This past weekend was great, I am so happy and proud of Audie. I would like to politely say to the man who said she was too careful to go intermediate "Put that in your English pipe and smoke it." Moving on....
Audie really tried her hardest and for all her effort I'm giving her a short break. I am really surprised at how well she scored in the dressage. She had a slit on the left corner of her mouth, I could really tell it was bothering her and didn't push her as much as I could have. The hill the arena was on worked in our advantage thankfully, it really helped her actually lengthen her stride on the diagonals instead of speeding up. Her counter canters were a little unsteady which led to our simple changes being sloppy, more of a canter to jiggy walk. The judge obviously saw something better than what I was feeling because we came out of that test with a 32.4. Show jumping I didn't get to walk because of my ride time. I went and watched a few rides, then warmed Audie up over a few jumps. She wasn't feeling like her perky self which made me a little worried about how this course was going to ride. I literally only jumped her over 4 fences before entering. I was afraid to tire her, we still had a challenging cross country course ahead of us. After seeing plenty of people drop rails I went in, we went around effortlessly. Everything flowed so smooth out on course, it kind of felt like her and I were dancing. After our double clear round we headed off to cross country, all I could think about was the drop called the cliff. Out on course near the end is a combination called the hobbits cliff, it's name suits it quite well actually. We had to jump a skinny and rather wide cabin, three strides to the 5'4" drop, three strides to another identical cabin. It might sound easy but it was pretty intimidating while standing next to it. I quickly put everything I was thinking out of my mind as I left the start box. I never go out on course analyzing something, because the moment you start over thinking something you have unintentionally set yourself up for failure. I go out with the mind set that I will ride what I feel at the moment. You can mentally ride the course as many times as you want but in the end what happens on course is a total mystery until it occurs. The course rode great, we were a little slow only because I forgot my watch. Oh well lesson learned, make sure watch is super glued to arm...check! I won't write again until I get home because the Monday after Bromont I'll be driving back to good ole Missouri. I hope every ones week is wonderful.
Your Aspiring Olympic Rider,
Callie Adaire Judy
