Eventually, I will learn to stop tugging down to the largeish oxers. The first two fences in SJ were not great. I never got him in front of my legs and so, by the time we turned to the third fence a large square oxer heading up hill, we were totally backwards. The evil monkey strikes again! He gave me a fantastic try but when you are jumping almost four feet from a crawl, it’s never a good thing. After we landed off the oxer, I kicked it into gear and away we went. The rest of the course was clean, still not with the greatest of rhythm. But he’s such a trooper that he managed to pull it out. And with the lovely turns that we managed, we only added the one rail to our score. No one in the CCI 3* was double clean, so that left Dillon with the least faults. Still not what I wanted but, I am very pleased with his efforts this weekend. His fitness felt great and I was thrilled with the answers that he gave. Now he’s slated for Fair Hill as his year end goal! Dressage boot camp here we come!

–C

Parting with delusion is such sweet sorrow.