We made it! Our first CDE is in the books! What a great time, very welcoming people, lots of learning and I'm very proud to say Phillippe and I finished on a number (a big number!) and not a letter!
Saturday was dressage and cones, Sunday was marathon. Little donkey was a little less than confident going into dressage but didn't spook or park at all. He wasn't as relaxed as I would have really wanted but he was pretty accurate and moderately compliant with my requests. Now that he's been through the ring and test, I think he'll be far more confident next time.
New learning for me - eventing dressage scoring! I'm a dressage purist. My daughter came up and told me she beat me in dressage. In all fairness, pony Jasmine definitely has better, more consistent and freely forward movement than donkey, but I knew I'd driven a more accurate test than her. My score sheet said 55, hers 57. But that's penalty marks! Mine figured out to 65.6%, hers 64.4%. I did beat her! But that's the only thing I beat her in.
We headed straight to cones after dressage where Phillippe and I were clear and a mere 2 minutes (and change) over time... but we were clear!!!! Ali and Jasmine had 1 ball down and only 14 seconds over time. Good on them!!!!
So that calculates about an hour of driving for each of the kids on Saturday.
Sunday marathon day! I had surgery yesterday (Monday) so I'd asked if we could do our marathon in the morning so I could have the rest of the day to do surgery preparations. The organizers were very kind in accommodating. Realizing I'm driving a donkey and competitive ideal time was not going to be our focus, they put us out 1 minute after the first driver giving us 27 minutes before the next driver after us was to go. It worked out really well!
I'm glad to tell you that we made it through each and every obstacle correctly without errors!!! It was a lovely 6 km drive around the grounds, the weather was still cool and bugs were minimal, a nice wind too. Donkey felt game at the end. Like he'd worked, but not OVER worked. That was a huge win for me, we trotted the whole thing except for in between a few obstacles. We even went through the water hazard with little hesitation! In the end, we were 17 minutes and change over ideal time. I can't do much about speed, he's a donkey, but I can certainly make sure that we're accurate, and that we were!!
Ali and Jasmine were a couple hours after us and had 1 mistake going through a gate the wrong direction. But she came in only 2 minutes over ideal time! They won a prize for top junior competitor. She's also excited to try it again! I came in 7th out of 9 or so in training, but there were a couple of eliminations... We had the highest number of penalties to still finish on a number. I get a kick out of that. But we still finished!
I'm waiting for the professional pictures to get posted, but here's a couple of us that were snapped. I'll tell you, I'm pretty sure that donkey was the crowd favorite. So many people were out cheering us on. It was such a welcoming environment. I'm so glad I started this!
Oh, each another hour's time driving Sunday.
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