Brooke Baugher won the Waredaca training three-day division C over the weekend and was kind enough to write about her experience for Eventing Nation. I have known Brooke for many years and watched her develop into an excellent young rider under her coach Emily Beshear, who owns and operates Brickland Farm in central Virginia. Jade Cooling, one of Emily’s working students, took the fabulous photos that are included in this post. Thanks for writing this Brooke and thank you for reading.
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From Brooke:
The Training Three Day was an awesome experience. I don’t think that I have ever had so much fun at an event in my life! The week was, although very busy, a really cool learning experience. Looking back, there is plenty of room for improvement, but I wouldn’t change anything about how it turned out!
We started off the week with our first horse inspection after attending a very helpful seminar with guest speaker Eric Smiley, who provided all of the competitors with a lot of great information and laughs throughout the week. After finding out I was the last competitor to jog, Gilly and I settled in and waited for the other 40 competitors to finish their jogs (all successfully). After jogs it was off to hack around to roads and tracks course!
Wednesday was dressage day, and I was pretty pumped because Gilly had felt great the night before. My trainer, Emily Beshear, came up to help us out with the warm up and made sure we were 100% ready to go in the ring. It was our first time in a big arena, and it was really nice. The test felt pretty good, other than a few movements, and I ended up with a decent score, even with two points taken off for talking in the ring… After dressage, I took care of Gilly and went out to walk the cross country course with Emily.
After walking the course with Emily, I walked it again with another student from Brickland, Jade Cooling. As we walked around, we talked about what the following day was going to be like, and she hit the nail on the head when she said, “I’m not even nervous; mainly because I have no clue what tomorrow is going to be like.” For all of the first time Three Day competitors I think it rang true.
Emily tending to Gilly on XC day
At the start of cross country day, we started by getting together a muck tub full of things that Emily had put on a list for us the night before. Her “brief” list included over 20 items that we may have needed. I headed out to the start of phase a wearing not only my regular cross country gear, but also two watches on my left arm and my whip watch. That morning, Emily had also written the optimum times for each phase on my right arm. I was set. Gilly and I easily came in within the time limit for phase A and stood (or attempted to stand) waiting impatiently for the start of the steeplechase. Gilly was pretty revved up for the steeplechase and after coming in under the time limit by about 20 seconds we left for phase C. I can’t say we did much walking and recovering…he wasn’t really going for it. We came in a few minutes early to the 10 minute box, but Gilly was barely tired and we were both pretty excited for cross country! The course rode really great, and even though there were a few errors on my part, Gilly took very good care of me and we made it within the time limit. Needless to say he got many well-deserved carrots and A+ treatment after!
The last day of the competition meant one more jog. Gilly got a quick clean up and then got an all clear for the stadium jumping. I came into stadium in second place, the top three places less than a point apart. I felt really ready to tackle the course. The third place competitor put in a great round, leaving us with no room for error. But, Gilly was a trooper as always and put in an A+ round, and left all of the rails in the cups! As we stood outside waiting, I was told that the competitor in first pulled a rail; I was immediately congratulated and many high-fives were exchanged. The highlight of the week for Gilly, I believe, was getting to lead the victory gallop after impatiently waiting through the awards.
The week was amazing! The entire competition was very well run…thanks to all of the organizers for putting the Three Day on! Also, I think I can speak for Jade and I when I say that without Emily we wouldn’t have done as well as we did. After helping her students to win the Three Day two consecutive years and three years all together, Emily easily earns the title of “best trainer” in my book!
