Monty Rocks Beginner Novice

Monty and I made it to the Colorado Horse Park and had an excellent time in the jump school on the first day! Monty insisted the best part of eventing is the deep bedding in the stall. He rolled three times just to revel in the soft scratch of pine shavings on his excessively clean body.

 
On Friday, Monty and I made it through dressage. Not my favorite test performance, but it clarified the things I want to focus on with him next. Miles and I walked the cross country course, which was beautiful and amazing.  The horse park had REALLY stepped up the presentation for this season!

Monty expressed to me the following day that he was very ready to move up a level in competition. He was super chill in the warm up, hopping over the simple warm up fences and then walking around on a loose rein with my feet out of the stirrups.  Then when we went out on the XC course for our run Monty made it look like a smooth hunter round. Easy galloping, confident through the water as well as the several angled fences and tricky turns that seem to have been put there just for him because he's so good at them. 

Our XC ride was at 8:30am, so I had all day to watch the upper level rides go.  The course was a little tricky for our beginner novice level so early in the season, but the questions really played to Monty's strengths so I was eager to go! "I had a dream so big and loud, I jumped so high I touched a cloud. This is gonna be the best ride of my life."

The show ended fabulously.  The showjumping course on day three was quite technical, all bending lines or angled fences, and lots of turning and changing directions.  We had compliments from complete strangers on our turnout with how tidy and official we looked.  In response I explained that he's quite a horse and I wanted to do him justice!  We also had great comments on our fast and accurate ride, as well as comments on what a nice jumper Monty is. 

I took the shortest lines and more challenging angles, because Monty jumps better when he's really thinking.  Monty just ate it up, the more he has to concentrate the better he jumps.  We came in 9th out of 21 with a pretty silver ribbon.  When I finally got around to picking up my dressage test from the office the judge had written some very kind and encouraging comments regarding when Monty had little bobbles in the test.  Overall a great success, another horse triathlon in the books!

Monty is available to purchase, his sale ad can be viewed at:
http://bitofhoneytraining.blogspot.com/2015/06/montys-updated-sale-ad.html