Pam's Pony Place: Las Cruces 2014

A Note About This Blog

I used to be a writer. Unpublished, but a writer just the same. I have several 100,000 word novels sitting on my hard drive. Then I fell off a horse and got a concussion that scrambled my brains really good (yes, I was wearing a helmet.) After that forming a written sentence was very difficult for quite some time. It's still difficult, but at least now generally the sentence structure isn't egregiously flawed. Verbally and written wrong words pop in, I switch words around, and sometimes I make no sense at all. It isn't because I don't have knowledge of grammar and punctuation, but my brain simply can't do it sometimes. Reading this blog you're accepting that there's going to be things that look like typos or make no sense. It's not because I don't proofread, it's because my damaged brain doesn't see what's wrong. I try my best, but things will slip through. I don't need them pointed out, I know they're there, but if I continued to worry about them I wouldn't write at all. I didn't for quite some time. It's painful as a past master of words to use them so badly, but fortunately the words don't seem to mind.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Las Cruces 2014

Six months after our fabulous elimination in Stadium at Watermelon, seven months after our elimination due to similar circumstances at St Johns, Naners and I made the eight hour drive to Las Cruces to see if we could actually get around a stadium course. It was cold! And guess what? Memory foam in the cold is like a brick. So, while I was able to put enough blankets on to be warm in the gooseneck that night, sleeping on a brick kept me awake more than I would have liked to have been.

Friday's stadium schooling went well, Naners didn't even think of refusing. We were scary fast, and it wasn't pretty, but we got around. The temperature warmed up and it wasn't windy, so almost pleasant. Then I finally got to go somewhere I've wanted to for years: White Sands.

Yes, the sand is white. The sun was behind a cloud, and it's hard to photograph anyway. We swear one of these years we'll ride there, as you can.

Saturday morning: dressage. Intro B again. I love that test, but I'm so sick of it and it isn't changing. We got all 6's and 7's and a 36.3, which is about what we usually get on that test.

Stadium: We jumped all the things! Our first double clear stadium round. I was thrilled.

Between dressage and SJ the wind had picked up and it was blowing dust. So I broke out my SSG goggles. They looked a little odd, but not having dust in my eyes? Totally worth it.

I was second shooter for the photographer for XC, so sat out for Prelim and Training. Storm clouds came in and before Novice started the rain came down. I headed for the barns, being wet and cold before I needed to ride would not have helped my day. When I dressed for XC I had to put my jacket on, hiding my fabulous loud pink shirt. It was drizzling when I mounted, by the time I went out on course the clouds were gone and the sun was out.

XC was a much more difficult ride. The third jump, a tiny log, sits between two bigger jumps. She tried very hard to not jump that one. She has a thing about her tiny jump being near big jumps. I had to really ride, and fortunately she wasn't going so fast that putting my leg on felt like the last thing I should be doing.

We still had several less than attractive jumps

But we got around, double clear for XC too. So, for the first time ever Naners and I finished an event on our dressage score, placing third, which was dead in the middle. Go us!