Eventing Derby Weekend at Colorado Horse Park

This weekend Jasi and I took Raven to the Colorado Horse Park to compete in their eventing derby.  Usually the horse park hosts a few full horse trials every year, but this year they were all cancelled as the park works to prepare to host the Area IX championships in September.  It's a mixed blessing, as it's great for our area to be hosting championships, but to cancel the horse trials at the park makes it difficult for people in our area to qualify to ride in the championships this year.  Thankfully they were still able to host the derby, which is like a modified horse trial.

The horses could be entered in just dressage, just jumping, or both.  I entered Raven in both, so on Saturday morning we rode a dressage test.  She was absolutely bonkers in the stall, and was pretty wild in the warmup.  She did finally settle nicely in warmup, but when we went over to the dressage arena to ride our test things went downhill fast.  It's customary to ride around the outside of the arena and tell the judge and scribe your name and competition number before you start your test.  We did so, but as we approached the judges booth there was a blanket hanging over the side to shade their faces from the sun.  The blanket was flapping and snapping a bit in the breeze, and Raven determined that it was a horse eating monster.  This resulted in her attaining new levels of tension in her actual test.  It wasn't pretty, but we got it done.  On the other hand it wasn't anywhere near as bad as last weekend, so I called it success.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbTwcMTfWKk

The second portion of the derby was a ride in the afternoon where we did a jumping course consisting of both stadium and cross country fences.  The stadium portion was great, a very twisty and turn-y five fences that catered to Raven's handiness.  There was a large wooden wagon sitting in the field as decoration which made Raven stop hard to inspect its potential as a horse monster.  Fortunately she believed me when I said it was safe and she continued on.  Jasi was able to get some video of the jumping too, and it came out really well considering how far away from us she actually was!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCNjBrLr8yA

Since the derby was just a one day event, but the horse park opened for schooling their cross country course starting the following day, we also brought Highboy and Miss Pea for the weekend.  It was a remarkable difference between Highboy and Miss Pea versus Raven in the stalls.  Raven was bucking, rearing, screaming, generally causing mayhem if she couldn't see me.  She would get wild if either Miss Pea or Highboy left the stalling area as well.  

Schooling on the cross country course the following morning was great fun.  I rode Highboy (who spent the first half hour partying complete with full airborne shenanigans) and Jasi rode Miss Pea who merely stood at a distance watching Highboy with polite disinterest.

 

The good news was that once Highboy put his brain back in his head and quit doing impromptu airs above ground (a stablemate said she swore she saw him doing some levade out on course), he morphed into a fun-loving but athletic cross country horse.

Miss Pea also enjoyed the work up the bank.  The mare loves to gallop and hopping up a stair is great fun for her.

Both horses enjoyed the long gallops and running through the water.

Once Highboy was finished messing around with the small logs he really turned it on.  He focuses so much better on complicated jumps than simple ones.  He did some work on a prelim series involving jumping barrels into the water, jumping barrels out of the water, then a few strides to jumping barrels away from the water.

We also added in a small trakehner (log over a ditch) to our barrels series, and Highboy did all of it well.

Video of Highboy doing this combination can be seen here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9BGfT6hw5o

Miss Pea had fun with her fences too. I was so impressed with how quiet and sensible she was, and how well Jasi piloted her around the course.

Some video of Jasi and Miss Pea working on the full course can be seen here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D7yYBBW4_w

It was a super fun weekend, and we're so grateful for Kimberly Hale Photography for coming down and taking photos of the schooling.  Sara took the videos for us, and Forrest the dog was an awesome cheerleader all weekend.