Horse Show! Cobblestone Eventing Trials

Madison bought Vince 2 years ago with intentions of making him her eventing mount.  Since he was an off the track thoroughbred, she brought him along slowly starting with lots of flat work last year and then slowly starting him over jumps.  Last fall we took him out to school cross country and he did great!  He went to a couple of hunter jumper shows to do Jumpers and was awesome.  So last weekend was his first big Eventing show at Cobblestone.  The week before we took him out there to school cross country and like last fall, he did great!

Madison was hyped and ready for this show. She had her horse ready, she was ready, and she knew her competition.  While she didn't show until Saturday, we went out on Thursday night to pick up her show packet, find where she would stall Vince, and walk the cross country course.  It was a beautiful afternoon.

This is the second set of jumps on the course.  Madison and Vince would be jumping the second one on the left - the smaller of the two that look like stacked logs.  From here the course went to the right around that big tree and then back to the left along that distant tree line.

Most of these are the jumps around the pond that is also part of the course.  The red barn in the distance is part of a gorgeous farm.

The total course was about 2 miles long.  This was along the far side and almost the furthest point from the start.  I should have done a "map my walk" when we did this so I could have exported the map.

This was a brand new jump on the course and one that worried Madison a little since Vince had never seen it.  It was the second to the last jump for her level.

This is looking back at all the tents and portable stalls from Zeeb Road.  The rails set up just beyond the taller weeds is the start box for cross country and you can see the first set of jumps on the right just below the horizon line. With almost 300 entries, we figured there were at least 600 people out there at any given time during the weekend.

Saturday morning - horse show day!!

First class of the weekend was dressage.  The dressage arenas were almost a mile from the stall area under those big white tents with the stalls.  Madison and Vince and I had to walk along a path that wound around the cross country course and back out to Cobblestone's main barn and arenas.  Vince was not amused with the horses running at him on the XC course and got a bit worked up on our walk to dressage.

While their dressage test wasn't terrible, it was far worse than what he's been doing at home.   He was very tense and "looky".

They scored a 32 which wasn't great but not awful which put them in 6th place out of 16.

After being able to relax for a few hours, it was time for show jumping.  Vince did great in the warm up but this would be his first time jumping rails on a rolling grass arena instead of in a flat sand arena.  And with lots and lots of other horses running past on the XC course and practice areas...

He wasn't his best although him and Madison both were trying really, really hard!

Saturday's efforts were a bit disappointing.  After dressage and show jumping, they were tied for 9th place.  It was becoming clear that Vince wasn't happy in this eventing environment and Madison made the decision that she wasn't going to push him on XC the next day.  She was treating it like a schooling run and if at any time she felt like she should quit, she would. There was no point in putting herself or her horse in danger.  It had been a long, hot, bummer of a day but also good in that she had learned some important lessons about her horse.

Sunday morning was even more hot and humid than Saturday and their XC run wasn't until 12:22.  After getting Vince fed and walked a bit, we spent a lot of time sitting around trying not to sweat.  At 11:30 it was time to tack up and warm up for XC.  Madison and Vince got ready and she walked him out near the 6th jump where there were horses warming up for their stadium jumping.  Vince would be running straight towards them later on and she wanted him to see this.  When they walked back past where I was stationed, I filled Madison up with more water and then found a tiny spot of shade under a baby tree to wait until it was closer to their time to go.

And they were off! In the below video you can very clearly see the first 5 jumps.  I stop filming when he stopped at the 6th but you can't really see it.

Jumps 1-3 went well.  And after that he fell apart.  They made it to the water and as I ran up over the hill to see where they were, I found them still trying to get through the small pond...and that's where they were disqualified.  It was just as well.  He had dodged or tried refusing jumps 4, 5 & 6.  He was fried.  Madison was tired of pushing him so hard.  They were done.

So no more eventing for Vince and maybe not Madison either except just for fun.  She has decided she likes the Jumpers and so does Vince.  His feet probably can't handle XC long term anyway so this will be a good thing for him.  It was a long hot weekend with some disappointments but also filled with good lessons and good decisions.