Oregon’s rains have apparently not let up for the season, so it was a pretty soggy weekend for Cairo and me at the Aspen Farms Horse Trials a few weeks ago. It was our first horse trials of the season, and it seemed like a good place to start considering how amazing Cairo was last fall at Aspen at our first training level together.
We got a little cocky, and I entered the Zeit Capital Open Training Division because you could win money, and I’m always up for a challenge. Ride against pros? Sure, why not?
(Side note: Aspen is in Yelm, Wash., not Aspen, Colo., it’s named for an upper level horse that took the facility’s owners to the three- and four-star level, including a fourth place at the Rolex Kentucky CCI****. My friends who don’t event get confused and think I’m doing some sort of resort ski vacation with my horse when I go. Right, a resort vacation that involves sleeping in the back of my truck and shoveling a lot of horse poop).
Day 1. Dressage.
I’m going to sum up our dressage with well… dressage happened. Cairo has a certain sassy flair that isn’t quite ready for prime time.
So let’s just say that there were braids and white breeches and there was a lot of trotting and cantering in circles and sloshing through puddles. I have not yet learned how to channel Cairo’s unrestrained fury at doing circles into something pretty.
See? She was braided!
Some of us dance in the sand. Some of us kick sand. Some things are a long-term project.
The good thing about our dressage was that when you start out in last place, it really takes the pressure off for the cross-country.
In all seriousness, Cairo has come really far in her dressage, developing a nice cadence and her topline has really improved. But dressage judges don’t give points for doing your homework, and we’re just going to have to get a little more chill in that little white-railed box.
Just think, if you keep reading these blogs, at some point there’s going to be some sort of inspiring dressage phase breakthrough (we’ve had some at-home dressagasms). Until then, Cairo in the dressage ring is the embodiment of my own favorite horse show saying: We are either here to win, or to be the entertainment.
Spoiler alert: We were the entertainment.
Day 2. Cross-country!
Is it just me or do the fences always look the biggest on that first course walk? I was feeling pretty good about that whole log drop to the half coffin and up the hill to the trakhener thing—Cairo and I did that last year.
The silver fence painted to look like a crosscut saw looked fun, and I’ve been dying to jump the sailing ship. But then there was a combination innocently named “fence 15 log” and “fence 16 coop” that gave me pause, because it was a downhill three-stride on a bending line.
I was having visions of that scene out of The Man from Snowy River that involved barreling down a hill in wild leaps and bounds.
Let’s keep in mind that we’ve been working on rideability. I know Cairo will jump anything I point her at. It’s just sometimes she’s a little hard to aim.
Earlier in the course there was an up bank, one stride, down bank. Cairo and I had never done that before. More Snowy River flashbacks.
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Come to think of it, Cairo would be so game for that wild Snowy River ride. Top speed balls-to-the-wall down the side of mountain is her style.
Then there was the last fence. It was the same last fence as last year. It looked huge back then and it did not shrink over the winter. So this year they added some brush to it. Great. I put my 4-month-old Rhodesian ridgeback puppy on it and took a photo. When I got back the barn I showed it to my trainer Meika Decher before we went on my trainer-guided course walk with her.
She cheerfully informed me the fence was not all that large, and my puppy just made it look big. Let’s keep in mind this is a 48-pound puppy. The brush, she said, would just make the horses jump it better. Uh huh. The bank? No problem. Fences 15 and 16? Those I was going to need to ride.
Our cross-country ride was scheduled for 9:08 a.m., so I went to bed early and then proceeded to ride the course again and again in my mind, pretty much all night long.
Meika dashed over to school me, before she had to go do her stadium round and Cairo was pretty reasonable in the warm-up. She’s not fond of a hectic schooling arena. She has a bubble and prefers that no uninvited guests enter that bubble, so thus she wears that pretty red ribbon in her tail.
When it came time to head to the start box though, Cairo’s glee took over her body, and we had some small squeals and attempts to impersonate a Lippizanner. No, Cairo, you are an Irish Sport Horse, no airs above the ground, please.
So we had that awkward moment where my horse was so eager to LEAVE the start box that I was worried I could not get her IN the start box. It’s stuff like this that makes me hesitate to wear a watch on course—am I coordinated enough to ride a wild dervish and push the button on my watch at the same time?
Because eventers are awesome, my friend Reb had come to brave the rain and cheer her fellow Polestar Farm riders on, even though she wasn’t competing. Reb bravely offered to help me get Cairo into the start box. Reb is on Cairo’s list of acceptable humans allowed in the bubble, so we got in, and we were off.
The moment Cairo got her eyes on the first fence, she was all business. OK, well more like a mullet: she was business in the front, party in the back with her tail held high waving like a celebratory flag. Anyone who questions whether a horse likes to go cross-country needs to meet Cairo. She just wants to know which fence and how high and how many.
