As I walked Cairo out to the dressage area today (or rather discussed with her why walking was more appropriate than jigging). I saw some riders coming back smiling and a lot coming back grim-faced or scowling. I thought, “Oh dear, I hope I don’t come back looking like that after dressage!”

I didn’t. I came back cracking up. As my trainer Meika Decher said when I left the ring. “Cairo’s last ride before dressage should never again be steeplechase.”

We got to the warm-up. I said “Trot.” Cairo said “Steeplechase!”

I said walk. Cairo said, “Steeplechase!”

And that’s kind of how it went. It’s a fine line with Cairo: School her dressage and nitpick transitions and such for too long and her little 6-year-old brain gets tired, and she gets angry. At the same time, I’ve got a horse that’s fizzing with energy and popping buttons. So we cantered and cantered—Cairo is rather fond of cantering so that doesn’t upset her at all. Nor apparently did it take the edge off.

We entered the arena and started off with a little drunken swagger down the centerline as Cairo and I battled for control of the bit. My dressage trainer Leslie Chapman once told me. “Who owns that bit? Did Cairo buy that bit? No, you did. Until she gets a job and buys her own bit, that’s your bit and she can’t take it away from you.”

“MY BIT” I thought to myself as we made our first 20-meter circle.

Cairo, to quote Letty Moreno, Meika’s working student, gave me the hoof.

Can you hear her screaming “Steeplechase!!!!”? Photo by Alexandria Gray

Somewhere in the middle of a silent battle of the wills in which Cairo was screaming “Steeplechase!!!” and I was internally yelling back at her, “This is dressage!” I tried to follow the advice I once got from Evention TV’s Dom Schramm at a clinic, and “ride her like she’s sweet.” It works brilliantly for jumping. We haven’t found the sweet spot yet for dressage.

I had a pretty decent 20-meter circle at the canter in there somewhere and got a 7 on it, but overall the best part of our test was that there was no bucking (we had one good one in the warm-up), and that we didn’t get eliminated.

I once read that if you make every ride 1 percent better, after 100 rides your horse is 100 percent improved. Cairo and I are tons better than last year, but perhaps we need to be 1,000 percent better when it comes to our dressage. Thank god for cross-country.

At least this is a recognizable gait. Photo by Alexandria Gray

The theme for Rebecca Farm this year is “two as one” and when it comes to having a terrible dressage test, it was teamwork for Cairo and I. Frazzled, I started heading the wrong direction on my medium walk. The judge was very nice as I stared at him blankly when he blew his whistle. We got pointed the right direction, walked, trotted, wrestled down the centerline and staggered to a halt. That’s when I started laughing. Cairo was furious and frothing like a rabid raccoon.

Every train needs a caboose and every event needs someone in last place and this week that’s Cairo and me. We got a 47.1, our worse score of the season. Whoops. Time to start rooting for a comeback!

Letty had a simple lovely ride on Panda, who is not the easiest animal and she’s in the middle of the pack of Division B of the novice three day with a 30.9. And to put things in perspective, another young girl in the Polestar Farm contingent came all the way to Montana on to have her horse come up lame. Cairo and I might be last, but we are still in the game. As the judge tactfully put it on my test, “Unfortunately, very tight and tense today.”

Letty and Panda showing us how it’s done. Photo by Alexandria Gray 

There will be other days and more tests.

Friday is Cairo’s favorite day, cross-country and of course her new fave: steeplechase! (I will forever think of that word with exclamation points because I’m pretty sure that’s how Cairo thinks of it.)

I walked the cross-country course Thursday morning, and I’m looking forward to walking it with Meika so she can tell me that brush at Fence 4 won’t ride as big as it looks. I’m less worried that Cairo won’t jump it—she tends to attack most fences with enthusiasm—and more worried she will jump the crap out of it, leaving me scrambling to both stay on and navigate the corner to the next fence, which is I suspect the question that the course designer intended. 

Totally have a plan for this. Photo by Alexandria Gray

I go at 7:37 a.m., and we start off with Phase A: 3 kilometers of road and tracks in which we trot for about 14 minutes on a track around Rebecca’s fields of canola. We will probably throw a little canter in there so Cairo knows there’s fun ahead, and come in around 12 or 13 minutes to give ourselves a moment before steeplechase (Phase B). We leave the steeplechase startbox and head right for our first of three fences at a gallop, finishing in 2 minutes. I don’t think Cairo will mind that we don’t have any warm-up fences for steeplechase or cross-country in the long format.

After steeplechase we head directly into Phase C, which is road and tracks again, about 4k with a time of 17 minutes 30 seconds. Then it’s the 10-minute box before cross-country to for the vet check and to sponge, cool off, check shoes and tack. That’s why my farrier sent me a set of shoes yesterday—if your horse threw a shoe on road and tracks or steeplechase, it’s too long a hike to go find it before cross country, so you have shoes right there for the farrier to tack on. The steeplechase is the warm-up for cross-country so we head right for the startbox once we are cleared in the 10-minute box and it’s our time to go. 

Cairo is a super fun cross-country horse—she hunts the fences. So tomorrow, once I get the early morning show nerves out of the way, will be fun, and dressage, well, it was dressage, and we will just keep working at it!  

Camilla Mortensen is an amateur eventer from Eugene, Ore., who’s made the trek to compete in the novice level three-day. She’s sharing her weekend with us with some great blogs! Want to follow along with how she’s doing? Here are the live scores—she’s in the A division of the novice three-day.