Sheer grit and a sense of humor.

by Robyn

Keni Kerin and Idolace, Summer Dressage I & II, 2011. Photo by Valerie Durbon

I knew very early on that this was going to be a good weekend–scores and ribbons notwithstanding.

Now that I’m back to working full time, I’m even more hyper-scheduled to the minute. I left work Friday and arrived at the Raleigh show grounds around 6:15. I was privileged to have the Kerin’s bring both our horses in my rig and get Bravo all set up and settled in–I was able to be on Bravo’s back and warming up shortly after arriving. As always, I was able to walk down into the warm up on the buckle. My plan was to cut through the warm up ring and go straight to the competition area, which was laid out differently than in the past. One wounded garbage barrel lying on it’s side threatened our plans, but after a few snorts, half-spins and a side-eye we successfully thwarted an attack and made it to the rings.

In my car on the way to the show grounds, the radio announced a staggering 102 degrees remaining outside. Every year I swear the summers get worse (and I’m not sure I’m wrong). I was hoping the heat would temper any antics Bravo had planned so that we could have a quick warm up and save some energy for the show ring. As soon as I picked up the reins, Bravo swung his haunches around and began to piaffe. Sigh. Here we go. In my last lesson with Anne (and also since then on my own) I have been doing transitions within gaits, really “bouncing” Bravo back and forth. I immediately employed this to get his attention: walk–super collected–walk; big trot–small trot–half steps–big trot. As soon as I felt he was capable of listening (despite the hump in his back), I proceeded to real work in the trot and canter. In my mind I was replaying the tapes of previous lessons with Anne; “Forward is your friend”, “If he’s taking you back to the barn, then at least do it in an uphill 3-beat canter”, “Your hands belong to him”. I gave when I could, and tried to channel all that energy and nonsense into elastic and forward instead of tense and up-and-down. 

And damn if it didn’t work. I won’t take all the credit (just most of it)–if Bravo had really turned on the uglies I would have been forced to punt and get my lunging stuff. However, I have “punted” earlier rather than risk an escalation in previous situations, and for whatever reason I just got on with it this time. I still had to school a tiny bit longer than I would have ideally liked given the heat predictions for the weekend, but I didn’t have to wear him out, either.

At this point, I knew I had won regardless of what happened once the show started. Not only did I put on my big-girl panties and ride through a frisky B, I actually rode smartly and effectively rather than just water skiing around hoping to tire him out. “Epiphanies” like these make me feel like a real Rider (with a capital “R”).

Luckily for Keni and I, we had early ride times all weekend. This makes for a bit of a frantic morning, but is well worth it. I paused my brief and spicy warm up Saturday morning to watch Keni ride another “proficient” PSG test (to a 61% and a win) and then tuned up a tiny bit more before heading into the ring. This approach was a bit different from Doswell.  At Doswell, I had the “perfect” horse after lunging and riding Friday and a pretty thorough warm up on Saturday before my first test. By Sunday I had ZERO horse left. This time I erred on the side of too much energy for my first test figuring that even if the first ride was akin to managed chaos, at least I’d have something left at the end of the weekend.

And damn if that didn’t work, too. The test was certainly not mistake free, and it was Second level test 2–which I dislike only slightly less than Second level test 1–landing me a win in a small class with a small score. Basically the walk and trot were highly rewarded, and the canternotsomuch. While I would like to argue that the canter is Bravo’s best gait, this underlying sentiment has been echoed in my recent work at home–the trot work has escalated immensely, I “found” my good walk again, but the canter has sort of been sitting in the corner like a braces-clad boy at the high school dance (although the simple changes continue to get good scores). I rode my second test (Second level test 3–which I actually like for some reason) just over an hour later with an equally small score for different reasons. This time Bravo had a fly on his belly that must have landed there at our halt at X. He walked out of the halt kicking his belly, then trotted kicking at his belly every few strides up to C, around the turn, and through our entire first medium trot. While I was quite impressed with both this athletic ability and the fact that he didn’t lose his cool despite being driven crazy by that bugger of a bug, the judge was not. (Unbalanced and loss of rhythm? You try trotting on 3 legs!) The rest of the test was a good many 7′s with some 6′s and an 8, but those first low marks landed us in 2nd place in a larger Dover medal class.

