Yay! My first show away in the truck! How exciting! Took it into work during the week and they redid all the gas fittings in the accomodation, replacing the garden hose with proper gas hose (eeek!!) & putting in a new gas cooker. So I made sure I went out & bought milk so that I could actually make myself a cup of coffee! Man I could get used to this!! Tested the fridge & found that whilst it no longer works off the gas setting, it does still work off the battery setting, so made sure I switched it on as I was warming the truck up & turned it off an hour after getting to the show, so as to have it as cold as possible, for as long as possible.
Had decided after Flynn being very flat for the dressage the week before, that maybe he needs heating up a bit? Went out & bought some oats to see if they would help. Didn't make any difference in energy at all, but noticed he was spooking a bit more than normal.
Got out to Pukekohe & had a casual morning plaiting up, drinking cups of cofee & watching the other classes. Got ready and went over to warm up for the 1m class. Flynn felt a bit hesitant coming into the practice fence the first few times but warmed out of it, so I didn't give it another thought. Went into the 1m class & had a right disaster, he gawked at every single fence coming into them, and then had a rearing fit when he took exception to a large area of dirt in the corner of the ring. He managed to get himself extremely wound up & upset over it, but eventually after about 2 minutes of standing on the spot waving his legs around, he finally went past it, but kept a good eye on it LOL Funnily enough we got 20% for that round *blushes*
Then in the 1.05m, I'm not sure what happened, but for the first time in his life, he actually dive bombed the jumps. We had quite a few rails in that class, including landing in the middle of the oxer, even though we'd taken off from a normal stride. 40% in that class & it left me very confused and wondering if I should still do the 1.10m or not... Decided to give it a crack & I could always retire during it, should he carry on the way he was. Turns out he wanted to do the 1.10m class as well, did a lovely round, for 6th place and 75%. So toddled off home, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Figured maybe he was a bit off his game from being in the paddock with no grass the night before, so doubled the oats, gave him a blud sachet & threw him in the usual grassy paddock.
Went back out to Pukekohe the next morning & got ready for the 1m class. He warmed up nicely on the flat, nice & foward & big powerful trot everywhere, so was hoping the day before was put behind us. However still jumped the practice fence a bit weird. Went into the 1m class & I have to say, I have never had such a short round before! We went over jump 1 after looking at it from miles back (just a plain brown upright too!) then we stopped at the white upright coming into the 6 stride line. I whacked him, we circled & went over it then 2nd time. Then he slid into the white oxer. As in through it. I quite retired & left the ring. That was really, really weird, Flynn's never done that before, if he stops, its a stop & spin at the last second, where as he backed off the whole way down the line & then 1 stride out just put on the picks, with no attempt to dive to the left like he usually does.
Decided to do the 1.05m to see what happened, however we didn't even get as far as the third jump. The white line was again jumps 2 & 3 in the ring. We came into the white upright and he backed off, I growled, he went to go, then went to stop, then thought better of it & tried to jump it, only by this stage we were nearly at a standstill, so he got his front end completely over it, then decided to go backwards instead of forwards. Hooked the pickets with his front legs & pulled them back towards him, got a fright from the pickets & poles coming with him, and leapt to the left, which then took out the jump stand and then took off across the ring. Goodness knows how I managed to stay on. I retired & then scratched from the next class & took him home.
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