Epic Hangover

...of the horse show variety, har har har.

I meant to do this post before everyone overshadowed me with their AEC successes and course walk photos and free XC watch giveaways and t shirts and hats and... whatnot (slightly bitter about this), but I simply could not make myself do it after the show.

It was a great show, don't get me wrong! I just worked so much around it, that I was near the verge of sleeping while walking.

Now, 9 days later, I've lost my gusto and excitement/frustrations of the day, but I will still try to make it a post worth reading.

Yankee was...perfect. I don't know why I was ever worried. His rollbacks were on mark, he galloped fast when I asked, he rated on a dime, his turns were smooth, he picked his feet up and he was happy. So I was happy.

People were dazzled by the hackamore. Have they really not seen a horse in  hackamore before?

For the most part I was anxious about remembering my courses...there were 4, not counting jump offs.

I have a difficult time remembering my dressage tests in my "oh shit" moments, so I was slightly extremely frightened I would be mid course and forget where I was going.

And oh it happened.

Twice.

To watch a pretty amusing video of me cursing loudly and asking the crowd "DO I GO HERE?", after twice forgetting my course, click HERE. Good grief.

I also skipped a fence completely and got eliminated in one class. It was tragic, because I would've won and it actually meant something to me because it was a 3'6 speed class. DAMMIT brain.

In the first class (my warmup, but a ticketed class), I got eliminated because I didn't do my jump off immediately. I have never once in my life stayed in the ring and ran my jump off round directly after the first and NO ONE bothered to tell me. I was not the only person to do so in the class, so they ribboned us anyways.

I STILL could not win the mini Prix and AGAIN got 4th. I think we will forever get 4th in this class. We were less than 1 second away from the winning time so it was close.

I won the 3'6 class with a stellar jump off, won the 2'9 speed and got some other places mixed in there. Not one rail or refusal though, so I was super pumped about that.

My favorite thing about this show? Free adult beverages.

Bloody Mary's for the win

I also had an amazing cheering section that stuck out a 9 hour show day with me. My friends came and my boyfriend, who is slowly befriending Yankee and realizing that he indeed, will not eat him.

Watch out, future horse husband in training

Overall, a stunning show. As always the owner outdid herself with the prizes and I had tons of fun. Absolutely worth the money, time and distance travelled! I'm sad I will never get to show at that venue again, but I'm gad I made my last trip a good one.

**EDIT: I just realized, I uploaded the wrong video. Its a jump off round, not the round where I messed up. HAH. Fudge.