There was no bucking at Caber Horse Trials in late August—by Cairo anyway. I can’t speak for anyone else’s sassy mares.
Cairo did have some, “emotions,” as I like to call her leaping and dancing when she’s supposed to be standing still, but as always our cross-country was a blast when we get to “Go, mare go!”
Thursday afternoon, schooling day, after the last of the summer’s heat faded a little, my trainer Meika Decher met me out in the field to work on our dressage. Dressage schooling was pretty much right in the middle of part of the cross-country course, so Cairo was first thrilled, thinking despite the dressage saddle she was sporting, we were about to go do the fun staff. Thus, the dancing.
Meika pushed Cairo and my dressage comfort zone a little—asking me to ride with my hands carried more up, “like serving tea on a tray to the queen,” she likes to say. I’ve been riding her with a lower, wider hand working to get her reaching underneath herself and stretching her topline muscles. But Meika could see how I tend to push my hands too low when Cairo got tense during a test and how a judge might perceive that as my trying to force her head down.
I picked my hands up and Cairo was OK with that. During our medium trots, I could feel she really quite liked it, so when it came time for our test I went, “OK I got this.”
Oh dressage. Nah, I didn’t have it.
My first clue should have been when I finished braiding and walked away to change my shirt. Cairo decided to have a nice roll and liberally decorated her braids with little itty bits of shavings. I came back, was horrified, dusted the braids off as best I could and decided to pretend it was fairy dust if I saw bits of it floating away as we trotted down the centerline.
I tied her, and dashed off to get a bucket to wipe off the poop she’d smeared on her butt during her little moment of fun. While I was gone, she merrily attempted to rub her braids off on the door. Sigh.
Clean, tacked up, braids in reasonable order, we headed out for dressage.
Cairo was great. Her mediums felt fantastic, she stayed straight, I used my corners. The only fly in the ointment was the flies and a multitude of other bugs. It was really buggy out and even coated with DEET, Cairo was annoyed. Still she kept her cool and except from some head tossing and tail swishing, she dealt with it.
Meika was beaming when we came out. Pleased that I had ridden as instructed instead of reverting to old habits, pleased Cairo was good. “So second to last instead of last?” I joked.
No such luck. Dead last. Meika looked vaguely horrified, and muttered something about things changing when I moved to intermediate, which cracked me up (and mildly horrified me), seeing as that we haven’t actually gotten me to prelim yet!
Reading an old Practical Horseman article by Jimmy Wofford, “The Eventing FAQs of the Matter,” he talks about jumping and dressage and moving up a level, and he writes, “Notice that I mainly consider the jumping disciplines when I try to decide if a horse and rider should move up. It may hurt our egos when we get a “4” for the shoulder-in, but no one I know of has died of that yet.”
True. Dressage has not killed us yet.
Cairo talks with her tail. Maybe that’s what the judge meant when she said Cairo was croup high in her comments? People recognize us from miles away on cross-country because of it.
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That tail, always talking.
She’s not mad or upset; she’s having a blast. But that same flag-waving in dressage is I think our biggest hold-up. You know how cat people tell you that when a cat sticks its butt in your face it’s just “saying hello”? Well, Cairo jauntily flipping her tail is her way of saying “Hey! I’m here! I hear you! Do you hear me?”
Meika had the same takeaway that my regular dressage trainer Leslie Chapman did in our last lesson: More forward. Let Cairo be powerful, not bottled up. The trot that is currently our medium needs to be our regular trot. I think Cairo will like the more being more forward and that might slow down the tail commentary, or at least make it more in rhythm with our pace.
(Side note: bodywork, animal communicator, saddle fit checked, vetted, she’s a sound happy little mare with a little of opinions and I’ll just keep listening to them!)
More forward and powerful is also what I need for cross-country. Cairo has no doubt we should be more forward but in our schooling the next day Meika had to keep telling me to kick on and remind me this was not a hunter class. Cairo knows perfectly well the schooling is just schooling. She soars over everything, even the crossrails, with a sort of annoyed impatience. I tend to be a little passive, waiting for that “Have a good ride,” moment out of the start box where Cairo turns the rocket boosters on.
Game faces, on. Photo by Irina Kuzmina
And on the boosters went, after a little pre-start box dancing. Caber is kind of hard because of the way it’s set up, with cross-country heading away from a gap in the trees going back to the stables and the first couple fences have you going through gaps in paddocks. That can back some horses off and I saw other riders having to boot their horses over the first couple fences.
