The photo above includes some of my favorite owners, students, and the most loyal Blue Clover Eventing supporters. Unfortunately, not a single one of them came to Olney Farm HT this past Sunday, and why they didn't want to spend the 100 degree Sunday outside with us in a field, I can't possible imagine :) In fact, not even our token Lercher went with us to the show! I knew it was going to be hot hot hot - and turns out so were our results! Speaking of the heat, I want to thank the entire crew at Olney, to volunteer is a thankless job and to volunteer on such a miserably hot and humid day, bravo. I also can't imagine what it was like setting up for the HT Thursday-Saturday where I think nearly every day broke a record for heat index in MD.Luckily our times had us in and out, and Trisha did a great job of keeping everyone on track. We did have several visitors that lent a helping hand (and brought us an amazing peach cake - thank you!!) and it is always fun to share all the gory details with anyone that is willing to listen. Marian didn't have too many gory details, she won on her dressage score in the Training Rider division woop woop! I was quite proud of her as she can be very hard on herself and the past two weeks has made a choice to focus on positive instead of negative, and I say she did a great job and she got ribbons and loot to prove it! The courses at Olney are not the biggest and toughest for their respective levels; but they have a lot of tricky places here and there and Marian and Tanner rose to the occasion and won a nail-biting tie for first that came down to closest to optimum time on cross country.
Our other superstar of the day was my favorite little grey mare, Splish Splash. After a nearly perfect record at Beginner Novice (she was only second ONCE by .5) it really was time for her to make the move up to the big Novice. I thought we were sunk as soon as we started. She grinds on the bit just out of habit, she is a lovely mover and scores in the 20s and she just does it without even thinking. In the indoor at Olney, it was deafeningly silent and with no doors windows nothing I swear I couldn't even hear myself think over the crunch crunch crunch noise of her loose ring double jointed snaffle. If I were the judge I know I would have just fixated on it. But, the streak continues, she was winning after dressage on a 20-something and never looked back! She did look down, and tried to put her feet down, while half way over the log on the lump out on cross country. I had never seen this at novice, it was legitimate! and Splash had certainly never seen anything like it. From up on top of the mound you see the ramp into the water, and ironic as it is Splish Splash didn't care much for water when she first started her eventing career. I was one step ahead of her luckily and through all the flags we went on the first try. (Sabrina, if you are reading this, we will definitely have me school this again once or twice before you and Splash attempt this together lol.)
Lucky did the same thing in his novice division, although unfortunately his day was ruined as soon as he went into the indoor. Apparently Lucky has never seen a mirror and didn't know just how good looking he is, and couldn't get enough of himself anytime we attempted to go down a longside or into a corner. Sadly, Novice Test B calls for you to go both down the long side and into a corner lol. He jumped really really well and was very relaxed in warm up, so we considered that a success.
Next week we are off to Millbrook. There will be some good cross country schooling to be done here in the meantime. Smarty needs some skinnies, Morris needs a bunker-style ditch and a 4x4, and Marian and Trisha are both looking to move up to the big P. So they just need to jump anything and everything that they think looks big and scary!! Oh the fun we will have!!
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