Flounder the Lead Line Horse

So, when I saw all the little kids at the show in May, I started planting the seed that my niece could do her first horse show at the October show. 

Luckily for me, the kid is still unbelievably horse crazy, so on Friday midday, my brother, dad, and older niece drove down to the show! 

LOOK AT HER BOWS

The kid was immediately in her element. She knew she was there to show Flounder and wanted to do it immediately rather than waiting the excruciating 24 hours until the leadline on Saturday afternoon.

She spent all of Friday afternoon watching the various rings, pointing out which horses looked like the horses at the ranch, and learning all about different colors and markings from me. My brother even asked some questions about the different types of sports and what was going on. And my dad was an old pro, keeping track of the horses in the hunter derby and saying things such as "I think this is our winner back for the handy, this one got an 83 in the first round, oh wait, no I think there was one that got an 87, so this one is in second place so far" um okay wow dad.

Saturday morning they came out to watch me in my classes. I got so much clapping from the kid and after every class (I had three), she got to hop on Flounder and ride him back to the barn. She whined a little bit but was mostly really good about being patient and watching the show. Luckily there were some great areas for kids, she found our Halloween decorations really fun to play with and she also got to run around in a grass field above the show while we watched it. 

Watching the hunter derby

Literally so much in her element

Eventually it was time to get her ready. She got her breeches on (which I didn't know would happen, she likes to wear patterned leggings and call them breeches, but I think she saw that everyone was wearing tan breeches), we put her paddock boots on, got her garter straps (which I had to punch holes in lol she's so tiny) on. 

My sister-in-law ordered a show shirt and bows for her hair. The show shirt will definitely fit for a long time, it was fairly big on her! We had some time so we went over to the tack shop and found a belt that matched her show shirt. The tack lady asked her about horses and I've never heard the kid so talkative to strangers. She talked to everyone at that show, told them about Flounder and her Sunny Horse back at home too. 

I have no others without her face in
them so here's me again

Look at this fish!

Finally she let me braid her hair, put in her bows, and we got her helmet on. We put her on Flounder and led her around a bit. I had my brother help my dad FaceTime my mom and my SIL (who was up taking care of her father with my youngest niece) so that they could see the leadline debut. 

Soon, it was time to go into the big jumper ring. She was one of three kids in the class and it was ADORABLE. There was a huge crowd because it was right before the speed stake. The kids got to walk around and one kid (who was older than her) trotted a little bit and immediately my niece was like I WANT TO TROT and we had to tell her no, you're two and this is not your horse. 

After walking around once or twice in each direction, we were called in to line up in front of the judge. The judge then asked each kid what their name was, what their pony's name was, and what color their pony was. 

Look at me looking for my next fence and not at
the ground where I will definitely end up one day

Definitely splurged on some pro photos!

My niece is two and a half. She was the youngest kid there and she got asked her questions first, which meant that her answers were hilarious. She didn't want to tell him her name, but she was very enthusiastic to tell him what Flounder's name was. In response to the question about Flounder's color, what came out sounded like "SunnyHorsepalominoAuntMimirideswithmeonmySunnyHorse" *deep breath* "Flounder is white and gray" 

Granted, we didn't practice Flounder's specific color so that was pretty close!

For her efforts, she got a big blue ribbon and a pink and white stuffed pony. We got a truly insane number of photographs of her AND we got video of the entire thing. My mom was so annoyed she didn't come down (it was on her, she was invited! But she thought the leadline would be boring, not like her daughter was also showing or anything...). 

Apparently when the kiddo got home, she told everyone she knew about her horse show and has been wearing her horse show belt with everything she owns. Amazing. She does her next leadline in a couple of weeks!

I love this one so much

I was going to write a third post but there's honestly not much more to report from this show! Unfortunately for me, there were no more pro classes for the rest of the weekend. But it was still fun! I stayed in the .80s and did one class both days (I was supposed to do two the first day but they.. eliminated... me...? It was fine, I got to do my second class). 

It was such a good time moving up and feeling so confident. I didn't have a panic attack, rode way better in the ring than expected, and had a blast the entire time.

The whole weekend was just amazing. I love my barn, I love my (technically not my but I like to dream) fish, I love my best friend, I love this sport, and I love having grooming! Can't wait for the next one!

Jumping Fish

WOW I am behind, so much has happened and I'm hoping I can use this week and the next week to catch up!

