And...pinch me?!

This past weekend, we loaded up yet again and headed down to Hoosier Horse Park for the Octoberfest Charity Horse Show Combined Test and Dressage Show. This time, Brandi and Chase were showing Thor and Royal as well. We hauled in Saturday afternoon to a warm sunny day and got settled into our stalls. I tacked up and wandered around and warmed up in the dressage arena and then meandered down to the jump area to hop over a couple of sticks in the warm up and chat with friends while Cinder ate grass. My friend Eron popped her over a 2 foot course for me just to get her in the arena. Sunday morning came early. I managed to arrive at the pitch black dark horse park at about 6:40 am. Cinder demanded handgrazing time. There were no social media pics because uhmmm too dark!!!!! I gave her a good 20 minutes of green grass, then put her in and re-hitched the trailer before the rain and winds came in. Chase and Thor made their combined test debut before the worse of the first deluge. Sadly, we were not so lucky and Cinder and I opted to wait till as late as possible..which was 20 minutes before our ride time. I walked to the mounting block and by the time I got on, my saddle was soaked through. My full seat breeches were not totally soaked and luckily instead of DC McBroom's wet liver experiences, I got gorilla glue like stick! I was thankful that I had packed my Kerrits riding rain jacket. Woo Hoo, Score! We warmed up and the rain lessened for our test, but we seriously lacked impulsion and the dreaded left bend was actually somewhat present however, the inside drift showed up in trade. Dang it! Great news was that Chase got an improved score in dressage and jumped the poles and got a red ribbon! Brandi and Royal got their first show together out of the way with good scores and WOO HOOO, she broke 60% in Intro C. First show season goal slayed! Cinder and I went to stadium (crossrails people, but hey it's been 6 years since I did a CT) and the warm up arena was ankle deep so we opted to go in cold. Just to recap- Cinder and I have jumped 8 times ever and have never jumped a course. 2 of those times were one crossrail in my indoor both directions. So we bravely trotted into the arena (thankfully in a no rain moment) and proceeded to trot quietly over 9 crossrails in order with no casulaties. We made it! She did look at the pots of mums beside the jumps and was like... what/why.. I was like they are just flowers and we don't have to jump them... and she was like..oh ok, that's cool. She's a good girl and we celebrated with some bites of grass on the way back to the stalls. When I went back to pick up my test, it took me a minute to mentally process the score...6 years people... and we decided it was acceptable :-) I found out later that we finished first in our class. We jumped the sticks and won the thing!!!! Good Girl Tinner Binner.

We will not discuss the trip back that included rain nearly the entire way and winds gusting up to 30 MPH at points because.... I Just Can't Even.