Area II Champs

Happy Monday, friends! Brace yourself for a marathon post of pics, gifs and videos (tho I promise not too too many words) because Doozy and I had a pretty big weekend! The Maryland Horse Trials at Loch Moy Farm hosted the Area II Championships, and despite our somewhat unimpressive record, we actually qualified!

lookie who completed their first big multi day rated show!! and with a top 10 finish!

Sure, sure, a rational argument can be made that, given our current performance quality, I could have saved the extra $25 entry fee (not to mention the extra gas and **fuss** associated with two days of showing vs one) and done the normal class — which was itself much smaller (meaning I probably would have placed higher / earned more year end points). 

brace yo’self bc we spent a LOT of time just sitting around, meaning lots of random pics LOL

But. Who ever said there was anything rational about horses anyway? To me, it sounded like an exciting opportunity to do a ‘bigger’ class, get a little more dressed up, and basically just make a full experience out of the whole thing.

looking serene at the trailer <3

A way to challenge ourselves in new ways without meaningfully changing the parameters of the competition itself, ya know?

step 1 before dressage: fill the tank!

That challenge was most apparent in warming up for all three phases, since they were so spread out (esp for day 2 show jumping) that each really did need to be treated as its own individual ride, vs a continuation from prior phases.

proof that mare accomplished all her important responsibilities at the trailer

The new recorded ride guides kept working their magic, tho, and Doozy and I were able to execute one of our best dressage warm up sessions to date. Not necessarily our most relaxed, per se, but we were able to perform all the figures, transitions, gaits, etc of a normal ride with minimal explosiveness. 

arriving at the warm up!

The test was more of the same too — it’s clear that these recent changes in our anpproach are helping Doozy focus and channel her tension rather than lose it completely. The test riding practice also paid off in showing improvements in the areas we’d practiced — including the entry, walk work, and final ‘Harmony’ collective.  

click to read full size

We still biffed the right lead canter, and the whole second half of the test was worse than the first… But it was still a ~1.5% improvement from BCHC, AND a new personal best at a rated event, beating our average score by more than 9% points. Heck yes!

AND! It didn’t put us in last place in our giant division LOL… In fact we were all the way up in (checks notes) second to last place. #Progress y’all

moving on to phase ii of day 1 — cross country!

That was all good, tho. Like, nobody could have possibly expected more, right? I certainly did not! Altho, while cross country is generally the ‘easiest’ phase for Doozy, I DID expect that our warm up for this phase at this event might pose some, hm, unique challenges for us. 

do we look ready?? lol

Cross country came after something like a 3 hour break, so we were well and truly ‘cold’ again by that point. I couldn’t just cheat by trotting a couple circles, jumping two things, and then GO. (Trust me, tho, I was tempted). 

And holy mother of dog, guys, xc warm up amid that huge crowd was NOT easy for Doozy. We were a bit of a hot mess, 100% spiraling onto the doom loop. But the practice still definitely helped us anyway, even tho I didn’t have my phone in the warm up so obvi didn’t have the recording going. 

trotting thru the box made for a smoother less explosive start

Both Doozy and I were able to channel enough of that recent practice to sorta kinda put together a proper flat school that did include actual trotting (vs tranter-bolts) and transitions, such that when we did move to the warm up jumps, the wheels stayed firmly on the bus. Whew!

I opted to keep her trotting around the start box when we were on deck tho, as she remained quite explosive and I thought we’d be able to ‘ooze’ out more easily from trot vs halt or walk. And it totally worked!

it was crowded in the woods, with all the different level tracks squished together. red circle is our jump 3, which required navigating around some stuff. this proved challenging for many in the class

Doozy left the box fantastically and instantly hit a good rhythm to the first couple jumps. I’m honestly super proud of that, and really wish the rest of the course was similarly flowy. Unfortunately it… uh, was not. 

beware of the itsy bitsy garden gate at jump 5 — it’ll get ya!

Idk what exactly was going on with this course design — they ran tracks up thru Intermediate so maybe Starter just got squeezed onto whatever ground was left…. But jumps 3-4-5 were all lumped right on top of each other and kinda jumbled together in a bit of a mess for us. 

Which, realistically, is mostly my error — I didn’t notice how close together they were when I walked the course, so I kinda just rode ‘one jump at a time,’ rather than landing with a plan for the next. So we had to have a fairly big “Whoa!” correction on the way to 5. 

familiar water but from a new direction 
she was tentative (and spooking at all the crowding jumps) but good!

