Mini Horse Trials: The results!

I had the trailer hooked up, Hampton braided and cleaned up and 2 mimosas by 7:45 a.m. Sunday.

Ready for Competitive Horse Prancing! I wore my hot pink sunglasses
for good luck. And to be silly.

Competitive Horse Prancing Dressage
Warm up went really well. Hamps was very attentive. I allowed myself a little extra time to warm up for dressage because it also needed to be our overall warm-up for the day. So I rode him like I would at home. We did some leg yields, shoulder-in, lots of transitions.

And then a man on the rail stopped us.

"This is ONLY a walk-trot test you know. You don't need to do all those fancy movements!" he said in a somewhat snarky tone.

A bit stunned, I said, "Well, he warms up best this way." And I continued on.

What kind of comment is THAT!? So weird. I told one of my barnmates what he said and she said, "Sounds like a comment from someone who knows you are going to beat him!" She's probably right. He was there with his wife/daughter/mistress ... I dunno. But seriously, wtf. Sort of rude in a passive-aggressive way.

Anyhow, our test was ... ok. He got a touch sucked back on me in the ring. I really needed to just boot him forward but I felt at that point it was best to just have a nice, steady test. From what I had watched before, I knew that just being steady would put us high in the placings.

Much to my surprise me pulled off a score of 28.8. That is a 71% !!!!! A personal record for me. Yes, I know it was only an Intro test but I was still happy. Scores of all 7s and 8s. :) I still feel we can do better but perhaps it felt worse than it looked. Or the judge was generous. :)

Stadium
Hamps and I have not jumped a stadium round since Octoberfest. Our rounds there were ... a hot mess, frankly. Sticky jumping, stopping, rails down, ugh. We made it around but it was not pretty.

Well, yesterday it was like riding a different horse. I really wish Amy (from Slow & Steady wins the Race) could have seen it since she also saw our Octoberfest rounds. Hamps was forward, rhythmic, honest. It felt like a hunter round. Our only bobble was an awkward distance at jump 7. I jumped ahead and Hamps knocked a rail. If that rail had stayed up we would have won the division! :) I was so proud of him after that round because of how far we have come. He was a little professional out there!

Hunter pony

I love his expression here!

Cross Country
We walked straight over to the cross country course. We started out well with jumps 1 and 2, Hamps thought about stoppin at the crooked log but I actually rode well here and he popped over. We had one or 2 more "sticky" fences in which he wanted to stop and think about it and I said "Actually we are going to jump this NOW." And thankfully the jumps are small enough that he could jump them from a near stop. LOL. Toward the end of course we were rockin and rolling and he was foot perfect. And hey we went down the big hill with NO bucking. :)

Down the hill

Weeee!!!!

Zoomin'

We are bad asses! SO. MUCH. FUN.

Clear cross country!

I am just floored at how much he has grown up in a year. At this time last year we were jumping crossrails and wobbling all over the place. Now he cruises around a 2'3" course without batting an eye, ears pricked the whole time, pulling me to the jumps.

We ended up in 2nd place (thanks to that one rail) which is just icing on the cake. Hamps handled the entire atmosphere like a veteran. I was beaming all day. (May or may not have something to do with the mimosas as well)

Hamps is so wild and uncontrollable at horse shows.
And my braids look good!

My favorite saddle pad. :)

Not a UK fan. Unless there is a mimosa in that mug. :)

We celebrated with more champagne and after I returned Hampton back to his field we drank some more. How I am not hungover today is beyond me. :)

Go Hampton!

And now for the classy shot of the day. Money.

So now the question is ... go to Meadowlake dressage as planned, or scrap that and do 2-3 more mini trails instead? :)