Whoops

I went to Queeny Park yesterday for their Mini Event.  For those of you who are not from Missouri, Queeny Park is this giant county park in St. Louis which also has an amazing cross country venue.  After being back in lessons for a short while I decided it was time to see what Buck was capable of.  He'd been jumping like a champ at home and in lessons and really seemed to love it.

It has been raining here basically non-stop since Friday morning and Sunday there was no change until about noon.  The dressage arenas were set up on the top of a hill in a field so the middle of the arena was a little more crowned then the edges and grass + mud made the arena slick as heck!  Our dressage test went terribly, not so much because myself or Buck did anything majorly wrong, but mostly because he was slipping and sliding all over the place which in turn made him want to be a little... "playful" (judges words not mine lol!)  Here's the video (my mom took it so excuse the lack of the entire right side of the arena!):

After Dressage we went to check out the cross country and stadium jumping since my stadium jumping time wasn't for another hour and a half.  I should have known this was not going to end well but the rain had stopped and I really wanted to check it out since I had never been to Queeny Park before.  My stadium jumping time was 1:52 and when we got done watching others do the course and "walking" the cross country (we could only check out the jumps not actually walk jump to jump) it was about 1.  We took a golf cart back to the trailer because it was a half hour walk to the jumping courses from the parking lot (didn't realize this until it was too late).  I tacked up and started the trek back to the stadium jumping arena.  I was LATE!  My trainer had beaten me up there and asked the people at the ring what they were on (because there was no announcer down where the trailers were parked) and they told her they were still on my division.  However, when I got up there (about 5 minutes after her) they informed us they had been waiting on my for 20 minutes and moved on to the next division!  Honestly, I think they're times were messed up because no one was going in the order they were suppose to and multiple people had scratched because of the weather.  Unfortunately we were eliminated because of this *insert sad face here*.  

Since I was eliminated I didn't really know what to do, Buck was kind of acting like a fool because people were jumping all around him in the warm up and I just wanted to get away from there.  The lady at the stadium ring said if I got to the start box on time (my cross country was at 2:08 and it was 2:05) I would be able to run through the course if I wanted to.  I decided some cross country schooling is better than none so we hurried over, made it with about 30 seconds to spare.  I also made the executive decision to canter between the jumps and trot them just because I wanted him to listen to me, when he gallops he gets a little out of control (thus the riding cross country in a kimberwick).  I'm posting this as well, at the beginning it's very far away because my mom couldn't zoom in anymore, but you get the idea.  It was a great course and if I had not already been eliminated it would have been a blast to gallop!

So that was our fun weekend with a mini event and I can't WAIT to go out again.  Plus, lesson learned on paying attention to the right times.  My trainer placed 1st and 4th in her division on two 4 year old Trakehners from New Spring Farm so all in all I think it was a good day.