Day 3: First Class

Ah, so now Day One of the show (day three of my trip) is behind me, I can breathe a sigh of relief that Delight did not blow up or leave the ring or buck me off or any of the other myriad naughty pony moments that could have occurred.

Oh'dark thirty at the Rolex Arena

Of course, this being a horse show, the day started around 4:30. Ouch, right? But of course with two rides for Team MacDonald, both had to be before 9 am...

Sambuca Extra and Courtney in their first Grand Prix test of the show

I watched my sister ride at 7:45 in the rolex arena then had to rush to get on my horse and down to the Dressage Complex (looong walk, remember?). I was running a bit behind schedule, even though I didn't have to get changed since I wore my 'dressage whites' under my clothes to start the day (planning ahead for a change), so I only had about twenty minutes of warm up.
The warm up with the lower levels riders is, in one word, terrifying. In my twenty minutes I was nearly run down by worried juniors and white faced ammys more times than I care to count. Deli-pony was NOT a fan...

However, we managed to pull a decent test out of thin air. It was much more relaxed than our Wednesday warm up, but not as relaxed as ideal. There was quite a bit of room for improvement... So imagine my suprise when I actually placed with a score of 69.6%.... Only three percent out of the lead. There's hope!

Of course, after wrapping up the our classes for the day before 9, we untacked the horses then moseyed over to watch a few tests (with Sam who stopped by for moral support!) and follow the grand tradition of horse people and critique and comment on the warm up and classes going on, then took the dogs on a little walk on the cross country course....

What's a visit to Rolex without a course walk?

At the end of the day, Team MacDonald took the Bucky and Delight out for a little ride to stretch their legs... On the cross country course. Delight took (most) of it in stride while Bucky was not impressed with the jumps. Or driving horses. Or paso finos from the store next door.
.... And after a little hand galloping, I can kind of begin to see the allure of eventing. It was FUN.

And dressage horses can go out and do just fine.