Cob Jockey

In the middle of a terrible practice ride on the show grounds, an hour after my husband texted me to tell my my dog had ripped my new eBay'ed Tredsteps to shreds, it started to pour down rain.  Sitting there in a borrowed saddle, in the pouring rain, feeling like shit and knowing I couldn't quit with Connor acting like a meathead was a very pity-party moment.

I'm keeping it all in perspective.  This is what you sign up for, with a green horse.  The night before we had the greatest flat/jump round of our life together, and not even 24 hours later, I couldn't get him to turn left or soften or put his head down in the warmup ring with our horses and a few others going around.  He was calling to the other horses and acting completely green, which was so disappointing to me after how focused he was during the GDHT warmup.  But things could always be worse than being green and unfocused.

Fence 6, the bogey fence for us.  We've never jumped hay before.

Looks tiny to me now.  It would not have felt that way a few weeks ago.

It got better, but only after about a half-hour of just ugly riding.  Then, right when it was getting better, it started pouring, raining so hard the raindrops hitting my skin hurt, and all the horses left.  I was in the middle of running through my Dressage test, so I kept going, and Connor turned into an animal again, spooking at the rain on the roof of the judge's box and screaming his head off.  I quit on a good note, when I finally found one, and walked back, soaked.

The good news is that stadium (18"ish) looks tiny to me, and there are no flowers.  We're finally schooling higher than we're showing (2'3" and maybe 2'6" here and there).  Here's hoping he got that out of his system and tomorrow is better.