Ready for a move up

 This morning Fanny and I had an absolutely awesome jump lesson! We had been debating on whether to do P/T at Poplar ht next weekend, or whether we should just stick with training. The jump lesson this morning, set at max prelim height, said yes to P/T! Fanny was nearly perfect in every course. Needless to say, I'm beyond excited to be moving a little closer towards my goal of young riders next year! Now we're on the way to Chatt Hills for one last XC school before next weekend. I haven't posted on here in a while, so I'll just do a little update on Rain too. For some reason, Rain decided she would start a lovely new habit of non-stop head tossing. Even a running martingale isn't helping! Our dressage and jumping was just starting to really get good. I try my hardest not to use artificial training aids like draw reins or side reins, but I decided I'd finally give loose draw reins a try. I'm not using them to cut corners and force her head down, just using them a little to help her realize head tossing is a no no and being in the contact isn't all that bad! Hopefully she'll go back to how great she was being before sometime soon..... Oh mares. 

A Cold, Rainy, and Rather Disappointing Weekend

Unfortunately this weekend did not go the way I'd been hoping it would. I had been working so hard to try to make it good, but the conditions this weekend were just not in my favor :/ It rained ALL day Saturday, steadily a good rain and at times pouring.. But the show must go on. I did my dressage in a muddy, puddly ring in the rain. It started out great, the first but of trot work and canter work was wonderful. Then Fanny decided she'd have a "Fanny" moment and threw a temper tantrum on the wrong lead canter which brought our score down (or I guess you'd consider it up) to a 35. We were in a four way tie for second before XC. The course was a good course with some tough questions, but they had been easily doable for Fanny and I in both schoolings... But the rain made it a bit harder. The ground was slop and it was super slick. Seeing in the pouring rain isn't super easy either. The course was actually going surprisingly well despite the conditions and we were perfectly on my minute markers... Until jump 9. By this jump, we'd been through water and tackled one of the super tough lines in the woods along with some scary jumps. We come to this log table, nothing scary, just your usual big log table cart thing. But, we had a runout. Fanny then proceeded popping and being stupid (like she does every time she runs out/stops because she knows she's gonna get in BIG trouble). We picked back up our gallop and cleared it no problem the second time. I have noooo idea what her problem was, but I'm figuring it may have something to do with the fact she did have a little slip about 8 strides out. I think it spooked her and she was just a little scared to jump right after it. Whatever her problem was, it wasn't an acceptable one. That freakout after her runout added a lot of time so we came out with 20 time penalties as well. We then moved to 7th, a good bit behind the rider in 6th :/ I played with the idea of withdrawing before SJ as I really didn't see a point in riding in the slop again. But, it dried out this morning and the footing looked great.. So why the heck not? We ended up having a great round and still finished the weekend in 7th. On the plus side, atleast we got a pretty purple ribbon and some cool prizes. If it wasn't for that ONE runout, we would have finished in second or possibly even first place :( Sad weekend, but hey, well be back next year.... Perhaps at prelim :)