Woo!!

Wow, so Twin Rivers flew past and I can't believe its over!! I went into this event with a different mind set than I usually do; I am usually a pretty competitive person, but I forced myself to tone it down and made my goal just to finish and get around safely. Mission accomplished!!

Regal is going to turn into such a little professional!! He already has the hang of everything and he surprised me at this event. His usually quiet personality goes up quite a few notches at events, and he's been known to be a firecracker in warm ups. But at Twin he didn't do a single thing. I was shocked haha. He was an angel for dressage warm up, and it was the most I've ever had his attention in the court before, I was SO happy with him. I could have ridden the test better, and accidentily slacked off a little near the end for a 37.3...not too bad. Definitely going to work to make it better though.

I was a little nervous for cross country day, I'm not going to lie haha. This was a bigger, tougher course than Regal and I have ridden or schooled, and I was putting a lot of faith in my boy that his honest nature and my scrappy riding would see us through. Once again he shocked me with a wonderful warm up, left the box and cleared his first fence like a champ. I was most nervous for the water questions and the double down banks. We had a little trouble at the first water, I didn't ride it as well as I should have, and he probably would have gone in first time if I would have had him straighter at it, but we got one refusal there before he went straight through. I had decided to go slow on purpose and focus instead on getting through safely, but I didn't intend to go as slow as we did!! I looked down at my watch after a while, realizing I hadn't heard any beeping my whole course, only to notice that my watch had froze one second after leaving the start box!! I brushed it off and finished the course slowly but successfully. Regal dropped off the double down banks straight to a skinny like he does that every day of his life. I was ridiculously proud of my boy!!! Though we picked up a ton of time, I was still very happy with Regal's performance.

Stadium is where I really expect the most from us, mostly because I am so comfortable with it because of my background in jumpers, and also because I know Regal is a talented, honest, and handy jumper. We were on our way to a gorgeous round when I set us up terribly for our last line, an oxer in to a vertical. Regal was crossfiring around the turn to the combo, and instead of pushing him forward to it I half halted, hoping to get him to switch. I mad the wrong choice for sure. He half way tried to jump it, realized that wasn't the smart thing to do, stopped and knocked the whole thing down. Regal is so honest that I have to mess up pretty badly for him to stop. Which I actually like. I would rather have a smart horse who won't kill us by always going, even when they shouldn't. Anyways...oops. So mad at myself!! We turned and popped through the rest of course great. ARG!! I guess that's what this sport is all about though; anything can happen at any time and you just have to be so trained and prepared that your reflexes are the correct response to the situation.

All in all, I thought it was a very successful weekend!! We finished our first recognized Training level event, and I was happy to notice that nothing seemed big all weekend, and none of the questions were too hard. Challenging, yes. But scary and impossible, definitely not. We will stay at Training level knowing what needs improvement, and we're going out to Woodside next weekend. Once again I can't wait!! I am so proud of my Regal man, he steals hearts where ever he goes with his endearing personality. He is turning into one of the most honest and trustworthy horses I've had the pleasure to ride : )