Manic Monday

Not quite a Monday, but some manicness regardless!!

Due to it be absolutely scorching for the days after Athlone agri show, my next show, which was going to be Dressage Ireland down in Clonlara, Co. Limerick, got postponed. I have to say I was pretty delighted. The weather was unbearable and the thoughts of having to do 4 tests on 2 horses, did not appeal. Instead I entered my local riding club competition. I did dressage on the two and jumping on Cu Chulainn.

We hacked out and practiced as normal during the week. I had to ride late in the evening or early in the morning as it was so bloody hot. I had a lesson on Wednesday as usual, preparing for the DI show (it wasn't postponed at that stage).

Savage Sunset at home

Walking the cats

Looking at the view

Flatwork in the field

Chillin CC

CC flatwork time

Window dog

Sunday was another scorcher. Fred was up first in the dressage. I hadn't ridden a test in a small arena in ages and boy did I know about it! I turned the corner to do a counter canter and was not prepared for the shortness of the arena at all! Oops. Fred was not impressed. We went on, but it was certainly not our best work. CC was less than enthusiastic about doing dressage, the usual craic. As they were the only two in open, we came First (Fred) and Second (CC). Although they didn't do too badly anyway.
Next up was the jumping. I decided to just jump CC as Fred is out of practice and sure CC loves it. It was roasting by the time our round came up. He jumped a great clear starting off, and straight into the double............I say 'straight' but I literally had to stop and catch my breath!! As soon as we set off for the first jump, he was thinking, oh yeah baby speed round!! So he did a cracking round with turns and jumps from nothing. Unfortunately pilot error lead him to be facing the back of a spread, so a mid air correction lead to us knocking it........DANGGGGGGGGGGGG. Still got a nice 5th place for our first Advanced Intermediate comp.

Snooze time

JUMP OFF!!

 Our DI comp was only postponed one week, so it was going to be this Friday, as well as my own region's comp on Sunday. It was gonna be a dressage filled weekend!!

Another glorious skyline

Guard dog

We are family

The boys had Monday off as usual and then it was practice time. We hacked out and did lateral work on our hacks. On Thursday I brought them over to Creagh Eq to practice on sand. CC was going really well and then a loose horse upset him, so we cantered for ages on both reins with me in jump position. Managed to get him working long and low by the end.Happy days. Next up, Sir Fred. Oh o....Fred's off. He has loose shoes, but he's very off. SHIT. Text farrier. He's not in the area tomorrow. Arrange to drive up to him before he heads off for the day. That means a 5am wake up call ( Fred not impressed) and off we go to Lanesborough. Fred got his shoes tightened and we're set. Home by 8. Back to bed for 2 hours. Then it was up and get ready for Limerick. We were on the road by 3. It took longer than I expected to get down. Beads of sweat were forming on my brows. I wanted to be there nice and early to give CC a good long warm up to get him as relaxed as I could.
Good news when I got there ( as it turns out it would not be as beneficial as I thought) one of the judges was a half hour late, and that was our first class. As it turned out CC was grand and not his usual tense self. He did a nice test and only got tense after the canter ( he didn't much like the people watching from A either). I found out that I'd learned the wrong test for his second test, so I had to run and find a copy of that and learn it. I successfully managed to do that and off we went my second test and his last. He was fairly tired at this stage, so there was a fair bit of tension unfortunately.
I had only time to grab a few swigs of water before I had to tack up Fred. The judge being late meant one arena was running late, but the other on time so I was all over the shop. I didn't have much of a warm up for him. He went lovely though and it was a great test ( even though any time I wasn't facing the judge I made a face like I was constipated). It was boiling hot and I was running out of steam. I had a small bit of time before my next test. I gulped down water and had a few bananas. Rusty had managed to escape twice out of the jeep because I left the windows open a bit for him. I found him back at the jeep, sitting there waiting patiently for us!! I was pretty much all out of steam for our last test. This was the harder test too with the serpentine of canter with simple changes. On a good day I just about have strength to attempt it, but tonight? Hmmmm. He didn't need to much of a warm up, I didn't want to kill him out altogether. Unfortunately I watched a small bit of the person ahead of me and they were doing a Novice test, which also had 10m circles. Queue 5 mins later in the middle of my test and I go blank questioning which side I do my 10m circle. Ding ding. The ominous sound of the bell to tell me, yip, I'd gone wrong. Dang it.
I got off Fred at 10.20 pm. I started my day at 5am. I was shattered and I still had to drive home. I let the boys out for a little walk around and some more water before we called it a day and headed. I only got one test back before we were going. CC had scored 60% in his first test, delighted with that. Unfortunately I'd have to wait to see if Fred got any qualifying scores.

I spent Saturday in recovery mode. I was still shattered and so were they. Not much was done that day.......

Sunday arrived far too quickly. Another early start. We got there first. Lots of time to warm up. Today CC was again doing 2 tests and Fred just the one elementary. CC was still tired from the last few days, so I didn't do much in my warm up. He did the best that he could and I was happy with him. It was an overcast day, but extremely muggy and heavy. Not ideal for riding. He wasn't impressed for his next one, but tried. Lastly (thankfully) was Fred. I was barely able. He was tired, I was tired. We all wanted to be at home, on the field and in the couch. He decided to do a (lovely) flying change during our canter work and broke medium trot to canter....... but screw it we got to the end. Unfortunately we didn't get a qualifying score. He did come 2nd and CC placed in his classes. They practically ran up the ramp to get home!! I stopped off at Supermacs for some tasty treats (Rusty shared some) and we listened to Galway Vs Kilkenny on the way home, screaming at the radio!! Which helped nicely with keeping me awake. We got home in one piece, the boys hit the field and Rusty and myself hit the couch. I finally got the results from Friday, 1 qualifying score from Friday, my mistake cost me another one 😢😢