My super groom (boyfriend) got Fable to stand in a bucket! Hell has frozen over!
Growing up, I was always told “don’t put your eggs all in one basket!” I’ve mostly lived by that in an effort to avoid disappointment. Like applying to 17 colleges. That was pretty awful, but my parents REALLY didn’t want me putting my eggs in one basket, so I put them in 17 different baskets! Or applying to jobs as a teacher upon completing grad school. I applied to 70 or 80 jobs in an effort to not end up disappointed. WELL-one thing that I’ve learned about horses over the years is that disappointment is inevitable no matter what, so you’d better mentally prepare yourself! Especially when you have only one horse, 100% of your free time, expandable income, energy and sanity is hedged on one four-legged creature. I have one event horse. She’s all I’ve got. And she’s a special one, so in that aspect of my life, I am putting ALL of my eggs in the Fable basket, hell or high water!
CDCTA Horse Trials
We entered CDCTA last minute, after having to scratch from Loudoun HT the previous weekend because Fable was sore on the hard-as-cement ground. We had weeks and weeks of drought in central Virginia without a drop of rain, and the ground really suffered because of it. CDCTA was no exception, although Fable had recovered from her soreness so off we went. We had a very pleasant dressage test:
Which put us in the lead on a 30! I have NEVER, I mean NEVER been first after dressage and luckily did not find this out until I was done jumping because I’m sure it would have gone to my head and affected my riding!
Fable jumped around double clear in showjumping: video of stadium round
And clocked around cross-country with time to spare. She was incredibly rideable and was light as a feather in the bridle the whole way round. The whole round felt smooth and fast. My friend Anna, who was also competing there, told me her trick to making time, which is to determine the halfway point of the course and determine what half of the optimum time is, then write that on your arm. At that point on course, you then make sure that you are at or under that time to gauge whether you need to keep on rolling or put the pedal to the metal! It really worked and I have been using that trick ever since!
Upon completion of the event, we found out that we had won, and also won the Thoroughbred Incentive Program high point award! I am still on cloud nine from that day.
Surefire Horse Trials
I had wanted to enter a difficult Training before we move back up to the big P, so we headed up to Purcellville for the Surefire Horse Trials. Dressage had some bobbles and was not our best, but good enough for a 33. I had warmed her up for 5 minutes too long, and with Fable there is about a 5 minute window between being not warmed up enough and warmed up TOO MUCH!
Stadium was great, Fable jumped around double clear as she usually does. Cross-country was quite a tough Training with some big fences and interesting combinations, as expected. There was also lots of terrain, so I knew I would have to make an extra effort to keep attacking and stay in that rhythm the whole course in order to make time. Surefire did an amazing job of aerating the footing, as it still had not rained at this point. It was evident to me that they had put a lot of effort into preparing the footing for the event, which I really appreciated!
When it came time for us to leave the start box, I made up my mind to attack right from the start and out we went. Fable gave me that same smooth, fast ride as she had at CDCTA, just dead honest and rideable the entire way. She never put a foot wrong. We came through the finish flags with time to spare (thanks to Anna’s trick!).
As we were icing Fable back at the trailer a little while later, the girl parked next to us asked me how my ride went. I smiled and told her that it was amazing, and that Fable was my old Preliminary horse that had suffered a major soft tissue injury last year, spent 9 months locked in a stall, and I had thought I might never get to ride her again. I told her that we were competing at the Training level and I was just enjoying every minute, regardless of the level. I’ve put all my eggs in the Fable basket, because she’s worth it. We’ve had our share of extreme lows, but the high of being able to gallop this amazing creature cross country far outweighs everything else. I feel privileged to be able to ride this horse every day and to be able to call her mine.
My wrinkly copilots
The Adventures of Fable and Adri 
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