First Competition: Beaver Trials

Sunday brought a lovely day-- perfect weather, with no humidity. We all awakened from our tents and got moving by eight o’clock; we snagged some breakfast and got strategizing about our horses and rides. The plan for the day was a combined test, with each rider on different horses for each phase. Basically the plan was to put me (Nicole) on the biggest horses, and try to work out the other three based on forwardness, greenness, and experience level. Ema was on InDisguise, a talented upper level mare; Jenn was on Tigger, a sweet younger horse, and KC rode Kwanzaa, an event horse with a background in dressage. They were all wonderful and we had workmanlike and accurate tests. Though we were happy to receive scores 73% to 81%, there is still a bit more ironing out we can do before we ride the tests again for the Maple Leaf Cup next weekend.

Ema

For the afternoon, we jumped a show jumping course on grass, and we had an unknown optimum time to ride against. Jenn went first on our team with the amazing jumper Valerie and they had an awesome clear round! I went second for USA, and rode a large warmblood named Lachlan and took .75 time penalties while rebalancing through the twisty course. Ema went third on the greenest horse of the day, TC, and unfortunately had a couple stops at the spooky jumps, but she gave him an educational and confidence-building round. KC had a very forward jumper in PreMadonna and just tapped one rail in her course and had a few seconds of time penalties.

Ema on the green but talented KC.

KC

Jenn

We ended up in second place for our team score, which was only 1/10th of a point behind the Kiwis! It was a great day and we are all feeling confident about our switch-riding abilities and dressage test skills.

Awards.

Everyone’s favorite part of the day was the “Horsemanship Challenge,” which consisted of each team getting one of the adorable lesson ponies and doing a relay of skills such as polo wrapping, braiding, putting a bridle together, speed-tacking up, and finally getting on and throwing water balloons at other teammates! Jenn started us off with some extremely impressive bandage rolling, wrapping, and putting two braids in on Tonka, our very hairy pony. Then I went to wrap a leg, do my two braids, and put together his bridle. We were well ahead when I handed off the task to KC to wrap, braid, and tack him, and then to Ema to braid, wrap, and then hop on the pony, ride to the bucket, and grab a water balloon. Fortunately for the spectators (and unfortunately for Ema), after she gave him a kick to get to the bucket, he surprised everyone with a couple of HUGE bronco bucks, knocking over his handler and leaving Ema in the dust. She dusted herself off, hopped back on, and lobbed the water balloons at us to finish in the shortest amount of time! All of the teams commented that the best part of the day was watching Ema’s cowgirl skills.

Tonka!

Some ominous storm clouds began drifting in, so we all hurried to pack up our bags, move all of the tents into the indoor arena, and clear out the outside areas. It was quite a sight to see the teams working together to carry fully set up tents and have our new tent village in the arena. Thankfully we finished this task before the rain rolled in and we lost power because of the high winds and fallen trees, so we were glad that we were all inside!

Team USA's tent.