Grand Prix

In short:

Test was good, not perfect, but good. We won the class (out of two) with a 61.3%. BAM. Grand Prix horse.  Blue Ribbon. Trail ride tomorrow.

I mean he just has the elegant LOOK of a Grand Prix horse, right?

In long, drawn out, and possibly somewhat unreadable due to large amounts of cortisol in my system: 

I spent all day Saturday freaking out and assigned people to distract me. Boyfriend got the morning, best friend got the afternoon, and my parents were stuck listening to my crazy that night. Poor innocent people. 

Breakfast of champions (Saturday morning) = nutella french
toast with strawberries and bananas

Bareback ride in the dark on Saturday night

Rico was a piece of shit to get ready this morning. He was VERY unamused by his bath at 8:45 and not willing to stand still for braiding. Despite having to deal with Rico's antics this morning, I handled myself fairly well. I managed to eat breakfast (and not throw it up) and was terrified but surprisingly calm as we drove up to the show.

It's such a nice venue- the footing is always good, the covered is nice to show in, and it's generally fairly quiet. So much of my showing career has been at this place. My first show ever on Rico was there, my first Prix St George, my first Intermediare II, my first Grand Prix, Rico's first Prix St George, and now Rico's first Grand Prix.  I was feeling quite a bit of nostalgia as I was getting tacked up.

Rico's first dressage show ever

I look so tiny on him! I really haven't grown at all since then...

I got on way late, which was planned. I gave myself 14 minutes to warm up. The show management and Heidi were not amused. Everyone came looking for me. What? You think Grand Prix horses need more than 10 minutes of warm up and 4 minutes of being told not to mess up the right pirouette by turning it into a reining spin? Pfft.

The test was decent.  There were no major mistakes other than the expected ones. The twos were excellent, the zig zag was perfect, the extended trots were awesome. The piaffe was shit, although not stopping, and the ones were shit. Of course! 

All tacked up and begging for treats

However, the judge seemed to think that Rico was pretty great, and that I was kind of dumb. The plan was to make it seem this way though- string together enough ones to make it look like I just miscounted and get out of the piaffe early enough so he doesn't stop. I got a lot of "needs more steps" in the piaffe and the comment for the ones was "fair attempt, counting mistakes." *woops* it's not like my horse, you know, doesn't have ones. 

The overall comments were that we had potential but that I needed to get him forward before the movements. Heidi was like UH YES YOU DO. The test comes up SO FAST that I felt like I was rushing through it. The plan is to have me ride the test more often at home to get used to it. We have about six weeks until our next one.

So yes, a blue ribbon and a score toward my Gold. I couldn't have asked for today to go better than that. I can't believe we made it. 

Love

Pictures soon! I have so much homework to do today!!