The long format lives on!!

I aquired a great deal of knowledge over last weekends Indiana Eventing Association's T3D/N3D.  This is the first year that Lee Ann Zobbe from Come Again Farms was the coodinator (she is also my most favoritest trainer to take lessons from)  She also added the Novice 3 Day to the scheduele.  It was a hefty bill to fulfill but from everything I saw and have heard it all went off without a hitch and everyone had a splendid time.  It is also a true 3 day in that Dressage ran day one, steeple chase, roads and tracks and cross country on day two and stadium on day 3.

Day one I was placed on bit check and went from not even knowing what it meant to successfully checking each prelim and training dressage horse in for their tests.  So that was a great learning experience.  The day started for me at about 5 am followed by a 2 hour drive a stop a starbucks and some help from mapquest I was there and ready for whatever they needed.  The ladies in charge of dressage said "can you do bit check" and I enthusistically said "sure", "as long as someone shows me how to do it".  I must say that some of those horses have the most wretched ground manners.  Some so head shy I couldn't even come near them.  Others flipping their heads and even smacking me with it.  I would say over half had decent manners and I am thankful for them.  I just wonder how a horse can get to that level of riding and not have at least managable ground manners.  But it was my first time so who am I to judge.  I was super excited when I saw Stacy from Team Taco come up to our station.  I may have creeped her out a little by acting like a crazy stalker fan.  Their dressage test was incredible!!!  And it showed in the scores that put them in first place with a 26.4!  You can read abou their amazing ride of ups and downs at the event here.  Sadly after phases B,C and D that still had them in the lead they withdrew and now Taco is recovering from a SDFT.  It is heartbreaking but also inspiring.

I got to see some beautiful horses and equally beautiful dressage tests.  I learned a great amount and I met some fantastic people.  I got to get a feel for some of the riders and learned some names in the eventing world.  There was one rider in particular that came off as one of the most errogant people ever but almost all were kind and nice people.  The day started chilly and ended in the 80's but my job was kind of cake and most time was spent under a tent just enjoying the day.  I drove the 2 hours back home that evening to find dinner awaiting on table by my dear husband.  It was early to bed for tomorrow was to start even earlier....