Today was our first full day in San Juan Capistrano; it was sooo nice to be able to sleep in a little bit and not have to drive for half a day or more! I thankfully slept very well (aside from Mom waking me with her snoring at 2am). My back felt much, much better today as well.
The show grounds here at the Rancho Mission Viejo Riding Park are huge. I haven't counted the number of show arenas and warm-ups, but I'm sure the number is more than 10 between the hunter/jumper and dressage shows. The grounds are beautifully manicured, and much of the hunter/jumper portion is being held on turf. The CDI arena for the dressage show was being set up today as well, luckily for me they also set up a bunch of brightly colored flags along the back side of the "C" end behind the judges' stands. Good for added impulsion (particularly since it is perpetually breezy here).
There must be 20 separate barns, some permanent, others portable (we're in the portable stalls). When we first got here yesterday, the stalls were total mud from the nasty little rainstorm that had come through the night before. Having no other options, we laid down the shavings and put the horses up, thinking we would probably have to totally redo them today. I was surprised at how well they held up!
The trek from the show office to the dressage arenas to the stalls rivals my trip from the barn at home to the local Starbucks! I got my golf cart today, and am proceeding to get entirely too comfortable zipping around in it amongst horse trailers, other golf carts, pedestrians, small dogs, trees, and various other obstacles. If you've heard of the infamous Thermal golf cart incident, you know I can be very dangerous with a golf cart.
I rode all three horses today, starting with Majek who was the most tense and goofy of the three (not unsurprisingly). To his credit, he had to deal with the most hectic environment; about the time I got him in one of the arenas a host of jumper riders decided to join me. Majek was already wanting to leap around and that only made him more wound up. Mom said he looked fantastic, he felt like a bomb waiting to go off!
Next was Monkey, who was quite good. We winnied quite a bit during the ride, which is totally unsurprising given how much he winnies at shows anyway. He hates to be away from his buddies. Luckily his whining doesn't destract him too much from his job. In fact, the added energy tends to help him to be more uphill, active, and expressive.
Finally Victor. He was a bit wound up but generally well behaved. We did have a few spooks and goofy moments when someone would walk out of a trailer that was parked next to the arena or someone's horse would jump around behind the bushes. Otherwise he was very "boingy" (someone watching him commented on how springy he was).
In general everyone settled in very well. Thankfully tomorrow I'm having a glass guy come out to the show grounds and fix the window in my truck!! Tomorrow is one more "lazy" day here; Thursday is the vet inspection and FEI jog, then the CDI competition starts on Friday. Looking forward to it!
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