Once that fly was finally dislodged, our second medium trot was the best I’ve had to date for one of our 7′s. At Doswell I could get a medium trot for about 2/3 of the diagonal line before Bravo would just fall on his face and run–this time the mediums varied a bit in quality, but lasted letter to letter! Bravo’s medium trot remains one of our accomplishments that really makes me grin ear to ear. James never could muster enough suspension to develop the medium trot, and Graham was super fancy with the front end but was never through and always quickened the tempo. Bravo has the first REAL medium of all my horses, and it tickles me to no end to feel his front end rise like a boat accelerating in the water while his tempo actually decreases a touch. It gives me chills thinking about it–and to think it was just January when we got the first few steps!

Sunday arrived bright and early, and Keni again began our day by kicking all the FEI TOC competition to the curb with a blistering 65% at PSG with her usual panache. I hurried back to the barn after her test to get ready for mine, deciding to basically do a 10 minute warm up for our first class (2nd/3 again). Unfortunately, even with this minimal warm up I had to use quite a bit of leg, spur, and even a few flicks of the whip to keep Bravo truly forward. The walk was good again (for straight 8′s), the trot felt about the same, and the canter improved in uphill feeling for me. The score reflected my feeling for the test, and we came out on top with a 67+%. The best part were the judges comments of “Overall energetic with honest basics”. Honest basics are what it’s all about so I’ll take that compliment to heart.

I stuck Bravo in front of the fan for the 50 minutes until our last test of the show–our exciting and terrifying debut at Third level. At this point I had no idea what to expect–I had very little horse left, and our changes at home are inconsistent at best and at worst involve leaving the ring with head between knees (his, not mine). In the end, I had some bad horse-show luck (one more point anywhere in the test would have put us over 60%) but LOTS TO LOVE about the well-monikered Super Pony. It started with a trip almost to the knees on our entry one stride before the halt. (5; needs balance into halt. Ha!) Then the trot work 7,6,7,7. Then our first medium (of which even the belly-kicker got a 5) and Bravo SLAMS on the brakes spooking at the photographer crouching at the sidelines. (3; breaks, very resistant at F. Double ha!). Then some halt/reinback/walk/canter work for 6,8,8,6,6,7. First change on the aid, fluid but LATE behind (4), second change ignore ignore ignore stick buck change (3) and there you go 59.7%. But the good news is that our half-passes got a 6 and 7, and our extended canter and trot (which I heretofore didn’t realize existed) got a 7 and 6.

People don’t usually dance a jig at the scoreboard over a 59.7%, but indeed there was much rejoicing.

Noteworthy other than my excellent adventures were Keni Kerin’s aforementioned double wins at PSG, Liz Bromberg who finished her Bronze medal with Magda (yippee!), and Tami Taft (aka my life-twin) with her first USDF show on her fancy mare Coatina (and at least one blue ribbon!). We stabled next to the absolutely delightful Valerie Durbon (also with her Third level debut) who was charming, takes great photos (including the one at the beginning of this post), and has a fabulous accent (oui oui!). Brendan Curtis demonstrated his ability to run the 400 in under 45 seconds while being drug by a yearling. Two words, Brendan: Flow Bee (C’mon, I’m just saying out loud what everyone is thinking ). Susie Wiedman (whose group won stuff all weekend) signed me up on a Pro Am team with Diana Hoberecht (aka sunniest person on Earth) behind my back (did we win?). Charlie Musco announced me as “Hot to trot”. Lastly, once again, Janine Malone ran a great show–on time, good footing, great prizes.