Catch up like Flounder and I catching up on time
in the jumper ring a few weeks ago!

It was good to be back!

Two weeks ago, we were at another hunter/jumper show! It came at such a great time, I was able to hand off all of my work and actually take a total of 4 days off of work (Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Monday for a recovery day). I didn’t even bring my laptop down! 

I spent all day Tuesday preparing to hand off my projects and then managed to ride TC. Unfortunately over the weekend, my back injury got worse, so I ended up taking it easy on TC that day and then not riding him or the pony Wednesday before I left. I wanted to preserve my back for the show, but did decide to hand off the ride on Flounder to someone else if I found that my back wasn’t up for it. I have a doctor’s appointment coming up for it and am taking it easy until then. 

On Wednesday it seemed like I might not ride at all. Luckily Kate did a warmup round on Flounder (the entire barn except the two horses I was hauling got down there on Tuesday), so I didn’t need to ride him AND he got a solid trainer ride on him in the arena I was going to be jumping in for the weekend. But I woke up on Thursday feeling surprisingly good and managed to ride the whole weekend!!

He is so cute

His cute little knees, I think I fucked this one up
but he didn't care lol

I opted to just do the jumpers this time. Flounder doesn’t have a change and is just not super competitive in the pro hunter divisions. Plus, I think the jumpers are really fun, the courses are so interesting! 

On the first day I opted to just do the .70 meter jumpers again. The first class had a jump off and we were definitely quite rusty. I went way too slowly and Flounder got annoyed that I wasn’t riding him forward to the fences, so he popped a fence down to let me know that I needed to pick up the pace or risk more rails. In my second class, I asked Kate if I should go faster and she said yes. Then as I was cantering to the first fence I heard her say that I needed to go even faster. So I went as fast as I could, which ended up being a completely normal pace. 

In true amateur hour fashion, for some reason I thought it was optimum time jumpers, so I took the long way around one of the turns noticing that I was a little ahead of time. It was a speed class though (why do they have speed classes at this low of a level?!), but we still were quick enough to get second place out of something like seventeen rounds! 

This absolutely made my day and then we were done before 9am, amazing! This was our first time having grooms (my first time in like 20 years!) and it was absolutely worth it. I got to hop off, change out of my show clothes and into normal clothes, and go watch everyone in our barn ride every day. It was so great. I had a little bit of sticker shock at first but then after the first day when I had horses unloaded from my trailer, my trailer unloaded and cleaned out, and then was parking after hauling in 15 minutes before… wow, absolutely worth it. This goes in the budget for shows from now on! 

He's literally so adorable over fences, no joke, Kate
clicker trained him to jump, he was actually a failed
gymkhana horse!

Look at all of his toes!

On the second day, I asked if I could move up to the .80s for my second class because there was only one pro class per height (and then no more pro classes after that, ugh). Kate said yes and so I did! It was good to have the .70s first to give me some confidence riding more forward. I managed to go around clean and fast for a fourth place ribbon.

It was my first .80s class on Flounder but he was a star. I honestly didn't even notice the jumps had gotten bigger! We went clean and clear and this time landed ourselves in THIRD place out of a whole lot of people. Such an amazing little fish!!

Friday evening, my brother, niece, and father came down to watch the hunter derby and stay overnight so that my niece could do her very first leadline class on Saturday afternoon. More on that tomorrow!

Rose in May Part 3: I'm a Dressage Trainer Folks

After Flounder had a super confidence boosting ride with his kid on Saturday morning, I hopped on! I was so grateful that I'd had the ability to do that and that she'd ridden him so tactfully. 

Kate had me jump one fence in warm up without much trotting or cantering. I think I was in there for maybe 2 minutes at most. That was the other great thing about this plan: I eliminated the warm up and went in cold. 

I loved these standards so much, I decided to get
really close to one of them

Good thing we did that because I proceeded to have the best round of my show so far. We dropped a couple of rails because my riding still wasn't quite where I wanted it to be, but I didn't lose my head at all. I only had a little bit of tunnel vision and I came out really pleased with even more information. 

There were some confounding variables, sure. I definitely felt more comfortable in the jumper ring just because we don't have changes and it's tough to make horse distances in the hunters (there were no combinations in the jumper classes for this show/level). I also liked how the courses were more complicated, as much as I was concerned I'd panic and not remember the course, it ended up being easy to remember and there weren't so many long lines that made me second guess myself. 

