We didn’t do the two-phase competition today.<\/p>\n
We did go.<\/p>\n
‘We’\u00a0being The Lovely S, Vinnie (the horse formerly known as ‘muckbucket’) and me.<\/p>\n
We just didn’t compete.<\/p>\n
The weather and the going were so awful when we arrived that I left it to the last possible moment to decide whether we would compete\u00c2\u00a0or not.<\/p>\n
And then the decision made itself anyway.<\/p>\n
The day went a little like this:<\/p>\n
Up at stupid o’clock; stagger and lurch about the house trying to get brain and body talking to each other in the same language instead of one speaking a kind of Serbo-Croatian dialect whilst the other only ‘spoke’ British Sign Language.<\/p>\n
Breakfast and morning tea delivered to The Lovely S in bed.<\/p>\n
We left the house with the usual things completed and arrived at the yard more or less on time to find\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n
Well I’m not altogether sure what it was we found.<\/p>\n
It was in Vinnie’s field and it looked vaguely Vinnie-shaped but whatever it was it had been hand-sculpted out of Worcestershire’s finest mud.<\/p>\n
Then the pile of mud looked at me and made a Vinnie-flavoured whicker so I guessed that\u00a0my horse had been\u00a0used as a kind of mould-maker by a group of itinerant countryside mud-sculptors.<\/p>\n
I approached the Mud God.\u00a0 He took one look at the head-collar in my hand and legged it pronto – proving that he wasn’t a mud-sculpture after all!<\/p>\n
I tried to approach him again; he ran away further and broke in to a canter around the field.<\/p>\n
Hey, I studied military strategy. I know when to withdraw to strategically regroup.<\/p>\n
I regrouped.<\/p>\n
In the kitchen.<\/p>\n
With an apple, a sharp knife and the washing-up bowl.<\/p>\n
Then I picked up the head-collar, the apple slices in the washing-up bowl and advanced again on the Mud God.<\/p>\n
As soon as I entered the field he spotted the head-collar, trotted and broke in to an effortless canter.<\/p>\n
Then he spotted the bowl.<\/p>\n
I could almost see the word ‘food’ form in his head.<\/p>\n
He did a 90\u00b0 turn and made straight for me, reducing his speed as he gained on his target.<\/p>\n
He skidded to a stop right beside me. I fed him the first slice. Then the second.<\/p>\n
But to get his mouth to the third apple slice he had to put his nose in to the head-collar.<\/p>\n
I thought: Gotcha!<\/p>\n
Back in the wash-down bay it took me almost half an hour to remove the mud.<\/p>\n
With Vinnie looking distinctly equine I finished loading the lorry, put him in his stall, put the tail up and drove out of the yard.<\/p>\n
A hundred minutes later we arrived at the venue.<\/p>\n
Fcuk me it was raining.<\/p>\n
Like a couple of soppy (quickly becoming soggy) loons The Lovely S and I walked the cross-country course.\u00c2\u00a0 We got back to the lorry soaked.<\/p>\n
I was now feeling very edgy about Vin going cross-country in sheeting rain with the take-offs and landings turning to mush.<\/p>\n
He’s a green, young\u00c2\u00a0lad. At this stage of his development and training I need every experience he has to be good, relaxing and rewarding.<\/p>\n
The Lovely S and I\u00a0had a reviving cup of tea then I inspected the show-jumping. The warm-up take-offs and landings were dire. To compound matters – out on the track the landing after fence\u00c2\u00a0one and the take-off over fence\u00c2\u00a0two were shocking.<\/p>\n
Decision made.<\/p>\n
The Lovely S and I had lunch and then I drove us back to Worcestershire.<\/p>\n
With Vin back in his field (rugged up!), the lorry cleaned out, back in its bay and oil-level checked we swapped to the car and drove home…<\/p>\n
Where we cuddled up on the couch and watched the first of the Bourne films.<\/p>\n
And…<\/p>\n
Ahem.<\/p>\n
This evening we’re watching Big Brother prior to crashing out in bed.<\/p>\n
I have to be up early tomorrow to drive to Wiltshire for the start of a new job.<\/p>\n
It’s been a disappointing day.<\/p>\n
If I’m honest… despite the fact that I was absolutely crapping myself, I really would have liked to have competed today.<\/p>\n
But it would have been wrong for Vin.<\/p>\n
B<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We didn’t do the two-phase competition today. We did go. ‘We’\u00a0being The Lovely S, Vinnie (the horse formerly known as ‘muckbucket’) and me. We just<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}