Maya - Sporting Days - Feb ‘21

Hello. This is a video for the Myer group. I took Maya to the Sporting Days Horse Trials, which is just a local event here in Aiken, South Carolina. Obviously she's an intermediate horse, nearly advanced, but I decided to give her a just a nice easy preliminary horse trial to start the year off. I was sort of treating this as a bit of a competition, but more of a. Just a bit of an outing at a lower level just to give her a little bit of a cross country school and pop through the small dressage ring. And she was very, very good. She did a really nice. She's a test, a nice dressage test. She is very, very seasoned at school and schooled for this level test. So it was actually quite, quite easy riding her through this preliminary work, which was sort of leg yields and halts and small circles and stretching circles and medium canters and stuff like that. She's been going really, really well on the flat, to be honest. We've got her sort of priming up for an intermediate in two weeks time at Pinetop down in Georgia. So she finds this more simplistic dressage work quite, quite easy and comfortable. She scored a 28 in the dressage. You'll see everything went really, really well. I lost her a little bit at the end. She started to swing her hind end in the last can of work. But she was obviously. This trot works fantastic. She walked really well and she was nice and behaved and relaxed through the whole test. The show jumping, I made an absolute mistake mess of in the show jumping. You'll see it in a second. I made a terrible turn to a smaller fence and had a, had an OXA down, which ultimately actually cost us the competition. That being said, I wasn't too worried about the result of this contest. I was more trying to use this event as a, as a little bit of sort of a blowout just to get her out and about the cross country. Actually, in the showjaming cross country, I used a different bridle. Peter Wild schooled her for us a week or two ago and recommended this. It's got two reins and it's still a snaffle, but it's sort of got a leather elevator sort of gadget to it which seems to keep her frame up and her shoulders up and a wither up. I think it actually worked really well. She was very, very balanced and in good control around the cross country course and I didn't even put my watch on and I was trying to just be nifty through the course without pushing her too Hard and I looked at the results and she, she made the time which was a little bit of surprise because I, I didn't feel like I was going fast. Maya, we. We've got obviously the. She's for sale at the moment. I had one guy try her and really liked her and he's just trying to rally his finances together at the moment saying that we've got some, we got some people flying in next Saturday to, to try and it's actually going to be a bit sad. I'm actually really starting to enjoy riding and training her at the moment and she's sort of giving me this real four star, five star feel. So I'm sure she'll get snapped up and sold while we're down here in Aiken. See here, this is the only blemish in our test. She a little excited in the. The counter counter here and started going a little bit haunches in. I'm sure we lost a couple of points there. That being said, she's quite chill and relaxed considering it was her sort of first outing of the year. I've. I've tugged a Bruce's field and jumped her around a sort of a meter 20 class last week and had one cross country. This is the cross the show jumping sporting days. It's a. It's a very. I don't know what the word is old event. It's one of the original Aiken events. It's got a. I love the show jumping ring here actually. It's got a couple trees in it. This is easy. This is a quite a low level for Maya. I think I may have been a little bit complacent. These jumps weren't very big for her. And whenever I'm teaching riding lessons, if anyone ever made a sharp turn to a square OXA like this, I'd yell and scream. Anyway, lesson learnt. I need to go a little bit wider there, give her a little bit more space and a little bit more room to that Oxa saying that I sort of wasn't really riding her to go clear, if you know what I mean. I wasn't sort of jumping a big in the warm up or lifting her up over the fences. It was more just a little bit of a schooling round. So she ended up finishing second. I think she got a score of 28 in the dressage, one rail down in the show jumping and then clear cross country. So it's about 32 which is pretty respectable and I don't think it took anything out of her. So I'll probably give me a couple easy days. She'll be tried for sale next week, and then the following two weeks after that, we'll take her to the intermediate at Pinetop. And I gotta say, I love this. This bit cross country, just. She never really got in an argument with my hand. Felt like we were jumping everything out of stride. I tried to be make a few sort of sneaky inside turns. You'll see in a moment. I go through this water jump and then I actually cut inside some jumps to get to the next jump. So she's very, very experienced and confident and brave through these cross country jumps. So anyway, I'm sure she comes through this all right and looking forward to her next event and potentially finding her a new rider. I'll check in with you all later.