Cross-Country Schooling!

Schooling cross-country. Another phrase that can bring dread to some people, to others it brings excitement and promise of an adrenaline rush. The Kentucky Horse Park Foundation generously puts on schooling days at the Park throughout the summer which provide the Eventing crowd a chance to jump fences on the famous course. Yesterday was the first one of the season and naturally it became somewhat of a clusterf**k as usual(which was not necessarily because of the astronomical number of people there or the craziness of riders and horses careening EVERYWHERE). If you haven’t been around me that much then you don’t know my middle name should be either klutz or clusterf**k.  SO since everyone loves stories here goes.

The plan: take Ransom/Catherine G, Marley/Elisa, Ted/Maggie,  and Junood/myself (with Sara/Everest out to hack) to meet Skip/Catherine D  and Eveen/Keebler (dubbed our fun Irish friends) out to school some lower level stuff in the evening on Wednesday. I knew Elisa was my only Preliminary person so she would get to school some big stuff while we did the little stuff. We were supposed to meet at the KHP between 5:30/6PM.  And since I am a bit neurotic about time (and everything else) I wanted to leave the farm as soon as everyone got there, so I got home early and brought Ransom and Ted in.

 That's Marley and Elisa on the right :)

The actual happening: Maggie had to fit a saddle to Ted since she is looking at him as a potential horse to buy (shameless plug here- Ted is for sale, 16.2hh TB gelding- FANTASTIC jumper, tons of potential and cheap!) so she wanted to take him schooling with us. Well, she had to change her air vest cord from one saddle to the other..we are now ten minutes behind. Me being the impatient person I am I decide to go load Ransom and Ted while she is doing this. Meanwhile Elisa pulls her rig around behind Catherine’s and tries to load Marley. Tries is the operative word here. Marley said she wasn’t keen on getting on the trailer today, so sorry it sucks to be us.  It ended up taking much prodding and Marley finally walked on ( in all fairness it was a Brenderup and according to Elisa they don’t even sell those trailers in the US anymore...I could say something snarky here, but well I like Elisa and the trailer actually wasn’t as much of a death trap as I thought those trailers were…must be the reason they didn’t make it in the US..) We are now 25 minutes behind.

Next we head to the park. I told Sara  (Junoods owner) to go in the campground entrance because as we all know that’s the way to go to the schooling area start. She called me while we were driving and said that way was closed. We decide to re-route to the main entrance. I then tell Catherine to over the dam bridge (the one we walk over for Rolex) because that way is faster too. She gets up there and it is also closed off because of the hunter show that is going on. We have to re-route a 3^rd time now (and were 40 minutes behind. Catherine and Eveen have been waiting for us for over an hour now but their Irish and good natured so they were willing to wait) and come upon the state vet. I always hate meeting the state vet. Most of them don’t know anything about horses, all they do is check the dates on your paperwork. God forbid they hire a horse person to do this, that would be beyond the State of Kentucky’s thought process.  We get through and head on up to the schooling area (on the other end of the park). I get a phone call from Catherine as we go to park (she wasn’t right behind us… her coggins on Ted has expired and she forgot to check it. They won’t let her through.  

Now we are in open panic mode (with me telling Elisa every five seconds, "wouldn't it be funny if?"- she was not amused...she asked why it would be funny, I said because its better than saying, "I'll be *!^%@^. pissed off if..")<-- another aside here..people get really frustrated with my neurosis..I know I say things like, "house on fire" and "wouldn't it be funny if" among other things..its what makes me who I am. :)

We  are an hour and a half behind and we now have to take Elisa’s rig back to the front of the park to pick up the pony so that Catherine can school. Maggie has volunteered to take Ted home. Catherine is upset and feels really bad, but we get everything moved (with the state vet dude staring at us the whole time) and finally head back up to the schooling area (did I mention it was at the other end of the park?).

 RANSOM! Adorable pony!

In the end we finally get on and go schooling. We picked up a new person who came with our Irish friends, Miriam and her adorable shire cross, Baby. Elisa had a brilliant school with Marley (sometimes all it takes is a bit change) and Ransom pony jumped brilliantly, even over some training level questions (Catherine really NEEDED that). Eveen and Miriam jumped some stuff I think they would never had tried if I hadn’t been there and we corrected some habits of Catherine D and Skip so their schooling went from a bit frantic at first to absolutely lovely by the end. Junood was out for his first cross-country school and bless him it was a MADHOUSE out there! I think everyone and their brothers’ mother came out to school! He handled it extremely well and other than a severe dislike for the ditch (we have to work on that more, I am not keen on camel jumping) ß don’t ask me how I know what a camel looks like when it jumps, he ended up being extremely brave and jumping everything else, including the banks and running through the water. In the end he had settled mightily and I got a text from Sarah later that evening that for the first time ever he was not stressed on the trailer ride home…maybe we need to stress him with hundreds of horses galloping around more often.

 Junood (Rolex here he comes!)

So now you know how our clusterf**k of a school went. I am extremely proud of the whole group. We had such a positive outing. I look forward to what it means for us for the summer.  For now safe travels and good luck to all.

Signing off~

Mandy