Cross Country Day.

Our day began early with preparations with Ernie well before 7:00 a.m. We left the start box promptly at 10:50 a.m. and completed the course with no jumping faults and 6 time faults. I rode the 15-16 water combination through the long route to give Ernie lots of confidence in his first four star. It was the half way point on the course.

The course was extremely long and there was not one break or anything easy on the course. Ernie handled it extremely well. There were a couple of obstacles that required a huge effort from him and he responded as soon as I asked him. It took a lot of energy and even though he was bit tired at the end of the course, he gave me his all and jumped great.

The team vets checked him and he is doing extremely well. No sign of soreness or lameness. We were sitting outside his stall and he was munching on hay and dinner while we re-hashed the day. I think he will be happy when we leave. He is looking forward to a long night's rest.

My team - Suzanne, Yvonne, J.D. and Tom - are doing an amazing job with Ernie. He accepts all that they do and it's so good to see them work together. My owner and sponsor, Jennifer Mosing, is equally amazing. She gave me a hug before I got on Ernie and is always at the start and finish for me. Her husband, Kirk, and daughter, Maddie, are here and that really means a lot to me.

I was so excited about how great he was on course that when I jumped off at the vet box, I forgot to unclip my Air Jacket, so it inflated when I landed on my feet. Needless to say, that provided a little bit of humor there.

I was also a commentator on the Universal Sports live feed that went out all over the world. I was able to present what the challenges were on each obstacle because I had just ridden the course.

Another good thing that is happening for our sport is an advertising campaign being done by Rolex and Land Rover. I was photographed for the campaign and was happy to do it because it will promote the sport of eventing.

We've moved up to 12th place and there are only a couple of rails that separate us all. For a look at the leader board go to: http://scoring.rk3de.org/leaderBoard.html