The first few fences were a breeze. Logs, coop, saw, log drop, coffin, trakehner, whatever—Cairo’s all, “I got this.” Another small drop and six strides to a log heading into the water. Because I’m not as brave as Cairo, I held her to the base of the fence before the water, thinking maybe she needed to see that there was a good landing before the water. I could actually feel her rolling her eyes at me, “Leave me alone Mom, I know what I’m doing.”
The dreaded up bank, one stride, down bank? Felt like nothing, though I noticed later in the photos that Cairo had a certain “kowabunga” panache to her leap off the bank.
Down bank? Easy peasy! Photo by Irina Kuzmina
The only fence Cairo even touched was fence 14. I was in some sort of cross-country exhilarated zen zone and let her barrel through the second water, giving us a crappy spot to the rolltop on the other side. Cairo was game as always and the sound of one her hooves tapping the wood served as a good reminder that the next two fences were going to check her rideability.
And sorry to build up to nothing, but fences 15 and 16 rode great.
She popped over the first log like it was a pretty little show jump fence, got her eye on the coop and cantered down the hill in a beautiful bending three strides. This left me suspicious that a monkey could actually ride Cairo cross country, providing first, that you could teach the monkey the course, and second, and more importantly, Cairo was willing to let the monkey into her bubble.
Another fence with an easy six strides to a corner (it walks five and half Meika had warned me) then the whale tail (no seriously it looks like a whale tail) bending to the sailing ship. I feel like the little cannons on the ship were a nice touch and in keeping with Cairo’s damn the torpedoes style.
Ahoy! Anchors away!
As Meika predicted, we sailed over the final fence easily and galloped across the finish in full OMG CROSS-COUNTRY WE DID IT euphoria.
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See that smile? That’s euphoria setting in. Photo by Irina Kuzmina
Amusingly enough, Cairo was so easy and rateable, we actually got time faults for going too slow: 20 or so seconds over optimum. So it looks like I’m going to have to figure out how to ride my horse and push a button on a watch at the same time. I thought we were going at a pretty good clip, but given our dressage score pretty much had us in ribbon Neverland, I decided not to worry about it and to dwell on how amazing the cross-country was, how rideable my horse was and how amazing the whole thing felt.
The good thing about our going at 9:08 a.m. is that it wasn’t yet raining, but also I then got to spend the rest of the day watching everyone else go (and hopefully being at least mildly helpful to my fellow riders).
Day 3: Stadium.
Sunday dawned lovely and sunny and promised to dry out all our soggy gear. I know it really did dawn sunny because Cairo and I were cursed with an 8 a.m. start time for stadium, and thanks to my less than stellar order in the group, we were one of the first ones to ride.
I got out to the open grassy schooling area, Cairo jaunty as always, and started to warm up. Cairo took offense at a rider who didn’t actually enter her bubble but got near it when her horse popped into the arena from a hill on the side and we had a brief leap and spin.
“Sorry!” I called out to the surprised rider nearby, “she’s having some emotions!”
But Cairo soon settled back to work and by the time Meika came down to school us, butter wasn’t melting in her mouth. “Is she feeling OK?” Meika called out because if Cairo is being quiet and reasonable, something must be wrong.
“She’s fine!” I told her, “We had our freakout before you got here.”
We popped over some fences, and then Meika said to do the bigger oxer before we headed over the stadium round. For some reason the notion of the “bigger oxer” (which was still smaller than some of our cross-country fences) sucked the brain cells out of my head and I rode up to it doing basically nothing. Cairo rolled her eyes and jumped it.
“Ride it,” Meika said, “Ride her canter.” And so I did, and it was lovely. Into the stadium round we went.
I was super pleased with our stadium (and so was Meika)—it was cadenced and rideable. She was great through the double and the one-stride and all my worries that she might push through my leg around the corners were not born out, she was all business (or as I’m now going to think of her, all mullet).
Giving this one plenty of air! Photo by Irina Kuzmina
We had a rail at the very last fence, thanks to my squinting into the bright morning light and then realizing at the last minute there was actually not one more stride there. It was a fairly impressive chip and Cairo did her best to jump out of it, but when your chest is basically at the fence you are jumping, there’s only so much a little bay mare can do. Still she turned on her little rocket boosters and just knocked the front rail of the oxer.
I took her out to the schooling area and popped over one more oxer, just to ensure Cairo had no lingering bitterness about the rail and the tight spot. She did not, she merrily jumped it and looked for more. On that note, we headed back to the barn for kisses and peppermints.
Meika pronounced our debut a perfect set-up for the rest of the season. And even better, she praised me for believing in my sassy little horse when others might not have thought she was the best choice.
If you count success by scores, we finished badly, but if you count success by achieving your goals and having a blast, then we were total rockstars out there.
And now I need to go take another dressage lesson before our next event!
Camilla Mortensen is an amateur eventer from Eugene, Ore., who started blogging for the Chronicle when she made the trek to compete in the novice level three-day at Rebecca Farm in Montana. Camilla works as a newspaper reporter by day and fits training and competing Cairo into her days.
