Ladies and Gentlemen, this might just be the final installment of the series detailing my adventures at the December Classic Horse Show at the Carolina Horse Park . In the light of day, and with some sleep to encourage me to be reasonable, I realized how LOVELY the grounds were. The stalls are 10 by 12, larger than usual, and have rubber mats, which are a luxury not generally found at shows. Each stall has sturdy, professionally installed eye hooks for buckets, as opposed to the u-nails that someone left there in the early eighties, and two outlets which appear to actually adhere to modern electrical code, another unusual feature. The only missing feature was hot water access, which I would have greatly appreciated that morning when it was still a chilly 45 degrees and Chico needed a bath. Hot water is a very rare amenity, though, so the facility still gets a great review from me. The footing was great and the warmup area was spacious, as were the rings. Thankfully the office staff got my stabling situation sorted out such that I could stay where I had camped the night before, and I let them know about my grooming stall since I am no good with deception.
It is at this point I check in on the rings and realize that I need approximately one more hour to prepare to go in the ring than I actually have available to me, because entries to the show were very very low and thus the rings were running faster than I had planned. I put in some particularly large braids to shorten the braiding process, skipped the cold bath and went over my horse with a damp towel, installed his fake tail, and gave him a few minutes to relax while I got my coat, number, and helmet on. It is at this point I notice that Megan is also getting her horse ready, which was problematic since she was the person who I was hoping could set the jumps for me in the warmup area. To any non horse people: when you are warming up for a class, you start working the horse on the flat, then begin with a low jump, and progressively make it larger and wider, usually to the size of the fences in the class. This is generally accomplished by having a person on the ground stake a claim on one of the fences in the warmup area (there are inevitably three) and then adjust the height and width for you. Without having one of those people, I had to just jump what was already there, which thankfully was a small vertical and a 3' oxer. I cantered back and forth over the vertical until I personally got my shit together, jumped the oxer, and headed to the ring all by myself.
Mr. Perfect, Chico, lit right up once he got into the ring, which is normal but not quite to the extent that was exhibited that day. In our warmup class, he actually SPOOKED at something outside of the ring on the way to the first jump, so I got after him, came back to it and tried to ride it in the way I would on a green horse who was stopping at a jump. I was sitting back in the tack, had my legs on, and steady contact on the reins. This time, Chico just plain stopped. I then took a moment to think of what my trainer, Chanda, would tell me to do, and walked up to it, let him sniff both sides, picked up an easy trot and gave him a long approach to the jump with my seat off his back, legs on, and very light contact, and he proceeded to jump the rest of the fences on the first try, which is what he usually does. Point taken, sir. You're allowed to have your occasional naughty moment, and I need to just deal, since you know more about this than I do. (Note: Chico is the only horse who gets this treatment, because he does, in fact, know more about show hunters than I do)
My first trip did not have anything that technically went wrong, since we took off an appropriate distance from all of the jumps, got the right number of strides in between them, and changed leads where it was necessary. That is why I won. It could not have been attractive, given that I wanted to go a full gear slower than he did, and most of the time between the fences was spent trying to slow the crazy old man down. I also subsequently added out of the corner in a couple places where I should not have. I let him nap and realize how exhausting that had been before our second class, and when we went back in, he was still fresh but much more rideable. We nailed most of the course, and on my way to the last line, a tight six, I thought "Grace, don't you dare pull on the reins and add a stride because you are winning this class". Of course, the combination of slowing down too much in preparation for the tight line and my decision to gun it for the long spot meant I had a really spectacular chip to that line. Way to overthink. There were only four in my division, so I still managed a third place finish.
I spent my "free" afternoon after the show doing all of my usual post horse show routines for horse care and then trying to find someone who could help me with my truck and trailer situation. One member of the show staff, Bob, helpfully offered to install a new jack if I would go buy one, which he described to me. Naturally, the one that I purchased would have worked on the vast vast majority of trailers, but mine has a welded plate in the way, so I later had to go back and buy a plain car jack, which we decided I would put on a section of 2 by 4 that he found for me and then use to jack the trailer up off the truck once I got home. He also fixed my hitch for me, which needed to be flipped so that the trailer would ride higher in the front and thus be level. I grabbed dinner for myself and Henry, and headed back to the show for night check and to braid for the next morning. I decided that to compensate for the very large braids of that morning, I would put in a ton of very small ones, which was a great idea until 20 minutes later when I had barely made progress down his neck and realized it was going to take an hour and a half to finish. Oh well. It looked pretty! I settled everyone in for the night and left what I thought was a particularly pretty setup:
The rings started earlier the next morning, and my age group's division was going earlier in the day, so even with the braiding already done, I didn't get to sleep any longer. Thankfully, my trainer Chanda's godmother, Judy Kelly, who is a famous and very knowledgable equestrian from the glory days of the sport, had run into me the day before and was able to set the jumps and coach me a little bit. Chico was not fresh like the prior day, and the combination of a little help to settle me down and having my normal horse back proved to be a very good one. We didn't win the hack class, which was a function of the judge's personal preference, since he has won some large hack classes at very prestigious horse shows, but I was not too concerned with that. We went out to warm up for the jumping classes, and after getting my bad jump out of the way, I settled right into the rhythm that we needed. My warmup and both classes both went very well, with the possible exception of the first jump in the second class which was spooky and thus merited a funny jump. We won both classes, and I received a score of 82 for my second class which was the first round of the WIHS/NAL classic. I was very pleased with that score, given that the first jump had been a little awkward, and it sent me into the second round as the leader. We also were champion of the division!
The second round would run after the older age group had finished, so I took the time to take Chico back to the barn to relax and pee, which he appreciated. Miss Judy had a prior commitment which prevented her from being able to school me again for the classic round, but Megan had finished for the day and very kindly messed up her tight schedule in order to set jumps for me. I warmed up quickly, and had a good round except he looked at that same jump along with an oxer which they had put in the ring specifically for the classic round, a bending eight strides after a two stride which was set on the judge's side of the ring. It was in an odd place, and I overdid it with the encouragement, which got us a little tight to that fence. He doesn't like when I get him close to the jump, and he was already a little wary of that fence, so I am sure the resulting effort was not attractive. We scored an 80 for that round, which is respectable, and I was very happy with him for being such a good sport about having to go back and jump again. Our combined score was leading when the adults finished, but I still had three children's hunters who were combined in the classic, so I left to purchase the aforementioned car jack with my fingers crossed that my position would hold. Much to my delight, it did, and I earned 140 points towards Washington and Harrisburg and 85 dollars.
Because I had to make a trip to fill up the truck and buy the jack and then find Bob and figure out how to get everything functional for the trip home, I was one of the last ones to leave the show grounds, but 5 PM isn't bad at all. The drive down taught me my lesson, and I took I-95 home, which was a total breeze and was 15 minutes shorter, even though the route was 40 miles longer. I encountered this magnificent truck stop which had a McDonalds attached, and I delivered the champion back to the farm safely.
I will follow up this post with one detailing my efforts at being the hunter princess on a budget, whether or not they were successful, and whether or not it's worth it. I will say this- I haven't entitled this series "Budget Fail" for no reason. While I am sure it would have been significantly more expensive if I had not taken the steps that I did, it still was not a cheap weekend by any means!
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