a lesson to learn, a day to forget

Today's show recap is going to be a departure from what you might normally expect over here at 'Fraidy Cat Eventing.

That was virtually guaranteed going into this event anyway, since I wasn't with my normal group (ie my friends who are the best at all things video/picture taking haha). Plus my trailer mate's dressage times were right on top of my jumping, so she wouldn't be around for pics anyway. Nbd tho, right? I can't have literally 8,000 metric tons of media for every single show, right?? Lol...

he's still pretty tho

Tho. Haha. It turns out I'm maybe grateful for the lack of pictures. Our day at Plantation Field was.... well, bad. It was a bad day. Not one for dwelling on or dragging out over the course of individual posts for each day, that's for damn sure.

lookin like a 100% goon ahead of dressage. already off to a good start! lol

It's a shame too, bc the horse has been feeling so so so good lately. Really really good. But then we had a shockingly bad ride the day before our show. In what was supposed to just be a straight forward flat school with maybe a trip or two through a grid for final prep.

It didn't work out that way tho. First we got caught up in a downpour that Charlie 100% noped out of. Then once finally out of the rain in the indoor, it was like I was riding a shell of a horse. Nothing garnered any type of response from him. The go button? Nope. The whoa? Double nope. Like nothing I did had any influence on him, but he was still kinda emotional about it.

i'm pleased with that free walk score

I tried to shrug it off, tell myself that one bad ride shouldn't be a deal breaker. That he's a good boy and he's been slaying lately. Plus I had already seen the course and pictures of all the jumps. Before that lesson, I was freakin pumped. This course looked like everything I could hope for.

After the lesson tho? Possibly some cracks started emerging in my mental game. Perhaps I may have let those sinking feelings of dread come sneaking in the back door. I.... had doubts.

finally got an 8 on his canter! that whole "nice attitude" part made me lol tho...

Dressage was not particularly inspiring, don't let those scores fool you. I was not at all very happy with the feeling I was getting from Charlie -- it was more of the same "shell" type feeling in the horse, like he wasn't really there. No try, no effort, no presence.

But I didn't really mess with it, didn't really rock the boat. I wasn't here for the dressage test on this day. So I guess we looked relaxed and steady enough to an outside perspective to squeak through with Charlie's new personal record in the dressage ring: a 30%.

Which is kinda ironic, imo. The judges were definitely a bit generous, and this score left us sitting in 5th place going into the jumping.

charlie was basically obsessed with his spicy little nugget of a trailer mate

We had a long wait before then, and even so I still ended up arriving in warm up a little early. Charlie was.... Not very emotionally at peace with the warm up area.

Plantation is a fairly unique venue: it's one giant hill, upon which all the main arenas are placed. Trailers and the dressage rings are down beneath one side of the hill, with cross country on the other. So the arenas right up on top have what almost amounts to a view of the whole world.

This was a tad overwhelming for Charlie and he felt pretty strongly that he belonged back down below, on the side of the hill with the trailers.

course meta data. the elevation profile is so bumpy bc almost all the jumps were situated on terrain

Warm up was sticky, but with a couple good enough efforts. The jump course itself was kinda more of the same.

It started off fine, tho we had a cheap rail at the first. But trying to get Charlie past the gate to jump 2 was a real challenge and we kinda biffed it and ended up adding both in the bending line and subsequent related distance.

Another jump in a roll back was apparently very spooky and we had a hard time getting over that.... Cruised down a line back towards the in gate just fine, but again got real sticky to finish on a 2 stride going away. In which.... bleh, Charlie added, taking that rail in the process.

Honestly it's kinda amazing we only had the two down.

this..... this is not a promising start, charlie...

I didn't love the selection of warm up jumps available for xc, but luckily with the help of trainer P (who had come out for my trailer mate but managed to scoot up the hill asap after her dressage test was done) we had a bit of a CTJ about going forward, and produced two really nice jumps from Chuck.

And he actually left the start box ok too. The course ahead of us looked really fantastic - the jumps were basically all smaller than we saw at Loch Moy last time, but the technicality was ratcheted up. Lots and lots of terrain. Three AB combinations (up bank, ditch, and bending line on a mound) plus a jump out of the water.

My biggest qualm with the course honestly was that the biggest jump was positioned at fence 2. Considering Charlie's kinda notorious for being sticky out of the gates, this felt like it could be a problem. But there was a fairly lengthy cruise to it, all going downhill, so I hoped I'd be able to get him past his grouchiness in time to push him up to the fence.

