one foot in front of the other

Things FINALLY dried up a little bit this weekend, after what felt like weeks and weeks of rain. It's been so wet for so long, and the ground was so freakin saturated that I was legitimately convinced our planned event this weekend would certainly be cancelled.

the changing weather with crisp early mornings means: time to break out the BoT mesh sheet again!

It was another home starter event (I guess I'm making up for lost time from not getting to ride in their events the last couple years, and now got to ride TWICE in one year!!), but even so I felt some serious trepidation going into things bc of the weather. Where would people park? How would the course ride?

warm sunny weather means still plenty warm enough for bath time after tho. it's clearly a family affair <3

And possibly these feelings of reluctance and foreboding contributed to a .... not great jump lesson the day prior. Which. Ya know. It had to happen eventually, right? Charlie and I just were not clicking. I felt like I had no feel, like he was dropping in his shoulder and diving at the fences and I couldn't see a distance to save my life. It.... did not fill me with warm fuzzy feelings ahead of the show.

also more shetland stallions, this time with mega hair on full display haha

But I had already settled it with my family ahead of time that they would be coming to the event to hang out, spectate, and tailgate. Too late to call it off now!

Plus, organizers had moved show jumping into the jump ring instead of on grass in the field, and had relocated some of the xc jumps where the ground was boggiest. This included that 2 stride line Charlie and I had struggled with so much. And finally: the weekend forecast was GORGEOUS OMG.

So I figured: we would show up, take one phase at a time, put one foot in front of the other, and see what happens.

aw Charlie <3

And it all worked out <3

Obvi I'll have full details for everything, but I was very happy with our dressage. It felt steady and obedient, despite a stupid error on my part when I forgot my test. Oops! Numerically it scored well for Charlie (33%) but realistically we were at the bottom of the pack after dressage - 5th of 6.

Stadium was more of that disconnected feeling from our lesson the day prior. A few misses and uglies. And one jump where we legit nailed the standard and I thought we'd take the whole thing down.... but the poles stayed in the cups so it was one of those lucky clears. And on cross country? Charlie proved yet again to be Mr Reliable. He made good choices, didn't get us killed in the slippy sliding mud, and bailed me out when I tried to shoot for questionable distances.

team is cleanin up!!

It wasn't perfect by a long shot. On a different day in different conditions and among a different crowd, it could just have easily been a performance that finished last on paper instead of first. But on this day? We did in fact finish first! Charlie's first win at an event! And my first win since Isabel's first novice at Olde Hope back in 2015. Feels good, man, feels good :)

Stay tuned for details to come soon! And hope you all had a great weekend too!