Rolex – Wednesday

Now the fun begins. I had a nice lesson with JJ in the morning. Arthur is a nervous horse that is very impressed by all the commotion of the Horse Park. When he is nervous he feels frozen… he doesn’t try to do anything bad but if he was a turtle he would definitely whole up in his shell. For those of you who saw him at Rolex last year, he tried sooo hard, but it was obvious how nervous he was. We worked on many exercizes that would help to relax and keep him focussed on me. I am so thrilled with how much he has matured from last year. He is still nervous, but I can only think how much more he will continue to improve over time. I LOVE MY HORSE!!!
At 10 am we had our competitor’s briefing where we are introduced to the ground jury, organizers, course designers, builders, vets etc. We are briefed on everything we need to know, the when where whys etc.
After the briefing we are allowed to inspect the xc course for the first time. My first impression….. There is a whole lot to do… Everything is do-able, but there is a lot to do and a lot of easy mistakes to be made (things that can easily leave you with a 20 jumping penalty day on xc kicking yourself in frustration). I am not overly worried about any one jump… this is always a good thing. I am confindent in my horse’s ability to take this course on… he does love his cross country! At 3:00 pm we have our first horse inspection. Sarah does a beautiful job of turning him out as always… and Arthur manages to keep his cool… sometimes I think that he thinks he is running the Gauntlet at the jog outs. I do think that he is beginning to understand that everyone is there to look at him and he enjoys the attention a bit! After the jog the riders are given an hour to “familiarize” the horses with the new competition arena. We are not allowed to take the horses into the actual dressage arena, but we are allowed to ride all around it and let the horses look at the grandstands.