Especailly today...He really rose to the occasion and the only reason I did not come home with a clear round was simply due to not knowing him well enough yet.
No one would guess that he is still fairly new to this level. The course was big, long, very technical, and with the rain we had the night before the going was deep. Plus Bromont is known as a fitness test as it is set, literally, along the side of a mountain... Riley came out of the box and made easy work of the beginning of the course including 4ab which was a challenging water question early on. He was then very sharp through the coffin and bold over all the big ditch questions. We were only about 3 seconds down at the 3 minute mark and going strong including a great jump into the 2nd water where we had to land and make a 90 degree turn to a skinny angled brush followed by 3 long strides to a brush corner. He flew over the next 2 fences easily then I wanted to take advantage of one of the few long, straight, slightly downhill gallops so really let him cruise on... unfortunately at the end of that long gallop was a 6 foot drop, with nothing before it, where we had to land and make a 90 degree left hand turn to line up 2 skinny cabins that were only 1 stride apart and just 4 strides from the landing of the drop. I learned something about Riley... he does not come back easily after a long gallop if he does not see something in front of him... and he does not hesitate at drops, he launches! It's one of those things that you learn in the moment... and with this particular combination there was absolutely no room to fix it as you go. We didn't even get near the first cabin so I had to circle and he jumped then perfectly once I re-approached. He just had no idea that we needed to turn to something and there was no way I could physically turn him after the effort he made off of the drop. Picture thanks to Nicholas! Many times a challenging question like that will be given separate numbers to give you the opportunity to circle without being penalized but Derek (the course designer) was definitely playing hard ball with us so we incurred 20 penalties.
After that happened I decided that the rest of the course would show me what Riley was made of from a fitness standpoint so I kept a pretty forward rhythm but did not press him as I wanted him to finish well and knew we were out of the running. He made such easy work of the rest of the course and didn't bat an eye at anything. We finished strong and in very good form and only 45 seconds over the time. No doubt he's going to be a 4* horse by next year! So far he lookds quite perky and is feeling very good. We jog tomorrow morning and show jump sometime after lunch... and we're still in 11th place as the course caused quite a few problems throughout the division.
And not to totally dismiss dressage day I'll back track... Riley was 3rd after the dressage and showed all the makings of being able to lead the field after the first day. Unfortunately he still needs to learn to relax a bit more in a big environment. His way of showing his anxiety was to toss his head for a stride at the beginning of each movement... even though it was just 1 stride it happened about 8 times so no matter how great the other parts were it really brings the score down. DOC actually asked if he'd gotten his tongue over the bit since he showed no other signs of tension and was moving the best he ever has. So we still have plenty to improve upon but I'm so excited at what we've been able to accomplish in such a short time!
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