After a week spent in Lexington, VA (which after going there 4-6 times a year for the past 4 years feels like home anyway) I'm finally home, but only for six days, so just enough time to turn 18 and remember that there's life outside of the barns.
OCET camp was it's usual amazing self. It was my 4th time doing the camp so you'd think that I'd have the basics covered and would be amazing in all aspects. Well unfortunately that is not true at all. As one of my fellow campers put it in the last moments of the last day, going to the camp is such a humbling experience.
Sure I know the Rider Responsibilities backwards and forwards and could recite the four aids while doing backflips out of an airplane, but that's about it as far as mastering goes. I've done the same flatwork and show jumping exercises four times now and they still manage to bring out my faults and weak areas.
It doesn't matter how many ribbons you've won or how many FEI competitions you've been to, cantering between two poles on the ground set on a 20 meter circle and being asked to be straight to each pole and get the same number of strides each time is going to make you feel like you've just come off the lead line.
Of course then the instructors do the amazing thing of taking a simple exercise like cantering between two poles, and before you know it you're doing up bank-bounce-3' vertical-bounce-down bank-one stride-3' 3" vertical with complete ease even when the last vertical is set at an angle to the bank (that exercise wouldn't be seen on any course lower than a 2* at lowest).
The hardest part comes after, remembering everything you've been taught, and trying hard not to screw up the progress you've made with your horse.
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