That's right! George is back!
Photo cred. Megan Allen
The original plan was to go Starter, considering he's really only jumped maybe 5 or 6 times, but he totally killed it when we took him up to school XC the week before, so we made the decision to go Beginner Novice instead.
Now, George is a funny kind of guy. Trot towards a jump and there's a pretty good chance he's going to stop. Or run out. But kick on and canter up? 9 chances out of 10 you're up and over before he could even think about putting on the brakes. He gets all his confidence for jumping at the canter. Our game plan was officially "ride like hell".
Day Of:
Because of scheduling and me having zero time between phases due to also riding Reffy, we walked the XC course as soon as we arrived at Burgundy Hollow. Cue mild panic attack. They had thrown straw all over some of the bigger fences making them even more scary. And they just happened to be fences we hadn't schoole because they were off the course to be repainted. GASP.
No problem. We got this. Ha.
Dressage was mediocre, George decided staring at the horses out on the XC course was more important than paying attention and not hauling me around the silly white rectangle. I think our score had us in 3rd place. Not too shabby. We had a rail down on the first fence of stadium before I swallowed my nerves and rode like hell! That's fine. Green jumper. Good boy. Cross country was a bit of a mess to start, two refusals in the first 4 or 5 fences, but we got it together and finished the rest of the course, INCLUDING the dreaded green table with straw spread all over it. Woohoo!!!
We didn't win by any stretch, finished 5th overall in front of one rider who was eliminated. But I was still proud! And many awesome photos were taken.
Photo cred. Jeremy Benfield
Photo cred. Jeremy Benfield
YAY GEORGE!!!
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