Lipton's Adventures to Devonwood

Overall, Spring Into Dressage at Devonwood was an okay show. We've been going to it for the last few years now and for some reason, something always happens. Sometimes it's just the horse decides to be naughty, and sometimes, you think it's that they're hurt.

Apparently, during the ENTIRE 4 hour trailer ride from home to the show grounds, all three horses were fighting, therefore causing them to throw out various (fairly important) joints. Inky threw out some ribs on the right side, Dorin threw out part of her back, and Lipton threw out some ribs and his right shoulder. We thought at first, however, that he had torn his annular ligament in his right front, seeing as he was showing symptoms of such.

Everyone looked fine in their stalls (stressed, but that's normal), so we decided to ride everyone. Inky was a professional jerk to Tracy, and Dorin was okay. I went to go ride Lipton and he felt fantastic until after about 15 minutes he felt a little off. And by a little off, I mean a lot off. We put some stuff on his legs, wrapped him up and waited 'til tomorrow to see. The next night was the same thing. He felt more fantastic than ever until about 15 minutes in. So we did the same thing, put some stuff on his legs and wrapped him up.

Then came Saturday. Our first ride of the day (and the weekend) was scheduled for 7:29pm. We pulled him out in the morning and trotted him up and down the driveway a couple times and he looked amazingly sound, so we decided we would ride, but we would give ourselves a 1 minute warm up.

7:00 rolled around and we got him ready to go in and slowly headed up the big indoor at Devonwood. He was fine up the hill, though a little Secondhand Serenade calms him down when he's looky. We got up the arena and they promptly told me that I was after the person who was in the area, who had just started the second pass in their trot work. Perfect. We went into the warm up ring, trotted around twice, and went in.

Overall the test was okay except for the part where Right and Left are NOT the same direction, and I did the second half of my trot work twice and the judge never caught it. Oh well. Overall we got a 58%, not too bad seeing as we got a 4 and a 2 on our first canter half pass/flying change sequence, which are both coefficient movements.

The next day was about the same. We trotted him in the morning and decided to ride. Although the test was much cleaner (we turend the correct direction), he didn't have the spark that he had the night before, therefore only warranting us a 59%.

Lipton has now returned home to Redmond while I am stuck here in the Super 8 Motel in Corvallis waiting for my campus tour which will begin in roughly 3 hours, though by driving through campus yesterday it looks like I really do want to come here.