Rocking Horse Winter II: Part I

We started off with Training on Saturday of the Rocking Horse Winter II HT.  The day was beautiful and warm.  I was up and out of the house by 4:45, showered and tired, but ready to go.  After check-in, I stopped by the barn and spoke with Marcy, letting her know I would be videoing her trip through my fence, the water!  It was a pretty good question, a fairly large...I don't even know what you call that.  feeder?  table?  mushroom?  Whatever, it was a decent size.  From there, down through the water and out and up over a boathouse.  It didn't look too daunting, but a fair question for the level.

There were no real issues.  Actually, I only had one rider with a refusal.  That does not mean that it was pretty.  Marcy asked that I count strides for her and let her know how it was riding because she didn't actually walk through the water.  That was difficult.  It truly rode mostly on a 7.  But there were 6's.  And there were 10's.  And there were those that simply trotted the out.

This is the out.  The in was just as steep.

The issue causing the inconsistency?  Going down to the water.  The horses were reading it as a drop, although it wasn't.  It just has a fairly steep grade.  Horses were leaping forth like they were dropping into the head of the lake.  It was mostly pretty funny.  Even the really good professional riders, like Marcy, were getting bounced around a bit.  Riley took a big one into the water, pitching Marcy forward a bit.  But there was enough room to regroup and get out of the water and over the, not overly large, boathouse, and then gallop on to a flyer before the coffin complex.

196 Laine Ashker riding Call Him Paddy

179 Bruce Davidson Sr on Chesterland's Cleopatra

193 William Ward on Cruising Arkansas
You don't hear much about William, but I really like the way he rides.

200 Bruce Davidson Sr on Holy Moses

203 Daisy Traiford on Fernhill Chico

201 Ellen Doughty-Hume on Excessive Assault

For this next rider, I really liked how she handled a situation.  Obviously, her horse needed some schooling at the water.  On approach she put up her hand with her stick and called "Not Presenting!" and rode an angle in front of the first fence and sliced into and out of the water, then rode back, but her hand back up and shouted "Presenting!" and jumped the question.  I appreciated that she let me know what she was doing.  And I really appreciated that she recognized her horse needed to take that time to understand what the water was.

215 Jennie Brannigan on Luna

225 Leslie Law riding Sky's the Limit

This is but a small sampling of the rides.  I was suitably impressed with the Training Rider divisions, as well.  There was this one Training Horse that I thought was the cutest thing.  It had to have been a POA (Pony of Americas), and was there and gone before I realized what it was, or I would have taken a picture.

Tomorrow we'll talk about Prelim!