The Energizer Bunny - Inavale Eventing Camp Day 2

On day two we actually got to sleep until just after seven because camp was much quieter. I think everyone was pretty tired from the day before! Misadventures fed McKinna and we lazed around a bit. When it was time to get tacked up I offered to go get her out of her corral. I got there to find her laying down. She saw me, got up, squatted to pee and then walked up to the gate. She was ready to go.

They had a nice stadium lesson. After warmup she put them through some more technical courses and raised the jumps some also. One of the other horses, a big bay appendix was pretty tired and wanted to be pokey. He’s only four and just learning to jump. He actually did great, all things considered, but his rider told me a couple of times she’d love it if McKinna would share some of her energy with him. She was definitely the energizer bunny. The main thing the trainer had Misadventures work on was slowing McKinna down with a definite half halt/release, half halt/release. It worked great and she got some nice canter work out of her at times.


Back to camp for lunch, a nap, hay and beet pulp and then it was time for round two of XC. I’d seen the trainer earlier and she said “How’s the pony doing?” I assured her the pony was peppy and ready to go.

They warmed up and then started with a repeat of the course they’d done the day before, but she asked Misadventures if she wanted to try something a little harder and she said yes so she directed her over a few novice fences too. Of the three other horses, two were young and one was ten, but had the brain of a four year old (his owner’s words) so Misadventures and McKinna looked like old pros and got to do the harder stuff.

In the they end did a course which included several novice fences.

They jumped logs,

they jumped barns,

they galloped,

they went up and down banks,

they jumped the novice ditch,

and they cruised through water.

They had one not so good fence where McKinna took off long and the fence was pretty wide (hopefully Misadventures won’t kill me for posting this, but I love the look on her face!) – it’s wasn’t pretty, but she just clipped it a tiny bit with her back hooves.

Other than that it was beautiful, so at the end of their course they re-did that fence and nailed it. Misadventures told the instructor she’d like to call it good with that and she agreed. While the others did just a bit more, Misadventures got off and let McKinna graze. Good Pony!!

We went back to camp and had a great dinner. We ended up with about thirteen people in our campsite including the eventing trainer and a few of her friends. One of the ladies owns a winery and brought some wonderful wine to share. Eventers are so cool.

Misadventures had chosen to do stadium for her lesson on Sunday morning, figuring it would do her the most good to prepare for her Pony Club rating coming up. She got up and decided since she was exhausted McKinna probably was too and there was no reason to push it. She went over to tell the instructor who told her she remembered her saying she wanted to work on her position, but she thought it was rock solid. That made her very happy – she’s been worrying about it some because she’s been hearing horror stories about how hard Mega Ratings are and how they are sticklers on position. So we packed up and headed out, as did several other campers. All the way home, she kept saying “McKinna was so good!” I’m really proud of both of them. McKinna is a great little mare and Misadventures worked so hard to prepare her for this in a short amount of time.

We all had a great time!