darn!
So my up definantly came down! I was 2nd at Galway Downs 3* riding my new mount Bubbles @ Bricky. He incurred a minor injury that needed a couple months off and with only 2 weeks under saddle he won't be fit enough to compete at the World Cup at Rebecca Farm this month.
I am very disappointed as the entry list looks like it will be much fun to be competing!
In addition to this, my last competition at the Colorado Horse Park was personally one of my worst competitons in my history of competing.
My students were amazing! So that softened the blow. Jimmie Holotik was 1st in the OP, Alexa Perkiel was 3rd in the 2* and Chloe Smyth completed her first Preliminary! However I had some "bad luck" and some unfortunant experiences.
Day 1 of the show seemed to be going fabulous! Everyone was in the top 3 after dressage. Both of my 1* horses did an exceptional dressage test and made me feel as though we were right where we wanted to be 2nd and 3rd with less than a rail to 1st.
My first horse on course was spooked by a spectator and he wheeled and I came off. The good news is that my new "HIT AIR VEST" deployed and I was happily uninjured after landed on a very hard spot on course.
This unexpected departure landed us a BIG "E" on our record without a qualifing score. Which complicated things as I'm trying to qualify CSI to compete at a 2* at the end of the year.
I then got on my second horse and had a refusal out on course...which led me to receiving an unexpected "Dangerous Riding" penalty. The President of the Ground Jury stated that having my horse pick up 5 canter strides before a fence was potenially dangerous and therefore was going to issue a 25 penalty Dangerous Riding penalty.
So as there are up's.......there are down's. I'm hoping I got them all out of the way as I really don't want to have a competition remotely close to that ever again.
Soon we will be going to compete at Rebecca Farm. I am looking forward to seeing quite a few East Coasters coming to compete. The Brossard's always put on a first class event.
Until the next one......I will be continuing to work hard and train towards perfection. We can't always control our circumstances.....but hopefully we don't ever repeat them!!!
Happy 4th of July!

T