Gemwood & Pony Camp

Pony Camp!!!!! The week following Stone Place was Eventing/Pony Camp. Lauren L. and I had five little girls and their ponies to entertain for the week. They were darling and had so much fun. They had a jump lesson every day and we went on several "trail rides" down to the house and back (this entailed us going for a hike on foot beside them). They were big into silly bands and I got a princess/fairy wand silly band out of the deal.

The Tuesday after Stone Place, I did the group jump lesson. Neither myself or the other two riders had really jumped our horses since Martha had been gone and back. Therefore it was the jump lesson from hell. Refusals, crashing jumps, run outs... I was pleased at the end of the lesson to have only taken down one pole and one standard, haha. To add to it, Hickory had worn himself out that day galloping around his field and whinnying for Mr. Incredible, his pasturemate, who was being used in camp. So even though it was fairly cool out, he was preetty winded. We had a real skinny in our course, which was fun and Hick was realy cute at.

Wednesday we had a dressage lesson and practiced riding my test. Takeaway points were lengthen reins slightly after trot to walk downward transition to have a better medium walk, and bring him more round before canter departs. And stop forgetting my test. Well, actually, to learn my test.

Thursday I dressaged again, just practicing.

Friday we loaded up and headed out to Gemwood Horse Trials in Fairborn, OH. We had tent stabling, which I think actually turned out to be pretty nice--we had a GREAT breeze. Hickory was a little fireball Saturday when I got him out for dressage warm-up. Martha said, "Wow. Well, this is a completely different horse than at home." I had a difficult time getting him to relax and stop curling and move nicely in our warm up. And he really is like two different horses at home and at a show. to the point where you can't really ride him the same way. To the dressage test. It wasn't fantastic. It wasn't terrible, but I left the arena dissapointed. It was worse than our test last weekend at Stone Place. Not the winning ride we were expecting. It ended up being a 38, with most of the comments being about straightness and bend and line. The judge's final comments were "Good start, headed in the right direction." Martha was happy, she said this was a difficult judge who was hard to get good comments out of. So, that was so-so. I think I was in 8th place-ish after dressage. Then there was the stud fiasco. We needed to put in studs for stadium as it was in grass. Could not get my studs in. Hot. Working bent over with big Hickory's feet. Not happy. Had to get help. Ohh.. I wasn't using a T-tap to tap out my threads before I put my studs in. Oops. And then stadium was basically a disaster. He was behind my leg and jumping wickedly huge and cracking his back and I fell after the last jump. Should have recognized the behind my leg issue in the warm up. Was trying to ride him up and to my hand in the ring but didn't have any hand with the hackamore to ride him to. Hackamore tossed. Good at home, wrong for shows. Had a fun rest of the weekend, though. Saturday was Dieke's birthday so we all went out to eat. And everyone else had great rides.

Our improvement plan: Toss the hackamore. Feed at shows half the grain he normally gets. Take him out for a ride before dressage warm-up.