But I think the lack of warm up was huge: I had absolutely nothing to trigger that visceral fear in me before going into the ring. Warm ups... apparently I'm totally fine with being mowed down in the dressage warm up, but someone gets a little close to me in the jumping warm up and I'm not okay. I mean... come to think of it, TC has always been the most enthusiastic horse in the warm up ring soooo maybe we're the ones terrorizing other people rather than being terrorized ourselves. Oh no. Oh noooo. 

He is the cutest

That wasn't my last class on Saturday though! I participated in the Hack and Splash later that afternoon. The class was a hunter hack class to benefit a charity, the catch was that we had to carry around a cup of water with us while we were in the class. Flounder had done it before and the fences were small, so I was game. 

I got my cup of water and went into the arena with 8 or so? other horses. There were 19 total in the class and we'd been split into two groups. Water was measured based on how much we lost out of our cup and the least amount lost won. 

As a dressage rider, the idea of riding one handed in a jump saddle, including over jumps, was concerning. Although in my last jumping lesson, I mysteriously started pulling on the right rein instead of the left, so I did jump some fences with my right hand behind my back. So you could say I was prepared. 

I don't have pictures of the fun class just yet, but
I'll use it for a WW when I do get them!

Shockingly, we did very well! After cantering the second direction, I realized that I'd actually not lost any water. How insane would it be to get through the whole thing without losing ANY water? Well, that almost happened as I took the first jump and no water spilled out. Holy shit. Buuuut I saw a short one for the second fence and got a little concerned about the water, causing Flounder to chip rather than just quietly shorten his step. I lost what ended up being 0.1 centimeters of water out of my cup.

We went to stand in the crowd and everyone told us how impressed they were that we hadn't lost any water over the first jump! I was like well, Flounder gives an amazing feeling over the fence. But it also felt REALLY good to be able to do this, clearly I had a lot of stability in the tack on the flat and over fences, and as someone who has, no joke, absolutely complained about how short my stirrups are in the jump tack EVERY SINGLE TIME I RIDE, I was pretty proud. 

The 0.1 centimeters lost was enough to win the class!! I got a very cute tumbler with the horse park's logo on it for my efforts and Flounder got a lot of carrots and cookies (I mean, he got lots of them all weekend). 

Such a fast fish! Note: we were not fast

Kate and I discussed and decided to end the weekend with just one jumper class the next morning. I was kind of torn because I was like... if the first course goes badly I would want to go in again, but if it goes well, I could always scratch. Kate said she'd rather us wish we'd done more, which was the right decision, so we just signed me up for the one class. 

This time I'd be warming Flounder up myself, so that would bring the warm up back into the picture, more information. It was a different warm up though, much larger than the hunter warm up. 

We didn't do a ton in warm up, just three jumps and then Kate asked if I felt okay to go over. I said yes, I feel as good as I'm going to feel. Kate asked what else we could do in warm up to make me feel better and I said that I could use like 40 Advil. She said that it was long past that time, which was correct. But seriously jumping that many days in a row completely destroyed my body! 

Such a good fish

The last course was amazing. I could not have asked for anything better. 

The course started out with a hilarious moment that made me laugh as I cantered to the first fence, that might have made the difference. Basically, I heard the buzzer and then glanced to the board to see if my name was up there, but it wasn't. I thought it had been the day before, it didn't matter since I wasn't competing for real, but I then second guessed if that was my buzzer. I really didn't want to be rude and start jumping if it wasn't my turn just yet. 

I yelled for Kate because again, it didn't matter, "is that my buzzer?" and she yelled back that it was. The announcer then said "yes, Megan, that's your buzzer" and I said "sorry, it's been a long week!" and he said "it's okay, she's a dressage trainer folks" which he'd found out when asking me why my number was upside down as I walked in. And probably assumed when I was complaining about my stirrups being short at the gate earlier. 

I laughed the entire way down to the first fence and then potentially put in the best round of my life. It wasn't perfect but I was able to ride just like I did at home and not lose my head. As I landed off the last jump, I was grinning, it was SO MUCH FUN! I can't remember the last time I had fun DURING a round. 

What an amazing way to end my first show! And more importantly, what a great information gathering weekend it was.