Wellington BE Arena Eventing Qualifier 10-01-16

First BE Arena Eventing qualifier of the year.  First time jumping indoors since this time last year.  Monts isn't a big fan of indoor jumping, he gets quite spooky and backs off which isn't much fun.  Arena eventing is really good practice for him though - tighter turns, riding against the clock, lots of jumps in the arena, skinnies, angles etc.  I didn't get there in time to walk the 90 so just learnt it by watching.  There were sunbeams on the floor which I thought might prove interesting but he was pretty good, jumped a lovely smooth SJ round.  XC was a bit haphazard - I kicked on but didn't keep him balanced enough and think he was a little surprised to be asked to move on and that there were XC fences in the arena so he chipped in to a few of them.  Did a double clear though, just a bit too fast, ending up 2.5secs under the optimum time and finishing 7th out of a class of 70 odd.

2hr break with a chance to walk the 100 - same SJ course with a few changes for the XC section and a skinny brush plus a really tight turn from the house to the hanging log.  For some reason just as I turned to the first fence he decided he needed to stop for a poo!  This really interrupted my rhythm, circled and tried to set up again but it messed up our approach and we got too close so had that down, then made a bad turn to the 2nd and had that down too!  Not a good start.  Saw a nice stride to the 3rd until he decided to really back off and chip in - he cleared it with a cat leap but not nice!  After that I gave him a slap down the shoulder and he jumped the rest of the course fabulously!  Only scrappy bit was the tight turn from the house to the hanging log as I missed the tight turn so had to go wide and just didn't ride the corner very well at all.  Something for us to practice as I'm really not great at looking at the next fence while I'm still jumping the one before so always miss the turns.  Wasn't really trying for time after the two SJ down so ended up 5.5secs off the optimum time.  Disappointing as know he is more than capable of a double clear but as we haven't jumped indoors for so long it was educational for him, it was causing loads of problems, he jumped fab after the rubbish start and there are a few more qualifiers coming up at LMEQ/Coombelands which are both outdoors so should be more his thing.