Successful first day at the Festival of the Horse!

• The FEI jog started this morning at 6:45am (bright and early!) and the CDI FEI PSG started at 8:30am or so. Monkey drew 7th to go, which meant I had to be up at some god-awful time in the AM to braid him and make sure he looked presentable enough for the FEI panel (not to mention myself). Monk's ride time for the PSG was 9:24am. Majek also had his first PSG ride at 8:27am, so I had two horses to get prepared! It was kind of an insane morning, but in some ways better to get everything over as it got quite warm again (probably almost 90 degrees again today).


• Majek's first ever PSG went absolutely super. No mistakes, pretty up and active, could always be a little bit longer/looser in the neck and more uphill but overall I was very happy. Scored 63+% but didn't place in a very large and competitive open PSG class. But very, very happy with how well it went for his first PSG.


• After Majek was Monkey, who warmed up super and also had a great PSG. I had one little silly mistake in the 3's, but otherwise a very solid test to score 64.8 and place 7th out of 27 horses in the CDI. The class was super competitive, with first place going to Steffen Peters with his new phenomenon Weltino's Magic (scoring 75+%), second going to Guenter Seidel with around 72%, and the next 4 placings being taken by Steffen's second horse, Jan Ebeling (on two different horses) and Mette Rosencranz.


• I was a little disappointed with my score, mostly because I scored almost 67% from the European judge, 66.5 from the Canadian judge, and only 61 from the U.S. judge. But in general I was very happy to score and place as well as I did!


• I rounded out the day riding the young horse Bolero, who did a pretty good albeit entertaining Training level test. By his ride time (after 2pm), it was already hot again, and he was pretty quiet in the outdoor warm-up (I didn't lunge him before I rode, thank goodness). But he perked up in the indoor arena, which is set down in a hole and has bleachers all around it. The people walking around impressed him and he was pretty spooky through his entire test. I had a heck of a time getting him into the corners or on the long side because he was looking at everything. :) He was good, he did his job, and for his first test with his relative inexperience it went pretty well. He scored 66% (he is capable of SO much more), with an 8 on gaits and several 8s in the test.


• I watched some of the rides (in between caring for the horses), and there were some good ones. I unfortunately didn't get to see Steffen's 75% ride, I would have loved to see that one. The GP was good, although the real heavy-hitters weren't in it (no Ravel). Guenter rode U2 (the horse that bucked him off last year) and had a nice test with some fantastic moments, punctuated by some big spooks. I believe Jan Ebeling won the GP with Ralfalca, he had a very nice ride.


• The weather is supposed to cool down this weekend, which would be a nice change. I love warmer weather, but this was too much too soon! I can't believe I'm complaining about being too hot!!