First (Schooling) Show of the Season

On Sunday, Peony and I took Spot and TC to a local schooling show! It was TC's first show since our October show and Peony/Spot's first show in over a year! TC has never been to this facility and we were doing 1-2 for the first time. We pretty much thought it might be a shit show.

TC has not been hauled with another horse and then asked to do his job in a long time. In the past, TC was very attached to any horse he was hauled with. For the most part, as a youngster, he had a trailer buddy who stayed with us. Once that horse went away from him and I left TC at the trailer. TC reared the whole time the horse was gone. Cool.

We're so cute in our matching shirts 

What I texted Peony about this show

This time though, well, I'm pretty in love with the seven year old year! TC knocked it out of the park in so so so many ways.

We loaded the horses up and drove across the city about an hour to get to the show. TC was very unsure about getting in Peony's trailer. He kept trying to load into the straight load like it was a slant. We finally convinced him to go in STRAIGHT, which honestly didn't take too long. Mostly TC gives into suggestion pretty well. I'm also pretty adamant that he get in anything, I'm looking at a straight load currently so he may need to get used to this...

At the facility, TC unloaded well and then we left Spot tied at the trailer (since I didn't trust TC) and wandered around. TC whinnied once but was generally very quiet about being there. He was just curious.

Peony's tests were first, I helped her in warm up and held TC while chirping things at her from outside. TC tried to eat leaves. I handed him off to Andy (who TC loves) while I went to read for Peony and TC was pretty good being held. And Spot was great! I will let her post about this even though she DOESN'T POST ANYMORE.

Favorite picture from this show :) 

I missed her second test because I felt like I needed to go tack up. It takes me a lot less time to tack up than I always think, so I was on WAY WAY early so immediately regretted not staying for the test, ugh. I went over to warm up expecting him to maybe be a bit of a nut but he wasn't. He just quietly walked around warm up looking around and then went right to work.

I decided to use up the time working at the walk while looking in the mirrors. That sounds so vain. But it was really great, I made some positional adjustments, I looked at our lateral work, and I found out that TC's walk pirouettes are coming along super. I miss my mirrors! I feel so blind without them even though I rode at the FEI levels without them.

Once as we were closer to our test, we actually warmed up. TC picked up a really great trot, though I knew that I wanted to get him a little lower and more into the bridle. I've made that mistake before. Everything rode great. We mostly did large figures and some transitions.

TC had been a bit of a jerk the night before about not picking up the left lead without bucking 6-7 times first. He actually was so bad that I spanked him once. It was a Rico type spank. He's not the sort you ever have to do more than touch lightly with the whip but he was being BAD. From then on, he was like YES MA'AM WE ARE CANTERING RIGHT NOW NO BUCKS PROMISE. I've only had to hit him like that like... twice in his life. And I reserve it for things like launching bucks into canter for no reason.

TC wants to be Peony's best friend. Man he can get his neck
really fucking short.

He's like "when can we go in there???" 

Right before the test, we were allowed to go warm up in the outdoor next to the show ring. It was a court, so I quickly did a little trot work and then the canter transitions again. They remained good! Phew. And then we were in for First Level Test 1!

The trot work went well and we actually scored pretty well on it. We got 8s on both ice cream cones and 7s on basically everything else. To me, he felt quite behind my leg, so I definitely want to keep working on that at home. He had felt so good in warm up, gah. I knew that I needed to get him zippy coming out of the walk to get that sometimes-ugly transition and then start the canter work well. It totally worked and we nabbed some more 7s. There were some basilisk moments at the first canter lengthening, but other than that, it was great!

The right lead didn't score as well as the left, which is typical and annoying. I feel like the right rides so well and that the left needs a lot of work. Bleh. Whatever, I have a trainer and I see her in a week! So there we go.

The collectives were pretty good. He got a 7.5 on gaits and a 6.5 on impulsion (with suppleness of the back underlined) and the rest were 7s. The judge said that we were quite attractive and harmonious but that TC has an overall tendency to get tight in the topline, especially in canter. Overall score was 70.18%

Lengthening

I didn't get a chance to see this test before the second one, they took a bit longer than usual to get the tests out. I decided to not do that much warm up. Just walk outside, do two leg yields and then two canter transitions and go in. The footing was a little deep and TC was getting a bit tired. It made me realize that I need to keep TC even fitter than I'd think to keep him fit enough to ride in less-than-perfect footing without me worrying.

The  test started out pretty well except that TC was completely distracted in the halt. The next few movements rode super though. We got an 8 on our first leg yield (!!), to the right, and then another 8 on the half circle to the right. We got more 7.5s this test than the last one and all was going well until the damn canter. As we came down off of our left lead lengthening, TC went to leap sideways and nearly left the arena. I had to walk him to get him to stay in the arena, so we got a 4 with the comment "walked" on it. Didn't get rung for saying the words "where are you going?!?!" to him under my breath at least.

The next mistake was in the right lead lengthening (double coefficient, ugh) when TC swapped leads in front and then swapped back. I could feel him getting tired and he gets bucky when he's tired, so there you go. That really killed us. The collectives were the same as last time except he got a 7 on gaits instead of a 7.5. General comments were that he was a beautiful horse and we were a capable pair, but that he gets somewhat tense and tight in his topline at times. Final score was a 67.81%.

Such a good pony

We won both classes, so that was fun, but I was so happy about how things went with TC that the scores and ribbons didn't matter that much (it totally mattered a little though). He was totally steady and quiet the whole time. I know that we have a TON of work to do in the court. Some of that is that he's still funky in the show ring like he was last year. Some of that is that we need to test ride more. And some is just luck I think. He's not 100% steady at home yet either. Nothing he did on Sunday was at all out of the ordinary of stuff we do at home.

But having a horse who I downright enjoyed being with at a show, I mean it was the first show I truly enjoyed the whole time in... a very long time. It was FUN. I felt a little in over our heads for these tests, but I think it's just that I haven't practiced them very much. Other than that "oh man we're showing First level things are getting real" feeling, I was in such a good mood! Showing with friends rocks and so does showing with a horse who is chill about showing.

As usual, TC garnered a lot of attention. We had breed guess of Andalusian or Lusitano (I'm like... do you see how much I am sweating and breathing in the sitting trot? He is not a baroque horse). Lots of people came to ask me about him and TC thinks this is the best part about showing. All he wants to do is talk to people. I'm super introverted and he's like my annoying extrovert friend who is super pretty and always getting attention while I'm over there just like... okay. And the off chance that someone comes up to me, it's to ask about my pretty charismatic friend.

He's so happy 

TC hopped back in the trailer and stepped out at home all pleased with himself. I was super pleased with him too. I'm just loving this horse these days, he's such a joy to work with every day. And now he's becoming a solid traveler. What a dude.