Horse Show Takeaways

This last horse show didn't go as planned, obviously. But I'm on the other side and honestly not feeling that bad about it. A bad show isn't the worst thing that can happen to a person. And I don't think TC's behavior was so far out of the ordinary that I need to make any major changes to what we're doing.

We don't show again until at least mid-August and I'll have plenty of time to ride with my trainer and take TC to a few more places so that he becomes a bit more reliable when he travels.

A moment where he actually looked quiet and over his back,
but you can tell with that short neck, bad things will happen

For now, I wanted to reflect a bit on a few things that we learned this weekend:

Next year, I'm going to camp
This weekend was also an amazing camp that Kate's trainer friend runs. I was invited to go and every moment that I was at the show, I regretted not going! So it's already on my calendar for next year.


Standing around is preferable to being stressed out
Aka, always arrive way earlier than I think. TC is getting better at standing around at horse shows, so I should plan on just having him do that more vs trying to arrive with just enough time. That way if I get stuck sitting in my rig waiting for a crazy person to load their horse in the driveway, I won't be in such a hurry.


The horse is too fit
I've been working hard to get TC fitter and fitter. He is now fit enough! So I'm going to hold him steady at 12-15 minutes of trot and 8-10 minutes of canter for a while. He can still strength build within that time, but holy shit does he not need to be more fit cardiovascularly. The horse can go forever.


I am not fit enough
This will be remedied soon, keeping fingers crossed that my wrist doesn't cause any issues!

I still like him

No more showing in heat
All last year I showed in July and August, but it was on the coast where the weather was perfect. This year, I showed in the Sacramento valley and that was NOT OKAY. TC obviously handles the heat okay, but I did not. Next year, we'll come out a bit earlier, get any scores we need by the end of May, then have a fun summer and resume showing in fall.


I need friends at shows
This show especially, I realized that I kind of hate showing alone. Like I don't enjoy showing enough (at least not at this level) to want to be there all by myself. Whether this means exclusively going to shows that I know friends/my trainer will be at or paying someone to help me out at shows where I don't have friends going, I'll figure that out later. I just think it'd have been better in that first test on Saturday to have someone helping me tack up or holding my stuff or sponging off my horse. It definitely made a difference for my second test on Saturday and my test on Sunday to have people there.


No more rocket fuel
At expo I had gotten some LMF Gold to try TC on and it made a nice difference in getting him more energetic, so I bought some. He got a pretty small amount of it each day leading up to the horse show and was generally a good boy at home.

Then we got there and he was really explosive. Soooo we'll be trying a different kind of food. I sent the LMF Gold home with my mom for Rico. He loves that stuff!



Tuesday morning's ride was really excellent (I gave both of us Monday off, he would have been fine being ridden, but I just needed to sleep in a bit). He was forward and into the bridle, nicely balanced, and his gaits felt really good.

So with that I think the plan is to just learn from this horse show and move forward with what we've been doing! Because even if the show didn't really make it seem this way, he is getting better and better.