Briar Fox Farms

This past weekend my horse and I competed in our first preliminary event.
We had our usual sub par performance in dressage...
Stadium proved to be very smooth and pleasant.
We almost knocked down 5A
and again almost hit the second obstacle in the triple combination.
But we came out with a clean round... and 3 stinking time faults.
"What the..."
Were my thoughts exactly.
Warming up for cross-country, two riders ahead of me came walking back without finishing the course.
Sort of not a good sign....
I told my mother, who is also my trainer, that I should probably bring a whip.
I'm so glad I did because it saved my butt over three fences.
I used it for the bank-down, the water complex, and the trakehner below.
My trainer gave me the courage I needed with the words,
"You're ready for this.  You have schooled harder jumps than these.  You can do this."
We were the only ones who made it through the cross-country course without any jumping faults.
We had 7.2 time faults.
My AMAZING horse....
We won first place.