O'Connor Camp Day 5

Today was very interesting!

This morning we started with a lecture by Max. She talked about boots and wraps for cross country and it ventured into boots and wraps in general and then kind of into more of stable wraps and some how we got onto fly spray? Yeah, we're a terribly unfocused group of people. Then instead of the bull and that stool thing we played with the puppies. They're super cute.

Karen with the super distracting puppy Boston.

After all of us getting super distracted we went out to the cross country course. David took 4 or 5 horses and worked them over jumps and stuff outside. Wesman was one of the horses he took out. He started with a tiny log... moved to a coop... then up a bank... and down... then the ditch...and finally the water. Yeah and this one time Wes did everything. He really put his head down to check everything out- which I am told is good. David let him just walk into the water and hang out there for a minute or two and check everything out. He trotted a circle in the water and eventually had him jumping out over a log. It was pretty cool.

It took a while to get all the horses that were brought out over everything so we finished up just in time for lunch. At lunch I passed around a nice little thank you card for Jan- the woman who put together all of our food at the horse center. Then Max talked about all the crazy sponsors they have. It was pretty much "hey we get a lot of free stuff. be jealous".

After lunch we all went out to do cross country for real. We split up into our groups and headed out. My group had Karen again and we started at the banks. It was cool, everything we did mounted Wesman had already done without me- no excuses! We went down the bank, then up the bank, then down the bank 5 strides to a jump... then up the bank 1 stride down the bank over a log, then we put all of them together. Then we went over to the water. We all just walked in and wandered around first- and we did it. Next we trotted in and jumped a vertical out, then jumped in and jumped out, then a bounce in and 4 strides to a vertical out. Then we put an odd little course together going in and out of the water like 3 times. After that we went down to the ditches. We did it a few times- one time we were on the side of the ditch closest to home and Wes started doing his backwards thing up the hill towards home. But seriously we did like two seconds of moving his haunches to the right and we were over it. Next we were suppose to head over to the double bank but David said it wasn't worth it so we decided to put a small course together. We did a little cabin coop thing (novice-ish) to a like a bench thinger (training-ish), over to a two stride into the water, 3-4 strides out of the water, left turn over a log jumping into the water (training-ish) 3 stride bending line left to a vertical out of the water and then five strides bending to the right to a barrel jump (novice-ish)-- the last time we did it we turned right and jumped back over a log into the water.

HOLY CRAP WESMAN WAS SO GOOD! There was one little thing over at the ditch but we got over it really quick and life went on... aaaaaaand this other time doing that last course I mentioned coming to the water. Yeah I learned that when you ride your horse "backwards" he stops (cause ya tell him to) and when you decided "what the hell I'll lean into it and see if he jumps" that he doesn't jump and you fall off and its wicked stupid. I landed on my feet and was still holding the reins but Karen was crying she was laughing so hard at me. She made me get on from the ground- that's a long way up, and apparently I owe her a bottle of wine now- but I'm not old enough to buy wine so I don't get it. Yeah- the jump was like barely 2'6". It was wicked funny. (She told me some story about how she was at an Event- in warm up and fell off over a cross rail with Biko and everybody saw it- So I'm in good company with wicked stupid falls.) I got back on and did it all again and it was super. But seriously Wesman was SOOOO good!!

So tomorrow morning Amy and Karen and riding the Olympic Dressage Test. One of the judges from Sydney is coming to watch and give them feed back and all that stuff. Apparently he coached David when he was younger and years later judged him at the Olympics. David said he had tears streaming down his face the whole time he was judging. So that will be wicked cool to watch! A week sure goes by fast around here...

-Caroline