August 15th 2020. Ashley + Bacardi’s first show.
5:30 AM : Alarm clock goes off. I wake up and rub the sleep from my eyes and start mentally going over my checklist for the day. I get up, get dressed and grab my chaps and head out the door. I get in the car, double checking that I have cash for my hauler, her bottle of wine and the snack for myself, my trainer and Bacardi that I bought at the store the night before. I zip on over to the Starbucks and grab coffee for 3 people and lunch for Sara (my trainer) and I as well. Then I get on the road to the barn. On my way along Highway 2 I have a breathtaking view of Mt. Ranier.
6:36 AM: I arrive at the barn. I go in greet my main man and feed him breakfast. I make sure that he hasn’t made too much of a mess of himself from his bath the night before. I start getting all of my things from the tack room loaded into my car so that I can load them all in the trailer once it gets to the barn.
6:52 AM We load Bacardi on to the trailer and get on our way! Bacardi as always loaded like a champ. No issues, no fuss. In, tied and the door shut behind him.
We arrived to the beautiful Polestar Farm by 7:45ish, had our temp taken and the trailer parked, the horse unloaded and the trailer dropped. We said goodbye to our hauler and she would be back later that day to pick us up.
Sara and I hand walked Bacardi to the check in tent and then went to find his stall. We got him settled and then headed back to the trailer to figure out how to schlep in all of my tack etc. It was not an easy task. We finally got everything in and able to sit down by 9:20 ish and by then I had about 20 min to get my horse tacked and ready to ride for our dressage test at 9:40am.
Right around 9:30 I mounted up on a very anxious horse who had not had very much time to settle in. We started making our way to the dressage arena as he slowly but surely got more and more anxious. Once we got to the dressage arena, he was already worked up into a sweat to the point that it was dripping from his body. I got to the point where his behavior was making me uncomfortable, so I jumped off and Sara jumped on. He was willing to forward for her but ultimately he was far too unpredictable for me to be able to ride him confidently and we made the decision to scratch our dressage ride.
We made our way back to his stall, un-tacked and we all took a breather and had some snacks. Bacardi got some baby carrots while myself and Sara helped ourselves to apple turnovers. To kill some time before our 11:44 jump round ride Sara ran back to the trailer to grab a few things we left behind. One she got back, we took a walk around the facility with the purpose of finding where the grasshopper jump round would be and get a picture of the course layout so we could study it.
Once we got back to home base we sat down to keep cool and cracked the obligatory eventer can of wine. We also made the decision that we would tack Bacardi up as close to our ride time as possible and ride (hopefully) straight into the arena, jump and be done.
Right around 11:30 I started tacking him up and mounted up around 11:35. We made our way down the the jump field, which was only about 100 yards away, but even that proved too much for Bacardi to overcome. Also, unfortunately, the grasshopper rounds were running about 6 riders behind so we had more time to kill then was thought. We took him back to the stall and tried to lunge him just a little to get his head in the game. Despite our best efforts, it was in vain. He was still incredibly worked up and we made the ultimate decision for Sara to ride his jump round.
He gave he quite a run for her money and it wasn’t the prettiest of performances, but he got over most of the jumps and tackled some new obstacles he had not seen at home.
We got him back, got tack packed up and started heading out for the trailer. Thankfully we were able to drive the car up to the office tent and did not have to haul the trunk all the way to the trailer. Kim, our hauler showed up around 1:05 and we got on the rode at 1:30 back home. We got him back to farm around 2:20 and unloaded. I was able to unload my tack in record time and head home myself.
There were a lot of learning moments to this day and a lot of positives. Stay tuned for my follow up on what went great and what we get to work on in the coming months.
Happy Riding!
A+B