Dom schramm clinic

A few weeks after our wonderful horse trial Roan and I had the opportunity to clinic with the awesomely Australian eventer Dom Schramm. Seeing as our barn hosted him, I was chucked into the only group that had an opening as we tried to accommodate everyone else before we picked our levels. The class was 3'. While Roanie and I have jumped plenty of fences at that height we had never jumped a full course at that height range. To complicate the course of large fences further, the clinic was being held in the covered dressage arena due to disagreeable weather. I was very nervous to be riding in front of so many auditors in a clinic height a little out of my comfort zone and Roanie definitely picked up on it. We didn't spend much time warming up and Dom went straight to canter adjustability.... Which you all know how adjustable Roanies canter is....  Adding canter strides in between fences is so hard for me and Roanie you may as well ask us to do a somersault in midair over the fence. We gave it our best and took our criticism well.

From there we worked on lead changes over fences, which everyone breezed right through, then Dom started putting fences up, then he put them up some more, and then up again. They just kept getting bigger and bigger which seemed to make the arena smaller and smaller. Despite the fact that I was so nervous I think I forgot to breathe for the first half of the course, Roanie took care of me and jumped everything beautifully. We did have trouble with one fence rolling back off to the left. It was a big airy vertical and we just couldn't keep our balance to. But, we worked through it and I learned that I sometimes have to sacrifice perfect balance for enough forward to keep a good quality canter.

This was the vertical that was so challenging! Finally got it though :) 

It's always such a fun learning experience riding with Dom. He definitely pushed me way outside of my comfort zone and really proved to me that the bigger fences are no issue for us. A huge thank you to him and Jimmie for coming all the way down to NC for one day to do a clinic with us!

Horse trial time

We've spent months and months of preparing and training and working our butts off in preparation for me and Roan's first horse trial, and it was so worth it. After getting off the trailer at the show grounds Roan was a little bit frazzled. As much as we've trailered for schooling, clinics, and other outings, it's hard to recreate the busy and exciting atmosphere of a horse trial. As soon as all of her feet were off the trailer we started throwing dressage tack up on her and heading to warm-up. We had a bit of a delay while pulling in (deep Southern Pines sand got us stuck a bit and we needed some assistance from the tractor) which didn't leave much time for warming up. Subsequently we put up one of the worst dressage scores of the day. But hey, all four feet stayed in the arena and as terrified as Roan was in the dressage ring, she did somewhat listen to me and didn't take me back to the trailer like she really wanted to. She felt like a cat dropped into a filled bath tub, totally frantic to get out. Just getting dressage out of the way was a relief, besides, everyone really goes to horse trials for cross country and boy were we ready to get on course.

XC warmup was one of the best feelings after a frazzled dressage test. As soon as I pointed Roan at the fence she perked up, took me charging at it, jumped well over the top of it, and galloped off. Perfect. Into the start box we went! Then the countdown: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Have a nice ride! And we're off! The only thing I had to worry about on that XC course was time, and I don't mean I had to worry about making time.... Halfway through I looked at my watch and was a solid minute too fast... Oops. Trot break... We ended up coming in double clear and headed over to stadium. 

The stadium course had lots of interesting bending lines and broken lines, things that we hadn't really practiced much back home. Oh well, the jumps were tiny and Roan was a fire breathing dragon after XC, I figured I'd just point her at the jumps, help her balance a bit, and otherwise let her figure it out. She is learning her job and I try to encourage her to be comfortable handling challenges. We went clear again and ended up with a pretty white ribbon! Not bad for a cow pony's first horse trial ;-) 

We have a lot to work on, and have several schooling shows planned and a big USDF show in Raleigh next month, all to get us prepared for Full Gallop in August! Roanies first sanctioned horse trial.