Starr Vaughn, or an Examination of My Poor Life Choices

Poor life choices were made yesterday when I insisted on hauling up to Starr Vaughn for our last show of the season when I was still getting over being sick. All week I've had what I thought was a bit of a cold but has ended up being a lot worse.

Friday morning I woke up incredibly sick after having a severe migraine the night before. I had planned on hauling up that day and obviously was not going to make it. Luckily my Saturday ride time was in the afternoon, so I laid around all day on Friday and then got up Saturday morning to bathe, braid, and make the 3 hour trek to Starr Vaughn.

I woke up very sick again on Saturday but was adamant about just getting up there and then deciding what to do. Looking back on it, I should have just scratched and spent the weekend in bed (which is where I am right now and where I will be for the next 48 hours). But I didn't like the idea of not showing again until at least January or February (stupid) and I didn't like the idea of "wasting" all that money (stupid).

So off we went with me trying to nap in the truck but unable to because of the coughing fits. When we got to the barn, I set up Rico's stall and shoved him in there before sitting in line for 30 minutes (!!) to get my number. By the time I had it, I was so exhausted that I had to go lay down for a couple hours. I kept thinking man, if I had any other horse, I'd scratch, but Rico is so damn reliable.

I went to tack up and did it in record time. I gave myself exactly 20 minutes for warm up (about half of what I normally give myself) thinking that I wanted to save my energy for the test. We walked over to the warm up which was in the big beautiful covered arena.

And that's when Rico lost his fucking mind.

He spooked at EVERYTHING on the way in, which I thought was fine because he's a silly horse and thinks that's fun. But then I got in there and he (yes he, I made few decisions in the first 8 minutes of the ride) picked up a trot. I say trot, but that's a loose term. He CHARGED around the arena in a big powerful medium trot squealing and shaking his head. I half halted and got a passage. Uhhhh. I kicked him out of it and got a threat to rear, then bronc bucks, then passage again. SHIT.

We proceeded like this for a while, I was just hoping he'd tire himself out but that wasn't happening. He felt like the kind of horse I'd consider taking into war. I tried a canter and holy shit that was a bad idea. He galloped sideways and when I stopped him, he threatened to rear, spooked at a dog, bronc bucked some more, passaged a bit, then cantered on the spot until I let him go forward into a working gallop again.

As this was happening, I was getting SO tired and SO sick. I finally put him into the Grand Prix pirouette pattern. On centerline one full pirouette left, flying change, one full pirouette right. Then I did the I1 pirouette pattern. Then we rode our St George pirouette pattern. That little shit probably did 12 canter pirouettes in warm up. He was soaked with sweat by the time I had him "warmed up."

We still had a few minutes left so I let him rest and then decided to do some suppleness work at the trot. At Greenville we had a few comments on lateral suppleness so I thought we'd work on that.

Hah.

The horse had found his second wind and shook his head, passaged, struck out, spooked at the place where the dog had been, and tried to take off with me again. I put him back into canter and continued to do pirouettes until we were called over.


Into the show ring we went and at that point I was just hoping not to get bucked off. The first half of the test went surprisingly well and our scores reflected it. We got a handful of 7s and 7.5s on our trot work and even an 8 on our right walk pirouette! I was feeling really good by the time I shortened the reins after the extended walk and prepared for canter.

But then Rico showed me that he wasn't quite done ruining my day. We picked up the canter and he shook his head twice. He whipped around both corners but did a surprisingly nice canter half pass zig zag and left pirouette... and then all hell broke loose.

The right pirouette wasn't a pirouette, it was a series of bronc bucks in a circle. He lost balanced and kicked hard at my leg in the flying change and then proceeded to get impressive air through his 4-tempis, kicking my right leg every time (I have a bruise on my ankle). The 3-tempis were the same and he kicked my right foot clear out of the stirrup, then (kindly?) offered to stop when I tried to get my foot back in the stirrup.

As I asked for the extended canter, he took that to mean that he could bronc again and just boinged down the diagonal, then in the flying change, kicked so hard that my foot came out of my stirrup again and we both almost fell sideways. I was pissed so I used my whip for the first time and he reacted by sitting down on his haunches and spinning around onto centerline. The halt was nice and square though.

Overall, it was the worst show experience we've had together in a long time. Sometimes he likes to goof off in the show ring but I've never felt like I lost control and that's definitely what happened yesterday. I came out happy with how we had handled it (it could have been a thousand times worse) but a bit upset that my horse had been such a nutcase.

However, the score didn't necessary reflect how horrible it was. We still managed a 61% and 3rd place out of 7 riders. We got four 4.5s, one 4, and two 3.5s. I don't even want to think about what the score would have been if he had scored like he normally does on those seven movements...

I made the decision to take him home last night so I could rest today and we could work out what happened at home. I don't know what got into him. I think it was a combination of him being very fit, having a day off on Friday, and being shoved in a stall the moment he got there.

The drama didn't stop when we got home. I was passed out with a whopping dose of NyQuil but when I came out to attempt to force breakfast into me, my mom told me that my horse had freaked out early in the morning. She heard whinnies at 5:30 and discovered that my horse was going nuts because there was a lot of fog and he couldn't see his neighbor who was out in his pasture. She locked him in his stall and then called the other horse in and my horse decided that rearing straight up over and over again was a good way of expressing his frustration.

So I'm taking Rico off of his LMF Gold and am going to get his fitness level down for the winter. I think he also may need a chiro appointment (certainly after all of his bucking and rearing this weekend) so I'll arrange for that too. I'm really hoping this was an isolated incident and that I have my exceedingly quiet, wonderful horse back very soon.


*I did get pictures which will be edited today or tomorrow (depends on my health, I feel yet another headache coming on now so I need to get off the computer and rest).