Cat Power

Abbey did well at her first Eventing Derby at Inavale Farm, Sept 17. I'm just now getting around to posting this.  My goals for her were humble: not get eliminated.  We ended up with the top score in our dressage test! Hooray! Jumping and cross country were our wild cards, since that is all very new stuff for her.  She was wild in the jumping warm up, just getting more and more amped, and I was nervous, which I'm sure fed into her nerves too.  When we were on deck for our cross country round I wanted to puke. I was sitting on a thoroughbred, about to do cross country for the first time since I was 14 years old!!!  She was full of beans, and ready to GO!!! We had one refusal, and one rail down, but overall, she did really well.  She was keen to move!

This was her fist competition experience (since her days as a race horse) and she was definitely "electric" but held it together for the most part.  We ended up taking 5th place in our division overall, after the jump/cross country penalties, which was much more than I had hoped for for her first outing.  She's a good mare! I dubbed her Cat Power, which will be her show name as long as no one else has claimed that for their horse in the US Eventing Association.  Eventing career officially launched! (now we have a LOT of work to do... ).