It is now the end of September and officialy the end of the summer eventing season. This is quite a drag because, as it often goes with horses my season did not turn out as I had expected. My first event this year was the Abbe Ranch Horse Trials in beginner novice. Not only was this my first event of the year it was also my first event ever! We started out in 12th place with a 48 after dressage. Not that bad considering that I had no idea what 'above the aids' meant. And then onto X-C. We started out ok but entering the woods Kiona (my horse) didn't think that she should really be jumping in the woods but we came out of it alright with 2 refusals and an almost fall, (i made an extrordinary effort to pull myself back on in light of the new 1 fall and your out rule). After exiting the woods the rest of the course went beutifully, but because of the little fiasco in the woods we ended up with 60 time falts and a total score that i am not willing to mention =] So onto stadium we went and unfortunatly Kiona started to get a real bleeder going on out of her left nostril and after talking to the vet and not bieng able to discern the cause we decided to withdraw. Luckily by the time we were back to the trailer and untacked she had stopped bleeding, but not after wiping a big smear across my show shirt! I think that the altitude got to her and she just poked herself with a blade of grass or something.
So after Abbe Ranch I had planned to go to 1 more event but that didn't pan out. I am now happily setting my sights on next year and getting really excited because I just started jumping novice fences! I can hardly believe that I only started riding englisg a year ago it feels like I have been part of it forever...
Anyways above are some pictures of Kiona and I.
