Green Acres Two-Phase

Otis and I went to Green Acres Stables in Madbury, NH on Saturday May 26th. I was excited to try another event, and I didn't have to leave until 9:00 am! I got there in plenty of time to find Liz, and luckily I was even able to park next to her (she had been there for quite a while before I got there).

I got Otis ready for dressage a couple of hours before our test, since we had never been to Green Acres before, I wanted plenty of time to ride him, just in case he decided to be naughty. I also wanted to ride over so I could watch part of Liz's cross country. Otis seemed pretty level headed for the amount of commotion that was going on at the show grounds. All phases of the event were in full swing by the time we got there, and there were horses and people every where. I walked him around the grounds a bit, and then decided to try the warm up arena, since there weren't many horses in there. He was doing pretty well, but there was another horse in there that would spook and bolt every time the horses on the cross country course would gallop towards the arena, and Otis decided to mirror it's reaction every time it did it. I decided to leave the warm up and rode him in the pasture area by the trailer for a few minutes. Once things calmed down in the warm up arena, I brought him back in, and I was very impressed with his behavior! I was able to get a really good warm up ride on him, so I brought him back to the trailer to chill out until it was closer to our ride time.

Otis was still being pretty good when I got back on him for our dressage test. I brought him into the dressage arena to wait for the judge to ring her bell. This was a bit different, usually we walk around the outside of the arena, but there wasn't room around the outside of this one, so we went in, and when the judge rang her bell, we went out, and then back in to start the test. I don't know whether it was the horses banging around in the trailer next to the area, or the fact that he didn't think we needed to back in the ring, but Otis completely changed his attitude when we went to start the test. When we halted at X, he start to do a little half rear! I did my best to calm him down, and the rest of our test went pretty well!

After cooling off for a bit (it was really hot out), I got changed and tacked Otis up for Stadium. I took him into the practice ring for a few minutes, then headed over to the jumping warm up. Otis was doing his normal leap over the fences, which was really frustrating, because we have been practicing a lot at home, and he hasn't been doing it there. Luckily, Liz was done for the day so she was there to talk me through it, and remind me to look up, not down at the fences. I finally got a good relaxed jump out of him, and my position was good, so I headed over to wait for my turn. We had to wait a lot longer than I thought because they let the younger kids walk the course before it was time to jump.

Finally it was our turn, we entered the ring, and did a warm up circle at the trot, Otis felt pretty good, and I was doing my best to stay relaxed, and think positive thoughts. He hesitated at the first jump, but went over it at this jarring leap. Fence number two was a bit better, but he was still doing his weird hoppy thing. Fence number three was the worst, it was a VERY small cross rail, and Otis came to a complete stop, it was so small, so I just kicked him forward, well he launched him self over the fence, causing me to lose my stirrup when we landed. I managed to get it back before fence four, which was pretty close. Things got progressively better after that, he started to relax a bit and jump more like he should. We still have a LONG WAY to go, but it was better then our stadium at UNH because I was more conscious of looking up.

Here is a video that Liz took of our stadium round, not pretty, but it's actually progress ;)

We ended up placing out of 8 riders, so I was pretty happy with that. Again, my biggest goal this year is to make progress with Otis at horse shows. I think we made really good progress in the warm up ring a this show. I was able to take him into the warm up ring, and actually do a good warm up with him, with out him giving me his bratty little attitude he has. Even though I had hoped for a better, more relaxed stadium round, we still made progress there as well.