So, on Saturday we managed to dodge the worst of the rain and set off on the long journey 8mins down the road to Merrist Wood. Warmed up mostly in the dry - Monty had a strop when the rain did come down and just wanted to swing his bum into it but generally warmed up nicely.
First test was N30. Came out thinking it was quite a sweet test. Slightly spoilt his left canter with a spook which I quickly rescued and a spook halfway through his halt (I called him a doughnut fair few times in the test) then the flipping photographer dropped her clipboard halfway down our centre line which meant our final halt was awful but generally quite happy with how it went as it wouldn't be the best test for him with give and retake in trot twice, medium trot twice and not a lot of other trot work for him to show that he can actually trot nicely!
We had 10mins to walk around before E44. I did one unaff Elem with Monts last year before his injury but otherwise I haven't ridden Elem since my old horse back in 2006 - at least you can rise to the trot these days! Unfortunately Merrist Wood have decided to put 2 large wooden advertising boards below the mirrors since we last competed there. He is used to the mirrors but the new boards necessitated a complete mental breakdown. I knew he was looking at them as we trotted down the long side and his ears were creeping up towards my nose and then in typical Monty style he leapt up in the air, spun 180 and disappeared across the arena with me. Idiot horse. Lovely judge gave me time to circle him a few times up that end before ringing the bell but he was tense for the entire test and ruined his walk to canter by crabbing sideways spooking. Came out feeling rather disappointed as knew he could do so much better.
Cheered up a bit when friend appeared with a pretty blue ribbon for the Novice. He had only gone and scored a PB of 68.85% with a few 8's including one for my riding!!! We were 2nd out of 10 in the Restricted, 5th out of 20 overall.
Put Monts away and then wandered back round to check score for Elem and nearly fell over with shock when saw that we had got 65.2%! In the end we finished 6th out of 13 in the Restricted, 7th out of 21 overall and only 2% behind 3rd place. Our score would have got us 2nd place in the Open. Without the silliness he could have pulled in a really cracking score for first ever aff Elem. That's better than my old boy ever scored at Elem. Hey, at least there's an alternative career for us if eventing keeps on getting rained off!
Novice score sheet. Not got my Elem one yet.
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