Hello to you all!!
I hope everything back at home is going well! I hear the weather is getting cold again :S Thinking about you all and so grateful for the amazing support and encouragement you are all giving me.
As I think a lot of you facebookers have already seen, the show was fantastic! But for those of you not on facebook I shall fill you all in :)
We had beautiful weather and it always brings back good memories being back in the Del Mar area. The first year we made our trip down to SoCal we stayed in Del Mar so it was nice to see so many familiar faces! The show was organized so well and like always was such a pleasure to be a part of! And I also met 2 girls that are competing with me that happen to be literally stabled just down the road from where I am at El Campeon!! So that is pretty sweet!
Wednesday we rolled into the show grounds around 2:00pm after getting stuck in some LA traffic so our 2 hour drive ended up being 3 hours but hey we’re getting used to the crawling 5 lane freeways here so it’s all good ;) Wednesday ended up being quite an exhausting day after getting everything set up and both horses ridden but we kept ourselves laughing and finished the night going out for dinner with the Dodd family, fellow Canadians from back home, so that was so nice to catch up!
Thursday it all started! We had our warm up class which I always like to use to get the nerves out and get back into competition mode. Rif did exactly what I asked for and we won with 68% and Stentano was fairly cooperative and we scored 62%. The jog followed later that afternoon and all was good and we were moved forward to the rest of the show!
Friday was one of those hurry up and wait kinda days as I didn’t ride until around 3 and then close to 5ish so I got on Stentano earlier that day just to loosen him up. We had some tension in our test with Rif as she got quite electric but we stilled managed to get a 67% and took the class and then almost a 61% with Stentano where I believe we ended up placing 6th out of 11 riders. It felt so amazing to go into the awards hearing the Canadian anthem! The prizes were great! Yes prizes.. at a dressage show!! I won a cooler and a gift certificate to one of the show vendors that is now paying for a big chunk of a new Samshield Helmet for of me.. and we’re going with bit of a Canadian theme so I’m super excited!
Saturday was even better for Rif with less tension! A 68% to once again take the class! And Stentano placed 5th (making it into the awards too :)) with a 62%. We had another proud Canadian moment in the awards ceremony listening to the anthem.. but Rif seems to find the awards extremely scary so we once again excused ourselves from the victory gallop so that we’d all stay in one piece!! We won another cooler so lucky Stentano gets one too now ;) and the company Fancy Pants sponsored a pair of customized riding pants so I get to design my own pair!!! This could be fun :D
Sunday was freestyle day… well let’s just say I didn’t realized how nervous I was about riding them.. I pretty much went into it completely blind having never ridden to the music before because of the tight squeeze to getting the music just in time for the show. I think both Rif and I were holding our breaths the entire time.. which might I add is not the best idea so these next few weeks you can imagine what we will be working on at home! We still did really well for the first go with a 68% and 0.8% off of first place. By the time it came to Stentano’s freestyle.. I think all my adrenaline had worn off and I was exhausted along with him I think.. after riding him previously that morning where he decided to be a complete crazy thing squealing and bucking.. so we went in and tried to push for all we had left in us but we had some costly mistakes and came 4th with 62%. I must say though that I absolutely love my music – Karen Robinson did such a great job with it so I just need to get down the technical part of it and then we will be ready to go get em!!
It was so fun to see Karen ride her developing Grand Prix class where she did an awesome job scoring 67% and then 68% and then 65% in her Grand Prix class on Sunday!!!
These next few days I will take a little easier on them and then get back to it near the end of the week! Our next show will be in 3 weeks so we have a little more of a break in between this time. I dropped mom off at the airport yesterday to head home.. sending her off to the cold weather :( but she’ll be back out in just over a week with April for her Spring Break and for my birthday weekend! And Esmee, my good riding friend, is also going to be coming down for my birthday weekend so I am super excited!!
It was so incredible to journey through the show with mom again and have her by my side each step of the way supporting me one hundred percent. I feel so blessed to have all her help and to know how excited dad was back at home hearing how things were going! And big thanks to Karen as well for all of her help at the show! I cannot tell you how much these two horses mean to me. They are truly blessing my life and touching me in such a way I can't quite explain. To be out doing something because you love it and because you can is more than I could ever ask for. It's a partnership and all I want is to keep dancing away with these amazing creatures and to never lose sight of the joy they bring me.
Thank you so much for the incredible outreach of encouragement and excitement for me! You are all so inspiring and I am so ready to keep on living this dream and to see where it will take us!! Please keep the emails coming! I love hearing from you all!
All my love,
Monica
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