Withdrawn

I was really hopeful for Sunday going into it. My ride time was earlier in the day, we just had one test (the 1-3), my parents had decided to come visit Sacramento that day so had agreed to come to the horse show and then we'd carpool into the city for lunch, he had gotten ridden pretty hard the day before, and it was scheduled to be much cooler (well, 88 degrees is still hot, but it's not 107 hot). 

All I needed was to get through this test, to get a 60% on it. TC generally scores in the mid to high 60s (I say generally and we've shown First level like... twice) so something would have to go terribly wrong to score lower than that. 

I got there with PLENTY of time to spare and gave myself 40 minutes to warm up. From the moment my butt hit the saddle, I knew that it might be a shit show. 

And it WAS a shit show, I hate being right

He generally was really well behaved in warm up, but he gets this feeling... I can't describe it. He can look totally nice and quiet and normal from the outside, but it's like I'm sitting on a rocket barely holding it together. I looked in the mirror and he looked *amazing* and I thought that maybe we can pull this off.

But underneath it all, I could feel an absolute psychotic mess of a horse. 

It wasn't like he was upset or pissed off or tired or cranky or in pain. He was having the absolute time of his life. He was shaking his neck at every horse who passed him, thought a horse doing lead changes near him was doing the COOLEST THING and tried to join in. He had a giant manic smile on his face. YAY HORSE SHOW BEST EVER LET'S PLAY YOU LOOK LIKE YOU'RE DOING SOMETHING FUN ME TOO. 

So when he held his shit together, he felt amazing. A bit locked in his back due to being on the brink of an explosion (a behavior I used to call "baby totilas" since he feels super giant but kind of mechanical), but amazing. 

Leg yield pattern rode pretty well at least

Forty minutes of mostly cantering later and I still had this feeling. My mom said "wow, he sure is fit now" and I was thinking yes, a bit too fit. But we had to go in, so off we went. I told myself, he hasn't done anything necessarily WRONG today, he just feels amped, maybe this is a good thing. 

It was not. 

I knew things were going to be bad when he bolted into the arena where the show ring was like I HAVE ARRIVED. He then thought that a golf cart was the Most Interesting Thing and wanted to shutter to a halt to stare at it. I got him back forward and we had a lot of leaping and shaking his neck. I thought about scratching right there... but also thought that maybe I could hold it together. 

I could not. 

Look how fucking short he can get nose to tail, that is not fun
to ride when he does it out of the blue like he did here

Up centerline we got a 7, then we turned for our lengthening and he leapt into the air and went to bolt, for a 3. Then we got a 7 and a 6.5 on our leg yield zig zag. Then another 3 on our stretch circle as I went to carefully put him lower and he went to buck. Then a 6.5, a 7, and a 6.5 on the circle pattern. At this point I knew I wanted to withdraw. I didn't know what the scores were, but we did not show ANY stretch at all unless you count the stretching of his underline as he went to buck. That's a double coefficient.

But I wasn't sure what to do. I guess I could just stop and say bye to the judge, but honestly I was really curious how the canter work was going to ride. So I kept going. He picked up the cross canter (WTF) into the right lead, went way crooked trying to take off with me in the lengthening, did a really nice quality loop, then proceeded to do his shit version of tempi changes across the diagonal, just like flinging his legs around like an idiot, picking up the wrong lead several times, and then finally landing on the new lead okay. 

Again the loop rode nicely, though he swapped leads on the lengthening. After that I was super fucking done so I waved at the judge and walked out. Judge told me to come up and said that he could have made me keep going. Um. If you had I might have just let him trot right out of the arena. An E vs a W is the same thing in dressage basically. Plus I'm not planning on selling him any time soon, so fuck his record (mostly, I didn't want to put a sub-60 score on him if I didn't have to). 

Right before some leaping, look at that mischievous face like
"I'm going to do something hilarious, hold my beer" 

Overall comments were "nice horse but a brat today, good luck," which I think summed up the whole weekend to be honest! He is a really nice horse. He's sweet and kind and silly. Sometimes too silly... Nothing he throws at me is hard to sit, he keeps his head up in his bucks and generally goes in a straight line. He thinks this is fun. 

So overall, a really bad show! But it was fun to hang out in Sacramento with my parents. We went to lunch (thanks Peony for the recommendation because despite being here for three months now, I've been to maybe two restaurants, it's what happens when you buy a trailer and refuse to stop showing lol) and then went to the tack store near my house. 

Then they took off and I sat at home and let the cortisol drain out of me. Yay horse shows... I'm glad the next one isn't for another month and a half, I need a break! And a trail ride I think.