...Marches On Its Stomach

Here is the lesson of last weekend: distance ride food > horse trial food.

Don’t get me wrong!  I have eaten some great meals on event weekends.  But no one has ever offered me lemonade and homemade molasses cookies in the middle of my stadium round, is all I’m saying.

So chilling at the hold for GMHA’s 15 mile mud competitive trail ride and drive on Sunday was a little different!

As introductions to the sport go, we picked a good’un.  (I say “we” because Amanda once again agreed to go along with one of my crackpot plans – and did me one better this time by taking pictures, viewable at her blog.)  GMHA is my very favorite venue in the world.  The weather was perfect: sunny and comfortable without being hot.  The atmosphere was relaxed and cheerful and the people could not have been friendlier or more welcoming.  Also there were cookies.  And a fantastic lunch.  And my wake-up alarm didn’t have to go off until a time at which I would normally have been already mounted and well into my warm-up.  I could get used to this.

We got a crash course in pulse-and-respirations on arrival and I had a moment of thinking my learning curve was going to be Way Steeper than anticipated when I put the stethoscope to the side of our practice horse (a charming fellow who’d been minding his own business on the grass when our little practice group asked if he would be our guinea pig) and heard – nothing.  My volunteer career flashed before my eyes.  Turned out I just had a bum stethoscope.  Whew!  Respirations turned out to be the hard part, which I had not expected – my volunteering day ended with a call for a second opinion, and thus a trio of P&R volunteers clustered around an adorable chunky Thelwellian small, trying to decide whether she was breathing or not – and I promise to practice practice practice with Tucker on standing still to provide a good view.

I learned a lot, made quite a few mental notes, and really enjoyed the range of horses and riders (and drivers!) and equipment in use.  I left a little smarter, I hope, and doubly convinced that yes, this is a thing that I would like to try.

Apologies in advance if I am scarce round the blogosphere over the next two weeks.  This weekend I am laying track for our club’s TDX test, next weekend I’m fence-judging at the King Oak Farm HT, and the Tuesday after that I have a biostatistics final (and final project due) – so it will be a little bit whirlwind around here!  Sneaking in rides where I can (and having the vet out tomorrow to get a picture of Tuck’s current status and hopefully a clearer plan for management going forward), and the schedule should open up considerably in the second half of May – if I can stop myself from just cluttering it right back up again!