Hi everyone!  The first day of Fair Hill is complete!  We've had alot of rain here (all on Tuesday) and it is making for some soggy going, as I'm sure it is at home.  Getting to the dressage area involves going through a tunnel... Which is filled with mud, and I'm sure you can imagine how thrilled Randy is about that!  But the overall atmosphere is wonderful, and I'm very excited!

The first horse inspection went off today... Randy jogged really well in front of the judges, and hopefully they'll take note that the funny shoeing job is not a problem this week!  He was so exuberant by the end of the jog that he was dragging me at full trot-extention speed down the asphalt--in my high heels!  I may have looked rather clumsy, but he was magnificent, and passed with ease.

The ride times have been published for Dressage. I was hoping that I would ride on Friday, but my ride time is now Thursday at 2:08pm.  That will be really nice, though, to spend Friday focusing on the course.

This evening, I also walked the XC course for the first time. It is 11minutes long!!!!  The entire course is uphill.  I'm so glad we have what we have at home for schooling...  Nearly every fence is a corner, water, or a ditch. There are at least fifteen ditches!  There are three separate water jumps.  Everything is naturally quite huge, but it should be a good course.  I even got the amazing opportunity tonight to walk the XC course with Derek diGrazia, the course designer.  He had wonderful insight into his course (obviously), and I was thrilled to hear him preach my "hips in front" concept around the whole course!  

I'll let you know tomorrow how the dressage goes! Keep your fingers crossed... For this next step, he needs less than a 75 in dressage to be a qualifying score.  (Remember, FEI scoring is not the same as horse trial scoring... a 75 is not as scary as it sounds!)