A Enter Spooking

The second day of the show started off well. TC actually let me braid him without taking everything out of my pockets and distributing the contents across the cross ties. It was much cooler that day, so I was glad that I got to the show facility a bit early. TC and I went for a short walk to go get my First 1 test from the day before and visited the warm up.

He was thinking about playing here and I look like I've  never
been on the back of a horse before, but I love this picture

I read the comments from 1-1 and was a bit disappointed. There were moments where she threw us 7s, but the overall comments cited needing more impulsion. She really wanted him to cover a lot more ground, which is totally fair. She also circled suppleness of the back and engagement of the hindquarters, and also noted that he "explodes at times."

At this point in TC's abilities at shows, this is too much to ask of him. I can get more oomph in his gaits, but that's at the expense of tension. We're still working on relaxation in new places. So as I was walking around, I decided to scratch my First level test that day. It's just not worth it if we're not meeting the general expectations of the level. I'm not willing to push him past positive tension in the show ring. He just needs to mature a little bit more first. I'm glad I did it the first day, even just to know that First is still beyond our capabilities in a new place.

When we get a little tense, we get a little expressive

He's actually putting on muscle, yay

Knowing that we just had one test, I did some extra work in warm up before Training 2. TC once again started out a bit tight and then settled in that arena. It takes him a good five minutes to settle in a new arena, which is pretty much as long as a Training level test lasts. Cool.

Warm up went well, I was able to do some more transitions than before and also cantered him a fair amount. I figured I wanted a different problem than the porpoising from the day before (spoiler alert, I got it).

We headed over to the dressage court early and I used their small square arena off the show ring to trot and canter around. I figured it'd help a lot, and he did porpoise a few times there, so that was good. I shut him down a bit more firmly than I had in the show ring the day before, and soon he was quietly cantering around.

Around the outside of the arena, we trotted and trotted. He felt really good! I was thinking that this test may actually go pretty well. Then we entered the arena.

A: Enter Spooking... ugh

Why did I name my stupid blog the way I did? It was just a placeholder name but then I got some followers and it seemed odd to change it. I'm still thinking about changing it even after so many years!

So yah I literally turned up centerline and he was like FUCK YES SHOWING and tried to take off into the arena. I shut him down and then trotted over to X and halted, laughing. The judge gave me a 6.5 (the halt and after the halt was quite good) and said "nice recovery :)"

After that, the test went super! I let him out further for the stretch circle, which raised our score from a 6 and 6.5 the day before to an 8. The canter work was pretty brilliant, grabbing us a bunch of 7.5s. I was pleasantly surprised by that. He did go to play a little bit in each direction, but I stopped him and it actually just made the canter more impressive. The judge said "good call" for one of them and "he responded!" in another. Good pony.

We only had one more issue in the ring, where instead of doing a quiet walk to trot transition at C, in front of the judge, he tried to take off again. Again I stopped him quickly and went to work, but that gave us a 5 and the following trot circle was tense.

Across the diagonal

Thinking about running off but making the right decision

Overall we grabbed a 70% and second place, right behind the judge who was judging at the show three years ago when I got my Gold! I don't mind losing (only by three points, why did you zip off with me twice, pony!) to someone like that. She's an amazing rider.

The overall comments were great, the judge clearly was a lot happier with him the second day (and he was more relaxed so that makes sense). Said that if I could get him softer in his poll and more connected, that he was going to be great. That's exactly what we're working on! So that's great to have everything really consistent like that.

Across the diagonal

Such a good pony

The whole show was such a good experience. Even though the scores were not as great as they could have been, I was so happy by the end of the weekend. We went to a new place. We competed in a rated show. We didn't totally embarrass ourselves. I wasn't scared.

We have a long way to go still with showing, but given that I wasn't riding this horse at the beginning of the year because he scared me so much, I'm REALLY happy.

Our fall adventures aren't quite over, but the show season is. I have some fun stuff planned this fall with TC, but the pressure is off until the spring. It feels good to have had almost a full season with him, definitely didn't expect that at the beginning of the year!