Photos: Debbie/Midge, Tees, Alex/Cuba, Laura/Maggie
The Knoxvegas event crowd was out in force at the Tryon Riding & Hunt Club Schooling H.T. in Tryon, NC this weekend: Alex, Amelia, Callon, Kaylen, Kathryn, Laura B., Laura S., Tally and yours truly. I never looked at the scoreboard (sometimes, you just don't want to go there); however, I can vouch for the fact that our performances spanned the gamut of Awesomeness, ranging from Awesome!!! to Not-Very-Awesome-At-All.
For my part, I was very proud of Esprit overall despite the fact that we got eliminated cross-country for jumping a novice jump (we were going beginner novice). Oops. In classic Leslie fashion, Tally and her stallion Tees were galloping down the hill as I was galloping up the hill, and I was so excited to see that Tees had made it to the homestretch of his first event that I started hooting and hollering for them and kind of forgot that I was actually on course myself. I looked up and the novice up bank was just right there, so we jumped it. Fortunately, nobody stopped us until several jumps later, so we got a chance to jump the big scary "ditch" and splash through the water on our way home.
Tees didn't make it much further on the course himself (he's still a little traumatized from the water-boarding incident a couple weeks ago) but we're proud of him anyway because he was such a big boy up until that point, posting a nice dressage test and a clean, lovely stadium round.
On other fronts, the "If you keep this up, we're going to have to start hating you" award was a tie between Debbie/Midge and Amelia/Snoopy. I will never tire of watching Debbie freak out because she loves her horse so much after finishing cross-country. Snoopy got 2nd in his division, and for both of them, the event was a great final prep for the AECs.
The "No, you didn't" award went to Kathryn's horse. Kathryn offers this laundry list of things that went wrong during the show: "...the buck in dressage, the two bucks/tantrums in stadium warm-up, him not leaving the start box (though doing it eventually) then having 12 of the most amazing, exhilarating, perfect xc jumps of my life only to have my horse decide he wants nothing of fence 13 and would rather go back to the barn and tell me so by bucking me off (we weren't even CLOSE to the jump! I started to turn him left to head towards that last fence and he put his head down, turned right, and bucked me off). Cute, huh?" On the upside, Kathryn became a big fan of her new Point Two air vest.
Maggie's new owner, Laura, ended up competing in the novice division, having only ridden her mount twice pre-show. Laura greeted Maggie's dressage ring antics with a sense of humor--she looked like she was about to burst into laughter throughout the test--and had double clean rounds in stadium and cross-country. I think they're going to get along just fine.
It was hard to keep tabs on everyone but I think it's safe to say that it was a learning experience for us all, as a schooling show should be.
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