Brookleigh ODE was Crafty's first event for the season and he was very well behaved all weekend. Our dressage was in a 20x40 arena and not only did we manage to fit in it but Crafty did a really cute test finishing up on a score of 48. He warmed up well and did not appear stressed trotting around with all the other horses, I just let him find his feet in the arena, not putting too much pressure on him as I felt his first time out needed to be an enjoyable experience. We also did SJ on Saturday and Crafty did a nice clear round jumping all the scary fill. Now I thought Sunday was going to be our biggest test as Crafty can be a bit spooky training, but I was pleasantly surprised when he cantered out the start box, found a lovely rhythm and took it all in his stride. It was a reasonably tricky Intro course with a lot of variety. We had a log on a mound two strides down to a narrow, a sunken road, ditch/palisade combination and two water jumps, crafty cantered around all of it with me needing to trot to the finish line as he has a deceptively large stride, finishing up right on time. Crafty finished on his Dressage score and placed 3rd! It wasn't until I looked at the score board at the end of the day that I realised we could have been 1st if we went a bit slower as 1st, 2nd & 3rd were on the exact same score and placings came down to whoever was closest to the optimum xc time. Overall I was very pleased and look forward to our next event :)
No comments:
Post a Comment