It’s true that every once in a while even a blind squirrel finds a nut. The same thing is true with Bobby and good ideas.

After Corona, Bobby noticed that we were both qualified for Area V Championships at Novice. This year Area Championships are at Holly Hill in Louisiana, which is a venue neither of us have been to before. Surely you can see where this is going. Because when Bobby and Amanda get an idea, we tend to charge headlong into it with reckless abandon.

When Bobby first suggested Championships, I admit to thinking I’d rather go and enter the non-Championship Novice division instead. Usually it’s much easier pickins, being that everyone “good” is entered in Championships. Last year if you wanted to place in the CH division you had to finish with a score in the 20’s. Let me tell you what me and Henry WON’T do! Our dressage just isn’t there yet. But then I thought… my momma didn’t raise no coward. Sure, we’re very unlikely to place, but we will show up and we will give it our best shot. They’ll have to climb over me on their way to the top. Besides, how cool would it be for my pony to have gone to AEC at one level and Area Championships at another level all in his first year of eventing? He’s kind of a badass (not even a little biased).

So here we go on yet another adventure. The Novice course at HH looks pretty straightforward (pics from last fall’s regular Novice and the N Champs in 2012), nothing about it gives me pause for Henry. There are bank combinations and a trakehner and a wanna-be keyhole type thing, all of which he’s seen before in some capacity.

I feel especially ok with it too since Championships are at the end of October, and if all goes according to plan we will have run Novice at Greenwood a couple weeks prior. Greenwood is the ultimate Novice course in our area, IMO. They kind of have everything: related distances, a corner, a down bank to log bending line, a trakehner, water, jumps into and out of a crater, a baby ditch weldon’s wall, a big honkin ditch to kinda skinny brush line, and a giant-ass maxed out brush fence. The Omnibus listing describes it as “a variety of questions requiring horses and riders to be competent at that level”, which made me giggle endlessly in and of itself. If Henry can jump around Greenwood, he can jump around any Novice course anywhere… of that I’m certain. And I feel like he can 100% jump around Greenwood.

Sadly no one has posted a Greenwood N course walk on MyCourseWalk yet (I wish everyone in the world would get that app, it’s fantastic) so I had to nab screen caps from someone else’s helmet cam video:

  

Greenwood is going to be the “hardest” course Henry has ever seen to date, and I’m pretty excited about it. He’s up for the challenge. Especially since Greenwood comes a couple weeks after dropping back down to BN for AEC, which should be a fun easy confidence builder for him.

So now Henry’s fall season includes

National Championships

Greenwood (aka Novice Rolex)

Area V Championships

I already have my entries in for all three so I’m officially poor until November.

It’s been fun placing at every event we’ve been to this year, but I’m afraid that streak is about to come to an end my friends. And that’s okay, because