Cairo couldn’t care less about leaving her stable buddies behind when there are cross-country fences to tackle. She grabbed the bit and zoomed at the first log, then the log on a box and cut-out cabin. Mindful we had our first real question coming up I tried to rein her in a little at the table before the up bank. Cairo disagreed. We took the table pretty tight and I heard Cairo give it a good tap.
Cairo isn’t stupid, so she apparently decided I might have something to say about how we jumped the bank and listened beautifully, up, two strides, over a log on the down bank and over a skinny. I had been a little worried that she might launch off the bank and we could miss the skinny, but she was still in “Mom might have a point” mode and was conservative.
That lasted only as long as the next long gallop through the woods downhill to another table. I admit I had a “Jesus, take the wheel” moment and let Cairo fly over it. Out of the woods to bending half-round and rolltop, then a ramp in the trees, and around the corner to a coffin set on a slight bend with a skinny log as the out fence. Ride it pretty straight, Meika said on our course walk. I swear the more difficult the question the more Cairo relishes it.
The next fence was a ditch-and-wall that is a total rider-freak out fence. It’s brushed tall and riders are all like “Whoa, it’s really big!” and stare into the endless abyss that is really a rather shallow ditch. But it’s also really friendly in that it’s on a narrowish straightaway heading back to the barn. I knew Cairo would merrily jump it and she did. Wheee!
Nonetheless I waited until after we completed cross-country before going back and standing in it for a photo. It’s more fun to say “Look what we jumped!” after than to think “Holy crap, I’m jumping THAT,” before.
Much smaller when I’ve already jumped it!
The fence I looked at with some trepidation was a table jump and a field away: A “tiger trap” around a mound to a wanna-be prelim chevron. Rather than calling it a tiger trap as I’ve seen elsewhere, Caber calls it a triple bar and I realized it really was just a triple bar made of logs, still I might admit to having had a bit of “take the wheel moment” there too. The hard part about the turn after was that it was a tight turn away from home but Cairo is no homebody.
Next was a log into water out over a brush that Meika said to ride at a slight angle. Cairo came in bold and brassy, and we nailed it. Bending line, then a log and we were done. Me with my usual post-cross-country idiot grin.
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Who has the wheel? Photo by Irina Kuzmina
“So there’s good news and bad news,” Meika said smiling as she walked up. Somehow I managed to ignore the smile and go, “OMG BAD NEWS.”
“I missed a fence?” I asked. Knock on wood I have not yet missed a fence on cross-country, but I walk my course three times every time because I’m so paranoid.
Meika looked at me quizzically. “No,” she laughed. “The good news is you are riding like a prelim rider.” The bad news (which wasn’t really bad) was that I needed to get Cairo more adjustable into the combinations. No letting Cairo or any form of deity take the wheel. This seemed reasonable. And doable.
This time only two people got eliminated and two more had refusals, so alas I only moved up from 18th to 14th. Karmically, I refuse to wish misfortune on my competitors, so I never hope that anyone else has problems. But after cross-country I run and check the scores. Sometimes I shoot from last to ribbon-reach. And others, well not so much!
Stadium on Sunday had some fun questions—and apparently I needed to work harder to answer them! The turn from Fence 1 to 2 was away from the gate. “No problem,” I thought, walking the course, Cairo isn’t barn sour. Cairo on the other hand decided to throw some new fun into our ride and got sticky and we forgot how to turn.
So we thumped Fence 2 after coming into it crooked and under-paced. Then we gave Fence 3 (an actual triple bar) a good whack. Cairo got mad. I got my act together, she came forward and then we got our groove on and the rest of the course was awesome.
Once we got it together… Photo by Irina Kuzmina
Thanks to our dressage score and the rail-whacking we were out of the ribbons, but who needs the ribbon when your trainer tells you are ready for prelim?
Here’s the thing. Prelim was never on my radar. My eventing ambitions were something along the lines of, “Hey, I’d like to do well at training and then maybe by the time I get there, I will suddenly be rich and can afford to go back to jumpers.”
I rode jumpers and equitation my whole life, with only one brief foray into eventing in college. A couple years ago I went to a little one-day horse trials on my off-the-track Throughbred and had a blast at beginner novice. Then we did novice. And then there was no turning back.
Eventing was fun, I could afford it and the people were awesome. Training seemed like a good goal. Prelim was what the “big kids” did.
So Cairo and I are signed up to start in our first preliminary soon. I’m nervous and excited. Wish us luck!
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.
