In preparation for our second event I booked in a dressage lesson and a show jumping lesson in the hopes of being better prepared than last week. I think I must have still been feeling a little disheartened after our poor DR at Kirrie and let it affect me in my lesson. Corky was playing up and I didn't seem to manage to sort things out as I normally can. I'd also been feeling quite overwhelmed by my schedule at work so generally wasn't in my normal positive frame of mind. Fortunately my trainer Karen sorted us out and we ended up doing some lovely work by the end of the lesson. The next night I tried to replicate the things we did in our lesson but was not quite as successful! The following night I had a jumping lesson booked with David. After an away day at work I was feeling much happier and relaxed which seemed to flow into my lesson. We worked on adding in an extra stride to set distances which helped to keep corky up and not speeding flat into the fences. He jumped really well which left me feeling super confident for the weekend.

So with some good lessons and lots of practice in the week, I felt nice and confident for the DR and SJ on Sat at Floors. I walked the XC on Fri evening after work and was left a little worried about some of the larger table style jumps, but in general the course looked great and was definitely more challenging than last year.

We arrived nice and early on Sat am - first one into the carpark! Feeling relaxed and happy we headed up to the DR. Corky started to warm up well, lots of nice relaxed stretching and he was soft when I picked him up. Unfortunately this was short lived and he then seemed to be super sharp after hearing another horse being hit with a schooling whip. He then would not settle back down, it was not the other riders fault at all, just the wee man being super sensitive as her horse didn't even seem to notice he had been hit! Sometime owning a sharp TB is not easy and definitely not one with a such a strong will like Corky. He would not settle down after that and we both got stressed out. Needless to say we rode a horrific head nodding test for 42.5 I felt like crying with frustration.

After a quick pep talk from Bella we headed to the SJ. Our warm-up went great, popping quietly over a few fences so I was very surprised and upset to then go in and take 3 poles. I won't lie - there were a few tears shed on the way back to the lorry to get ready for XC. Bella's job as groom then extended into counselor as well! She talked me off the ledge and sent me off to enjoy the XC and pull the day back for me and Corky!

​Boy she was right, he absolutely flew round the course, flying over the big galloping tables, coming back for the ditch, log, ditch combo which was causing lots of problems. The only issue we had was me and my poor sat nav!! Would you believe I got mixed up after fence 2 and thought there should be an extra one before 3 (I thought 3 was 4!!). Thankfully I realised and kicked on to 3 (double checking the number before actually jumping it!!). I have never got lost XC before but in hindsight I think it was a good think as we picked up time faults for 4 secs too slow. If we hadn't stopped looking for the mystery jump, we would definitely have been far too fast!

We had lovely times on the Sat so not too early a start. Walking the SJ and XC everything looked great. The XC was very hilly and there was a section about half way round with two corners and then onto trekenner on a curved line I was a little worried about but we had the dressage to worry about first!

I was feeling excited and confident about the dressage after the good scores we had been getting lately. I think that was our downfall! The warm up was varied, a few mins of good work, then back to our old contact issues. I worked him for 40 mins as this is usually when he does his best work at home. Our test was disappointing but fairly scored for 37.5. I decided to put it down to excitement of our first event and move on.

Off we went to the SJ where we took 2 poles :-( Chipping into the third which was a one stride double so Corky tried to put in 2 strides. We then took the next fence too as were too fast out of the disastrous double! At least we know where the mistake came from and can work on it.