A great telling of show adventures from a competitor's standpoint
Carole organizes clinics with Andy out on Martha's Vineyard.  She now drives Holy Helga (referred to as "HH" in her reports).

Part 1 

Well we’ve just returned from NH and our first arena driving trial – had a BLAST!!!! – also managed to entertain the entire group…….

We did fine on our dressage test – score 51 which put us squarely in the middle -5th place out of 12 – then the trouble began – there are 4 obstacles each with gate a, b, c. We started obstacle 1 - took out half of gate a on the way thru, managed gate b but then I got confused and forgot where gate c was – missed it entirely! – the big E! eliminated. Went to obstacle 2 and started in fine form thru gate a& b, forgot c entirely – eliminated – luckily they let you continue to play even after elimination – on to obstacle 3, once again took out half of gate a on the way thru, whipped thru B and got more confused than ever about C, tried 5 or six times taking out gate D (used for upper levels) in the process and finally made it thru C – 121 seconds – yikes (note that one of the upper level girls (who is 14) made it thru a-d in 22 seconds) – by this time Andy and I are wetting our pants and Helga is really rolling – on to obstacle 4 – a, b, c slick as you please 23 seconds! Whoo hoo – that would have put us in first place if only we could have done them all like that! Luckily we had a rest before cones – 10 pairs of cones to be negotiated in order – we did fine on 1-5 ran directly over cone 6 which made a bit of a racket causing Hh to scoot backwards thru 10 taking it out on the way – this necessitated stopping the clock while the course was reset – now it was getting embarrassing! On thru 7 and 8 roll over 9, smash thru 10 again – forward this time and then in total confusion backwards thru 8 – ding dang eliminated again! – well folks were very kind, one guy told me he thought I had a potential carreer in motocross in which you apparently go like hell and hope for the best! – so we had a blast in more ways than one! HH was very well behaved, Andy was a good sport and I learned a lot! SO we have 10 days to get our wits together before our next adventure – we are going to a clinic and show in NH then NJ the following weekend –we can only go up from here!

Part II

O Boy are we having fun!!!!!!!

Got here on wed afternoon and settled in -got oriented and started to memorize hazards – holy moly that gets confusing – it is also a hike so Ann loaned Andy and I her scooter. My legs are not long enough and my butt is too big to ride behind a one legged crazy man going as fast as possible over hill and dale. Holy Moly. Hold on to your hats! Rather nerve wracking – but I managed not to fall off until the machine was stopped and there were a jillion people watching – Public Spectacle #1 (PS #1).

Thursday was a day of practice and more hazard walking memorizing and o yeah polishing and polishing and polishing and polishing, hand grazing HH (Holy Helga) in between activities which led to PS #2 when I thought I could do two things at once and HH took that opportunity to take off for wide open spaces – luckily eating is her favorite activity so she didn’t get far – the grass is knee high and incredible here. More hazard walking, more hand grazing which led to PS #3 – yup did it again – careening thru other people’s camps and almost sending a pair of beagles to the promised land. After that I learned to use the chain over her nose.

PS #4 occurred when I decided to hitch up alone – we do this routinely at home with no drama whatsoever, but as I learned, horse shows are different! HH got away when only one shaft was attached to the tug – Gawd knows how but the other shaft promptly got lodged between her back legs and kind of up her butt. Needless to say this breach of decorum was not acceptable to the diva who promptly went into a kicking, bucking fit. O yeah, the shaft was still up her butt and the enterprise was still half attached at this point. Luckily I had the presence of mind not to let go of the reins and was able to keep her from spinning which would have been really disastrous and John from next door was able to get to her head (my hero). Yow - ok so then I learned that you NEVER hitch alone at a show.

By the time we finally got to the real thing I figured we were pretty much under control. Dressage went off without a hitch and though I thought I could have done a bit better I won the class with a score of 54.1 (Dressage is scored like in eventing so a LOW score is better – If this were ridden dressage my score would have been 66% - not fabulous but not terrible either)

More hazard walking – can you imagine that by this time the fat lady was pretty much pooped? Finally the fun part – the marathon! Section A (3 km – any pace but with a time limit) was fun and uneventful – A tour of a very pretty part of NJ. Section D (1km at walk only) no problem. Ah and then section E. This is the part where speed counts. It also helps if you can remember where you are supposed to go! Actually we were rolling along rather smugly which is what led to PS #5. Fortunately this is the only PS caught on film – Since a picture is worth a thousand words see below. This was not my idea.

Interesting to note that the front wheels can be completely perpendicular to the rear wheels and the whole rig does not turn over. Now isn’t that ducky! Remarkably enough with the strategy of my fearless leader we had banked some time so even though we lost quite a bit of time in the bushes we still came out ahead. 

Cones was on Sunday and thank goodness we were well behaved thru that event. Note there is about 8” between wheel and cone - a ton of room! Although we went clean our time was terribly slow and we were 5th in cones. Somehow or another because the score is calculated by performance in all three events we ended up in first place for training ponies. No one could have been more surprised! – I think we were mostly lucky but whoopee doo anyhow!!! We’re going to try preliminary in CT on June 9 – we’ll have to get quite a bit faster – yeehooooo!!!!

