Jenny Camp 2017: Last place never felt so good

Happy Monday Everyone! I gotta be the first to admit: today is 100% a day for playing hooky. Sorry not sorry. Hopefully if all goes to plan it'll be another good horsey day with more to write about later, but for now let's talk about the weekend.

It was another long weekend here at 'Fraidy Cat Eventing - with a Saturday jump lesson at OF with trainer P that ended up being a private (yay!) that lasted about ~2 hours (omg so good tho). Then obvi Sunday was show day at MCTA's Jenny Camp!!

yay team! also brita joined the colorful jacket club too. it's a fun club :D (the club also uses bridle tag numbers bc coats like these can't be covered up by pinnies!)

If I'm being 100% honest here, I was apprehensive at best about this show. Like, I was excited about it. And objectively speaking, I knew it would be a fun day - bc how can you not have fun with good horses and good friends at an awesome venue (complete with tailgating, obvi)??

But I wasn't super optimistic about our riding. Charlie has been.... very green this past week. Just kinda in general, ya know? Plus he's also been a bit sore, as I already mentioned his message therapist uncovering some concerns in his poll and elsewhere.

So I didn't necessarily expect the best from our rides. But that's fine - he just needs mileage anyway, ya know? Tho then I walked the jump courses Saturday before the show and felt.... even more apprehensive about the jumping.

covering. ground.

Stadium was roped off in a tear-drop shaped section of fairly tumultuous terrain - complete with lots of down hill jumping and tight turns. And naturally the narrowest section of the arena was on the downhill side.

Then there was cross country. This course was unlike either of the two Intros I've ridden at Jenny Camp in the past. It was.... Bigger: Ten of my 13 jumping efforts were either shared with BN or were flagged such that the BN fence was an option for Intro. And Longer: 1,800m.

At least, tho, the ditch bank and water were exactly as I had hoped they would be: perfect for Charlie's current level of schooling. (Tho, naturally as might be expected with a green horse, we still had some issues here).

happy group at the end of a long day

All told, tho, once it came time to ride - it honestly worked out pretty darn ok.

Our dressage went about as I expected - garnering a score ten points lower than last time, but actually less competitive relative to the rest of our division (funny how that works haha). Stadium was surprisingly better than expected - still had a rail tho.

And cross country was.... rip roaring lol. You're gonna need a seat belt for that helmet cam footage haha. And we did all the high options!

Charlie was just so so good. So honest. Not very educated, while simultaneously not particularly sensitive to rider influence lol.... But good. We picked up a 20 at the water but I'm honestly pretty cool with it. Charlie doesn't exactly know what penalty points are at this point, but he did eventually figure out the right answer. Good 'nuff for now.

We were tied for 10th after dressage and the penalties from stadium and xc dropped us back to 13th. But you're not gonna hear a word of complaint from me. As far as I'm concerned, and as far as Charlie knows, we won. You WILL, however, see a ton of photos and videos lol.

#winning

Anyway. More to come later, as always. For now, I hope everyone else had a great weekend too!