Radzionkow CDI

On May 1 the team headed over to Poland for the Radzionkow CDI. This was my first time in Poland, and driving through this country was so beautiful because Poland has such a vast landscape- seeing so much open country stretched out across the horizon remind me of good ol' Canada ;-)

We left on tuesday at 10pm and drove through the night and arrived on wednesday and got the horses settled, then on thursday we had the vet check.  I brought Anited along to school and Heike also brought her horse 'Rocky' along. Below are some pictures of us working the horses.

The picture below is one of my favourites, because I didn't know it was being taken because our driver (Günter) who always takes all the snap shots at the shows, he caught me and Orion sharing a moment and it is these moments that I live for- when its just me and my horse :-)

In the next picture is when I noticed that Günter was snapping pictures

We also had a friend from Poland (one of Heike's students) come and join us and act as our translator. Below in the picture- from left to right - is me, Anna and Heike. 

On the friday Orion and I rode through the Grand Prix Test. Despite the rainy afternoon Orion shone like a star and we scored a 68.8% and placed third! Something that really helped me focus during this test were some very helpful insights that I found in the article written by Cathrine Haddad. A good friend of mine (Vicki) sent me this as a good luck message and the advice in it could not have come at a better moment. Here is the link for the article written by Cathrine Haddad from the Chronicle of the Horse magazine http://www.chronofhorse.com/article/casey-and-pentimento-mental-prep-first-grand-prix. Although we had the first two days in Poland were sunny and nice, on the afternoon of our Grand Prix test the sky turned grey and pouring rain replaced the rays of sunshine that we had been enjoying. If you read the article, you will understand the humour behind the fact that it was raining, because Cathrine shares her secret of how she deals with her show nerves by finding some source of light to focus on. So without any sunshine, I had to do some searching for a source of light  before I headed down the centre line. And as it turns out I focused on the reflection of light from a car traveling down the highway. I thought this was a fitting source of light because it made me think of all of the kilometres I have traveled to get to this point. And it reminded me of a sketch that someone had once shared with me explaining the definition of success:

This simple sketch is taped to my closet, so that every morning when I am getting ready I remember that the journey towards any goal is not a smooth path, but all the bumps and turns along the way are what define the success at the end of the road.

After our successful round in the Grand Prix, Orion and I qualified for the Grand Prix Special which we rode on the saturday.  My ride on Saturday was the perfect example of how much truth lies in the sketch above. Because Orion and I hit a couple bumps, as our warm up for the Grand Prix Special did not go as smoothly as planned. As a result I didn't have the same sense of inner calmness as I headed into competition ring on the second day as I did on the first day. As a result I didn't find my rhythm in the canter right away and we had some mistakes in our line of two tempis. But despite the mistakes we also had some great high lights, we even got a 9 for our canter pirouettes! Even with the mistakes we ended up with 67.2% and placed third again. Still good :-) but I know that we can do better!! So all the all it was a successful weekend in Poland filled with many learning experiences!

Thank you so much for keeping up with me! Until next time :-)