Steph Rhodes-Bosch Road to the WEGs, Chapter 4

One of the first things Steph did after winning the advanced at Richland and then driving home to Virginia all night was sit down and write her EN guest blog.  We appreciate the dedication Steph!  Please visit Steph’s site to learn more about her and be sure to check out her fundraising opportunities.  The road to the WEGs is, if nothing else, expensive.  Thanks for writing this Steph and thank you for reading.

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From Steph:

This past weekend, Ollie and I took another step forward in our fall season at the Richland Park Horse Trials in Michigan. This was my first time at this event, and it was well worth the 11 hour drive! I drove up overnight on Tuesday with Rebecca Howard, mostly so that we could have lessons on Tuesday morning with David while still giving our horses all day Wednesday to rest and recover from the trip. We figured that we spend most nights staring at the ceiling thinking about our dressage tests anyways…. so we might as well just drive!! 
 
Ollie travelled well, as always, and felt very good in our pre-ride on Thurdsday morning. Our test wasn’t until late in the day, so I got on him about 10 am to see what sorts of things I would need to focus on for our final warmup. We had some serious dressage bootcamp with David in the week leading up to the competition, and I felt like we were a lot better for it technically, but there’s still a lot of improvement to be had as we get comfortable. I was pretty pleased with my test, but as usual felt like there was more to be shown, and I was very happy with our score of 31.7. I’m going to use the next 10 days to work towards squeezing out an even better test at the AEC’s! 
 
I was very excited to see that the  cross country course looked like a fun, galloping ride around. After our quiet jump around the Intermediate at Waredaca two weeks ago, it was a very good next step! Not super huge, and not a ton of technical stuff, but a great chance for us to practice the exercises and also to practice jumping out of a bit of a faster rhythm. Ollie is usually very quiet in the start box, but on Saturday he was ready to get on with it and really peeled out of there!! The first jump was quite close to the start, so we jumped that and the second a little quietly before getting up to speed for the third fence. I don’t really know why, but apparently quite a few horses landed hard into the first water at fence 5, and Ollie definitely joined them! He felt nice and soft going up over the hedge, but he must have gotten a little too vertical as he came down. As a result, we kind of went splat and ended up with an extra stride before the boathouse. Luckily for us, Ollie is a really powerful jumper, so he had no trouble with the big effort out, even though it wasn’t the best ride through! After that, though, it was pretty smooth sailing!! The advanced horse trials did the two star route through the second water, which was a water to water 5 stride to a hedge on a steep mound, and then four strides out over an angled brush. I think that was probably my favorite line of the whole course, he was just so rideable and confident through there… made it feel so easy! Jon had asked me what I thought about the approach to the sunken road in the woods, and I had said I thought it would be a little spooky for horses that went that way, but I thought Ollie would just nicely back himself off and be fine. Well, I dont even think he was concerned about the change in scene at all!! He galloped straight into the woods, and I actually had to work quite hard to get his canter back as we wove our way through the trees to the first element…. which he drew to right away! Overall, I think that he felt like his usual cross country machine self, and we didn’t have any trouble making the time even with our quiet first two fences. 
 
But, all did not go exactly as planned. At some point through the course we lost our Left front wheel (shoe), and I was really concerned that I was going to have to work really hard to make that foot feel better after galloping around on it barefoot. Luckily, he wasn’t sensitive to the hoof testers at all, and after a couple rounds of ice that we would have done anyways, he jogged off just fine!! 
 
Ollie and I also made a new friend this weekend in Massage therapist  Angie Cooney. Dr. Ober introduced us early in the week, and on Saturday night after we had recovered a bit and had some dinner, Angie did some work to help undo some of the tension that Ollie was carrying in his body from the run. He was so funny during the massage, because he was very sensitive in some parts of his body and as she was applying pressure you could tell that he was really uncomfortable. He kept looking at her like he was very offended! But Angie said that as she felt each muscle start to release, she felt him sort of relax and he accepted the pressure more and more as she moved around his body. By the time she was working on his hind end, he was leaning into her!! I usually think that other people don’t really notice his expressions as much as I do, because I know him so well, but Angie thought he was pretty hilarious the way that he was so offended at first, but then figured out that if he just went with it, he would feel better! And feel better he did. He came out of his stall on Sunday morning and took a huge stretch and then marched off to find some grass. 
 
Obviously, I couldn’t have been more pleased with the way he jumped on Sunday afternoon. I felt like there were a few fences in warm up where I wasn’t completely there for him, but he was still jumping great. The course, however, I felt like I did a pretty good job with. He was very focused and did his job just right. After our clear ride, I would have been happy finishing the competition in third place, because we did everything we set out to do. The way I see it, there is absolutely no shame in finishing third behind the likes of Becky and Kim. Winning was a very nice icing on the cake for us, seeing as its only the second time I have ever won anything!!
 
So now, we are home in Virginia after driving until 3 am, and the preparation is ON for the AEC’s next weekend. It might be the American Championships, but I would think that the Canadian invasion will continue!! Hopefully I’m right, for those of you who have been rooting for us, please carry on!! And for those of you who haven’t been, consider jumping on the bandwagon!!! Thanks a lot for reading….  🙂


~Stephanie
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