Alas, that was not to be. You'll see it in the helmet cam, but he was very very very sticky. Just cantering down the hill away from everything else. Not even aimed at a jump. Just straight up didn't wanna go in that general direction.

it wasn't all bad tho!

This did not improve on presenting to the fence and he just barely climbed over it. Kinda biffed the next jump too for good measure, tho it was on the small side at least. Then sucked back big time to the next jump. In his defense it wasn't tiny... but... it also wasn't large. And.... despite my full body efforts (the helmet cam is shaky, to say the least), bam. Refusal.

Represented and jumped it fine. Then same fucking thing at the next jump, except this time he ran out instead. And again jumped it just fine on second attempt. I was a bit flabbergasted, but was really hoping the next couple fences would help us get into more of a rhythm.

Next up was the up bank combination which wasn't really ideal, but somehow we made it through that ok enough. We added a third stride, but I kinda thought we might after walking it anyway.

i was so excited for this too.... oh well. some other day!

We had another craptastic distance to the brush table - bc, ya know, it's kinda hard finding distances when the horse is sucked back against your leg, and then got high centered on the most innocuous looking coop in the world.

Tho, I guess in Charlie's defense, the terrain was not totally innocuous -- the ground fell away rapidly down a steep hill immediately after the coop and I think Charlie took one look at that (half way over the coop) and noped right the fuck on out of that. I managed to not fall off in his mad scramble backwards over the coop, and.... Yea. That was definitely that.

I might be stubborn, but even I could see that our day was over. And that if I didn't walk away with an "R" we'd surely be ending up with an "E," or worse, a hurt horse. 

So.... Yea. Not a very inspiring day. Honestly I debated even uploading these videos but... well, the urge to document is strong with me haha. And there's usually something to be learned from the really really shitty rides, even if it's not really the lesson I thought I signed up for.

There are a couple initial thoughts here. On one hand, this was a pretty uncharacteristic day with Charlie. He's green and he's changeable and I never really know what I'm going to get leaving the start gate with him... but this didn't feel like my horse. Something I find deeply concerning.

charlie's favorite part is hangin at the trailers

On the other hand tho... This side of him has been present since day 1. He's been gate sour since the very beginning. Is always barn sour. We've had epic throwdowns about that. He's notorious for not accepting the pressure of being driven forward. I learned that about him in my second week of ownership.

A couple months into ownership, I wrote about how this side of him could easily turn into an issue of getting eliminated in dressage for disobedience, or of not being able to get him out the start gate on cross country. In short: it's a familiar demon.

sorry bud. we didn't come here for the tailgate. back up to the rings you go to exist etc while trailermate did her thang

While obviously step 1 in the fallout of a really shitty ride is always a comprehensive wellness check, I'm also trying to take stock of my approach to training Charlie.

My biggest focus has been keeping him happy in his work, keeping him fit and fresh with a lot of variety. Especially lately since he's been doing so well, I really haven't been pushing too hard into anything. Very brief, focused schooling sessions intermixed with lengthy hacks or woodsy trot sets. Honestly I've wanted to avoid anything that might make the horse more sour.

charlie by this point thought existence was some bull shit tho. he was what you might call a glass case of emotions. or a dumpster fire. honestly, homeboy was a hot mess.

I wonder if this has worked against me in some ways tho. That, by avoiding work that could lead to that sort of argument, I've actually been tacitly allowing Charlie to become a little more dull, a little more recalcitrant.

Maybe I thought that since he's generally such a good boy, and so reliable, I could just kinda avoid rocking the boat and cruise on through on the strength of his ability and eagerness. Except... Ha, turns out if the horse doesn't supply that eagerness himself and if I haven't actually instilled a certain degree of discipline in the training... Turns out shit falls apart real fast.

Here I was thinking if I just l left the horse alone and didn't pick any fights, he'd be able to cruise through this new level all on his own. Which... actually, uh, yea no. That's apparently not how horse training goes. Uh, my bad?

So ya know. That kinda sucked. Wasn't really the weekend I had hoped for. But maybe some important lessons were learned. Hopefully haha. The way I see it, just about every horse hits a pretty rough patch (or five) when learning to jump. Maybe I should actually be amazed it's taken this long for Charlie to figure out how to say "No!" in the first place? Idk. We'll figure it out tho.