Also in most of these photos I look really cranky – that wasn’t cranky – that was intense concentration!!!! I had the time of my life!!!!!

Part III

Hard to believe we have been home more than a week! Our last trip was a whirlwind adventure – left here and traveled to the Sullivans in CT. arrived there Friday afternoon realizing that if I wanted to be presentable Saturday morning I’d better get cracking. Cleaned harness, washed pony, sort of thought about the carriage but didn’t do a thing about it which turned out to be a good thing – Maggie (age 15) was generous enough to let me sleep in her room and even cleaned it out! – This did seem to be a big hit with her mom! Ed the dad made the best steak ever with ice cream sundaes after – what more could a girl want? (photo courtesy of Cat Luce)

Saturday started out damp and steadily got worse. My question about whether I should tack up or not given the steadily worsening downpour was met with odd looks – Apparently the only reason an event would be canceled would be lightening strikes within close proximity to the food tent. Because things were soupy I decided to let HH eat hay in the trailer where at least one of us would be dry – This seemed like a good idea until it was time to get her out of the trailer – I suppose the combination of long road trip, a night in a stall and a morning in a trailer was a little much because she exited with all cylinders firing. The engine was definitely running - Basically it was pretty much all I could do to make it around the dressage test and cones. We did manage not to smash anything but dressage score was 69 – pitiful - and cones wasn’t much better. When we finally got to the marathon there was still plenty of pony. Wet pony. Very wet pony. Very wet very fast pony. did fine on the first three obstacles and lordy we were certainly fine on time but I did manage to go thru D backwards on the last obstacle and rack up 20 penalty points. The good news is we were not eliminated and we got the blue ribbon anyway because all those other pansies in my class scratched! (a little damp I suppose?) I do think there is something a wee bitty odd when you get a blue ribbon for a dressage score of 69.

So we finally got to pack up and truck to Andy’s where we stayed overnight. I then drove to Maine to check on the Maine estate and work on a culvert and hay issue – got those two problems solved and was feeling celebratory so I bought a puppy. Yuh – more on that topic in the next installment. Drove back to Andy’s on Monday drove the pony and headed for bed – Tuesday drove, did laundry (remember wet, very wet? – there was mud too) and cleaned harness – Did I mention that by this time I had a head cold and was dripping snot? I spent the day dazed and clutching a box of Kleenex. Nyquil to the rescue – packed up and drove to Maryland wed am – this pretty much took all day – got there around dinner time and settled ponies, set up camp, moved camp because we apparently set up in wrong spot, went to dinner and fell into bed. I had planned to camp out but was lucky enough to score a bed! (driving people are the best) The bed I can manage without but the shower is a necessity that gets more necessary as each day goes by (Eeewwwy!) so I was feeling pretty lucky.. 

As it turned out the camping was dry and so was the site – No faucets – water for a hundred horses came out of one hose on one tanker truck. Slowly. Very very slowly. Remember the wet? Remember the mud? Remember the snot? Well we hadn’t really recovered from any of that so I had one very dirty pony. And an even dirtier carriage. As it turns out it takes awhile to give a pony a sponge bath. Luckily everyone shared the hose and folks were good sports in general - I did somehow manage to get scores of 8 & 9 (out of 10) for presentation. That should astonish everyone – certainly did me!

Actually after all this the actual competition was relatively uneventful – the only public spectacle was the golf cart – I swear it was defective! – It jerked, stuttered and was generally rather embarrassing since I could not get the thing to operate smoothly – O well hullooo never mind us just wave and laugh as we herky jerkyed along. What a sight – and no it was not my driving. It made it until the last day when it gave up the ghost and crapped out in front of the food tent – where else?

Dressage was ok – 54 - cones was ok – some how I had a ball down on number 16 – and that was an easy one too – Marathon was fabulous – we got to do a water hazard for the first time and HH was terrific! I also managed for the first time not to get lost on any of them. WAHOO! Things are looking up! We ended up in fourth place which I was pretty happy with given that we did really well on the marathon (note that Muffy Seaton was in second place so 4th wasn’t too bad really) The big deal was that Maggie won the preliminary division (horse and pony) – all those folks had the pants beat off them by a fifteen year old!

Packed up Sunday and camped on site Sunday night - got up at 3 am thinking to beat Monday morning traffic but NJ was one gigantic traffic jam – took FOREVER to get to the boat. HH was champion – she just keeps eating (and pooping – you should see what ends up behind her after 14 or 15 hours in the trailer – whoo weee baby!– the digestive system is working just fine and dandy)

For class results:  http://elkcreekcde.fairhillinternational.com/class-results.pdf 

I did not purchase pictures this time (expensive$$$$) so if you want to see them go to:  http://www.photoreflect.com/pr3/thumbpage.aspx?e=2963779 

• Holy Helga and I were #85
• Andy = #10
• Maggie #58

Next is Waldingfield in mid July then GMHA at the end of Aug. Having so much fun I can hardly stand it!!!! Can’t wait for the next adventure!

~ Carole