No big deal, tho, Doozy was able to find each of the jumps decently well, she just was landing a bit too unbalanced and fast. The track made a U turn to 6 that went fine bc I was ready for it, then another nice flow to 7 before leaving the woods. Then a screaming line downhill to a barely-there log that again was a tad wild omg. 

at least one rider got straight up ejected from the saddle when their horse saw that Forestier finish arch!

But then we had a nice flow up hill before trotting thru the water. Doozy was a touch tentative which worked nicely in our favor as she backed off well enough to catch the next little downhill jump much more comfortably. Then a sprint to the finish — wherein she did not launch me while spooking at the crazy inflated arch haha. 

**immediately** mugging for cookies at the finish lol

Personally, this course was an interesting lesson for me. My mental state is such that I tend to really fixate on the less good moments — being wild to 5 and that downhill log — while completely overlooking the good parts. 

cross country helmet camera!!

So I was feeling a bit disappointed with myself while rushing to take care of the mare and pack up to get home before sunset (we ran xc at nearly 5pm). But after reflecting while driving, and then watching the video once home, I changed my mind. 

Sure, those two moments on course were not great and I’d love for everything to be perfect… But also, basically the entire rest of the course was good — Doozy jumped everything nicely and easily, and started and ended well. What more could I want? Esp considering that the sort of wild ‘derby-esque’ feeling of jumps 3 to 5 proved to actually be extremely influential in the overall class, no wonder it was a bit tricky for us too. 

same shit, different day!!
mare cannot believe we drove allllll the way back out for a 70second show jump round LOL

Working on reframing my perspective has been… Hm, a significant challenge for me over the years. I tend to get really wrapped up in negative thoughts and this blog is literally littered with examples of me withdrawing prematurely from shows bc I didn’t want to keep going.

pro pics are in the mail so for today we just have shadow jompies <3

Except that I *do* want to keep going. For whatever crazy reason, I *do* want to horse show, I do want to keep learning and living these experiences. 

So being able to shift gears after cross country, drive all the way home, and then drive all the way back out again for a single show jumping round at 4:44pm the next day? To me, that is proof positive that for all the ups and downs of the last 2 years, this little Doozy Experiment is working, y’all — and we are really doing the things!

eager beaver got redemption at this judge’s line where we had a rail earlier this summer

And again, the recorded ride guides featured heavily in warming up. I expected Doozy to be wild and she absolutely rose to the occasion haha. But guys. The practice is working: The Unfeeling Brit Bot, He of No Intonation Whatsoever, kept us on track. 

We accomplished a proper ‘normal’ flat school as if we were at home, trotted (but really actually trotted) the X, cantered a vertical. Took a break until we were on deck, trotted (again, for real trotting) another X **perfectly** then went in for our round. 

and a minor pilot error won me a face full of dooz ears, oops, but we made it to that blue jump anyway

Similar to XC, I got Doozy trotting right away. Historically since I’ve had so much trouble keeping her from exploding, I wait until the bell to pick her up. But actually things feel a lot smoother when I can let her be forward right away. And that proved to be true again in this course. 

no harm, no foul, mare kept chugging along!

The track didn’t entirely suit us, given the whole “omg related distances” thing LOL… Doozy is getting REALLY good at finding her take offs, but idk if I’m just doing too much bc we do NOT land in the same canter we jump from lol. So related distances are tricky. But we fit the planned add in from 2 to 3, and actually made the step work from 4 to 5, tho it was a touch wild. 

I got a bit lost on the turn to 6, resulting in that “face full of ears” moment above, but Doozy carried on anyway and basically found her way to a good shot at any jump I pointed her at, regardless of how crooked my approach lol (oops). 

enthusiastic mare <3 had a silly rail at the last, but c’est la vie!

Our luck wouldn’t last forever, tho, and we did have a rail at the last. Again, it was a fine enough jump but we were just a bit too flat and strung out. To be honest, tho, I’d mentally prepared myself for at least 2 rails haha since… ya know, we are who we are. So just one still felt like a win!

show jumping helmet camera!!

Somehow, tho, even knowing that sure, it’s not perfect or whatever, I still left the ring feeling super proud — of both of us <3 Doozy obviously for doing this crazy thing with her crazy slightly unreliable pilot lol, but also myself for sticking with it. 

she may or may not have eaten all her prize cookies immediately LOL

It’s so easy to get caught up in feelings about how it should be, what we should be doing, where we should be, or whatever. But honestly I’m just so happy to be back in the game at all after a few years on the sidelines.  

raced the setting sun home to turnout before dark. good mare <3

And besides, nobody ever remembers all the driving and fuss anyway. All any good memory needs is that happy wash of endorphins, and maybe a couple nice pics / videos too <3