San Luis Obispo USDAA RACE Trial.


Brodi is an Irish sport horse. Because of this fact and insurance reasons, he was not allowed to run Steeplechase this weekend and had to leave the arena during the walk thru. Also because I had no helmet. This was his first trial, and also Waffle the puppy’s first trial and they both had a great time.

Banksy and I had fun too. Banksy is amazing. She won Grand Prix and Biathalon, came in 2nd in Steeplechase because I screamed too loud and she hit a bar. Some Qs in some other things, and I did hear that her team won Masters Pairs, so that’s a thing of great importance in the universe. I know we had good gamblers, snooker, and a great jumpers with a bar. I know I did fix-and-go in both standards so there you go. I love the fix-and-go, have a bar, go do something to train. We had a trial with some Qs. Not sure what we need those for but I guess it’s never bad to collect some. I like winning things like Grand Prix and Biathalon.

The best thing was an extra big ring with big running courses, those are our favorites, and one of our favorite judges. On the first day all good dog walk entrances and exits, we did a lot of dog walks and I love nothing more than seeing Banksy’s beautiful, perfect hit. There was one hard exit, in pairs the first day, that she handled with her beautiful hit to my surprise, a hard collection turn to a backside jump on the side of the dog walk, we did not do the collection turn, I let her hit, turned her, and got to the jump no problem.

Second day was all soft turns with the dog walk heading into the wall. Well, all 2 of them. These are our worst one, she hates to look at the wall and the soft turn jump was far enough away that she wouldn’t see it as much as the wall. The first one I got ahead so she could see me, showed her a turn, and she had a beautiful hit! Then I was on the difficult side of the line and sent her in a wrong side of the tunnel 2 jumps upstream. Worth it! It was standard, and we have fix-and-go and who cares about standard and it’s stupid table. She did miss that hit in biathlon standard later, where it just cost us a time fault, because I couldn’t get ahead, I had to decel to show a turn and go the other way and that was that. But so many good hits all weekend!

Otterpop told me that she hates travel and cannot stay in motels anymore without having an anxiety attack. So that was fun. We haven’t had a luxury girls weekend away in quite a long time, Gary and Gooey stayed home and us girls stayed in Motel 6 near the Whole Foods and grand Laguna Lake dog park, both other exciting places on our trip. Banksy and I would like to go to more trials, maybe we can find a way to make that happen. Or maybe not. Sure would be fun!