Thursday, September 9, 2010

And what of the little spotted horse?

A short but phenomenally FUN horse show season with Keebler came to an unexpected end after our July trip to the South Farm Horse Trial.  Dressage was coming along little by little, jumping was awesome, and dang it--I was getting closer to my "usual" goal at a HT--to finish on  my dressage score.

A typical not-bad-could-be-better dressage test was quickly forgotten, and it was on to XC over ground that was a little hard but not too bad.  I'd popped off over Bonnie's shoulder last year at their dark-in-the-woods half coffin, so was a little anxious about that.  Of course with my awesome Mother's Day present of a helmet cam, I can just show the video rather than blather on about the course . . . South Farm XC helmet cam

Watching now I can see where the two seconds that we were over time were lost.  Dang it!  But there are still a few "steering optional" moments and I was trying to be subtle and finesse things maybe too much.  Anyway, a great clean round other than 0.8 time faults and since Keebler was completely ho-hum about the Amish buggies after the first few sightings, I was hoping to have a nice SJ round.

This is how Keebler jumped on Sunday--clean out of his skin! 

And this is what we went home with. :-)

Sadly, the happy ending was decidedly deflated when Keebler came up lame 4 or 5 days after the show.  We'd checked his back and done a little work on that, but after a few days of turnout he came in 4/5 lame on the right front.  He blocked to the foot and was positive on hoof testers, so we figured stone bruise from the galloping or maybe an abscess . . .

. . . and two months later, as I start catching up with Keebler news, the poor guy is sitting at Michigan State University recovering from surgery with hope and uncertainty keeping him company.  More later . . .

No comments:

Post a Comment