T minus 7 days until departure for the Mid-Winter CDI

Next Monday Lana and I will be off on another great adventure, this time a trip to Burbank, California, for the Mid-Winter CDI-W (February 20-22).  We'll be taking Victor, who will compete in the CDI GP and GPF (his first GP freestyle), and Majek, who will compete in the National I-2 and GP (his first GP) classes.  Bolero will sit this one out, as he is still at a funny place between 3rd level and PSG, and I'd rather wait until he is confirmed FEI to show him.

I've had just a ton of things to think about and do the past month, partially in preparation for the trip and partially for my clients at home.  As seems to be typical for these trips, not only do I have a bunch of the usual preparations but unusual preparations come up as well.  For instance I had a few issues crop up with the truck that needed to be resolved.  We like good working brakes.  The truck also decided it needed a new "transfer case", I don't really know what that is, but I know it's flippin' expensive.

The boys have been going quite well.  Since it's difficult to have the horses going at their peak for GP for very long (I worry about burning them out, but I also worry about burning myself out LOL), I've been gearing them up since mid-to-late January for these shows.  Before that I was schooling much of the work, but it was not quite as intense.  I actually spent much of last fall doing very basic work with both of them, improving suppleness, self-carriage, and straightness in the basic way of going.  I also did some trot poles, jumped them a little, that sort of thing. 

I had a couple clinics in late January, one that I rode in at a local barn and one at our barn which I organized.  I haven't organized a clinic in a while and I forgot how much work it involves.  Between scheduling and figuring out the lunch situation and the inevitable schedule changes it was a ton of extra work.  However both clinics went very well, and gave me a bunch of ideas for where I need to go in my training, despite adding more things to do to my already overloaded plate.  

Of course the Monday after my clinic (two weeks before we leave for CA) I realized I had forgotten to get a current Coggins and Health Certificate for the boys.  Somehow that hadn't made the priority list, but luckily it was easily remedied.  Thankfully I had remembered to get the required influenza shots for the boys on their FEI passports and all those goofy memberships required for CDI competition.

Victor's GP freestyle has been a ton of work, and I haven't even been doing much of it.  Cindy Seburn has done aall the work finding appropriate music and doing the difficult and tedious job of editing it so it fits together.  I did the choreography, which was harder than I thought it would be.  Since Victor is still a relatively green GP horse I didn't want something too complicated, I'd rather show a logical and fluent choreography than something too difficult that is hard to follow and hard to execute.  Once we got a rough draft I've been riding it almost daily in an attempt to get the timing right.  I know it pretty well and the little tweaks we've done have helped make it much more ridable.  The freestyle is pretty much finished, and it is cool.  It will be fun to debut in California! 

This week the goal is to get the freestyle completed and memorize it.  Also I need to make sure I have everything I need packed and ready to go for the trip.  Plus I need to take care of all my clients before I leave!  Luckily I can count on Lana to know what we need to bring.  On previous California trips I'd do all the packing as well as everything else, which was downright overwhelming!