Kelly Pugh was kind enough to update on Friday at Rebecca Farm. Be sure to check out Kelly’s great blog for updates on her season. [Kelly’s blog, RF Scores] Thanks for writing this Kelly and thank you for reading.
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From Kelly Pugh:
Hi again!
Dressage day has come and gone and now onto the fun stuff!! I was actually able to enjoy my Friday a little more by doing a training cross-country ride this morning on my young guy Tito. When I first walked the training course I thought for sure they had misnumbered it and I was actually walking the preliminary. No such luck. Tito put his big boy pants on and tackled the course showing me more and more of what he is capable of doing. We conquered the training Olympics and and are going into show jumping in second.
A lot of the FEI divisions were struggling with their fit horses and a dressage ring that was positioned right next to the cross-country course. Galloping horses and cheering crowds did not do many of the horses any favors and unfortunately mine was included in that group. It is frustrating but part of the game and dwelling on it does no one any good. All I can do is kick on the rest of the weekend and go home and continue my never ending homework.
I was privileged enough to go on a course walk with Ian Stark today and get his take of the three star track. Defiantly a forward track and now that I think about it there are no options out there. All the more reason to get it done the first time. Ian made it pretty clear on the walk that he wants to see us attacking, riding forward and positive but also smart. The big ditch and wall is what everyone is talking about and my favorite part of the course walk is when we got about five strides out from this jump he said “It looks like no big deal from here so lets just not get any closer to it until you’re jumping it.” Deal. There are a lot of turns to jumps and he made the point that if we were to cut the turn we would have to take away from our canter and ultimately lose seconds on the clock, so stay wide and stay forward and jump everything out of stride. Easy right? In case I have not said it yet, forward is the name of the game.
Flying Tail Farms overall had a great day and the majority of us walked away with smiles or walked away with valuable lessons being learned but either way non of us can complain. When I found myself getting discouraged by my ride I had to give myself a little pep talk. I am truly blessed to be sitting on such wonderful horses at such a beautiful venue surrounded by an amazing group of people. A bad dressage ride? So what, I’m living the dream and its going to take a little more then a tense ride to ruin my outlook on that.
Bring on the cross country!!
Good luck to everyone competing this weekend!!
And as always, GO EVENTING!
