Samantha Kay;Emerging Eventer

Today has been devoted for some months on the calendar, to going to Dayton to watching Samantha compete in her first ever Event, ridden by Mary, in her first ever Event!
I am so proud of Mary for committing so much time and hard work to getting Sammie prepared for such a big enterprise.
For those of you who don't know what this entails, Eventing is horse sport. It is the one horse sport contested at the Olympics.( Not that Sammie is at that level, but just for clarity...)
There are three phases to an Event. There is dressage, where you ride the horse in a fenced arena of prescribed size, and perform a predetermined set of movements. The movements become more and more technical and difficult as you advance through levels of competition. This is a test of precision, control, ease of movement in a muscular fashion. Some people compare it to ballet on horseback.
The second phase of competition is cross country. This phase is fences of sturdy, permanent feature and natural materials set out on in the open, timed and navigated at a great rate of speed. This is a test of endurance, physical coordination and strength and frankly, just plain old crazy. I love this phase. This is the one that seems most incredible to me. Why would a horse choose to gallop about the country side, jumping over huge, often tricky obstacles that are more easy to go around- carrying a person? Just because we ask.
The last phase is Stadium Jumping. This phase is show- jump obstacles in a tight course inside a fenced arena. The jumps are often bright colored and distracting. The poles that make up the jumps are perched inside shallow cups, that if you knock a pole, it will drop. This is also timed, and you are docked for knocking poles, not taking a jump and time.
That is pretty much the quickie version of eventing.
Sammie and Mary looked fantastic! They are a nice pair, and Mary has done wonders with Samantha's most trying feature- her canter.

Kendra (Samantha's true owner- I just stole her and worked with her) came to watch as well, and I think she enjoyed herself, but probably misses Sam a lot now.
Here are some pictures of Sam and Mary in their Debut!

Samantha and Mary warming up for Dressage.

Sam is a great poser.

The whistle has blown, and they enter the Dressage arena...

Over fence 4 in the Stadium Jumping phase.

And one picture I pirated off Mary's facebook page of her and Sam at the Timber Run show last weekend. I have a feeling this was taken by Daniel Schubert.: Photog Extraordinaire! You can find him (and hire him) on Facebook. He is from Kettering, Ohio.

And here they are navigating a Cross Country fence in schooling (that means not in competition). This is another pirated picture, from Daniel Schubert's  facebook page. He is a fantastic photographer- Emerald Valley Stables is very lucky to have his talent following them about!

You may have noticed there aren't pictures of Sammie and Mary doing the Cross Country phase of the competition today. I could say my camera's battery went dead. Because, it very nearly did, before I found an available outlet outside the straw barn to recharge the thing.
The battery did not wear out. But Mary and Sammie didn't get to compete in Cross Country. See, in eventing, if you get eliminated from any previous phase of competition, you cannot continue with the next phase. At this trials, they run things abit awry, making Dressage first, Stadium next, and Cross Country last.  And, today was not their day in the Stadium phase.
Instead of detailing the story, let me tell this one instead.
Way on back in the 80's, when I was competing heavily in this sport, my biggest venue was the United States Pony Club Nationals in Culpeper, Virginia. This is a team Event, where 4 riders compete together against other teams from across the country.
My team was challenged in many ways, and by the time we got to the stadium phase there were only three of us left to compete. You need three riders to stay in competition. One of our teammates had been on a longish visit to the hospital after a nasty fall on Cross Country the day before.
I had fought my way through the Cross Country on my sweet mare, Holly, who wasn't at all convinced that going over was smarter than going around on some of the fantastic and huge obstacles.
But, we had done it.
Stadium was the easy part. We were consistently good there, and although the obstacles were max height and max width, I felt we were going to be okay. But that afternoon, in front of a huge crowd, we came to a massive oxer (that means two jumps pushed close enough together you have to jump them at the same time). And Holly wasn't doing it. Nope. I was bitterly disappointed. I was tired, I was spent and I was left feeling a failure.
Over the years (months? I recover quickly) it became just another one of those things. And I saw it as an accomplishment that I had made it so far. That just being there was pretty special.
Here I am, many years later, still enjoying myself with these wondrous, beautiful, sometimes frustrating animals. And knowing that Mary, and Sam, even though they found that oxer that wasn't doin', did do something pretty special.