We survived our first horse show. Whew! We walked away with a blue ribbon and 68+% in our first ever dressage test. Yahhh B! We received 66% in our second test and third place. Yahhhh B! Sorry, is that getting annoying yet?So, B rocked it out in Training Level 1 and 2. Now, for the gritty details.
My ever-supportive husband and I arrived at the farm around 6:30am to get ready for the day's adventures. B was still out in the field after a long night of grazing, so we quickly brought him in for some last minute primping. Lucky for me he chose not to roll and was therefore as shiny as I had left him the night before. Yahhh B! Ha ha...sorry...I digress. I gave us a solid 45 minutes to load, as this is not B's strong suit. Plus, I hadn't loaded him since our last outing in March. I was perfectly willing to accept his possible refusal, but, once again, lucky for me, B climbed on up within the alloted time. Off to the show!
We arrived at the farm 15 minutes later ready to rock. Woot! We soon learned that the farm where we were showing was in a low lying area that 8 gazillion nats had made their home. Within the first minute, one flew in my ear. In my ear. After dropping the F-bomb one hundred times the little bugger flew out. Ok, ouch. Meanwhile, I was walking B around the show ring. He was uppity-up once in awhile, but overall he just wanted to make friends and graze. Longeing proved difficult as we had to attempt it on grass. Mission aborted.
By the time I had given up on longeing I realized that it was 9:25am. We showed at 9:44am. Oops. We ended up doing some trot diagonals, a couple circles and one quick canter each way. By the end of that warm-up I was seriously wondering why I couldn't just be doing Intro. I heart walk/trot. Here goes nothing...
In classic first show style, B and I walked up to the judges box and the scribe shuffled a bunch of papers. Yee haw! To the middle of the ring in one swoop. The judge thankfully told the scribe to put her papers away. Awww 4 year olds. After a brief jaunt around the ring, the whistle blew. I'm not going to give you the complete blow by blow as I don't want to bore you completely to tears. In summary, it was a blast. :0) I have never had so much fun showing in my life. We boogied around that ring and I couldn't wipe the grin off my face. It was another "first ride on a pony" moment.
Our second test was more contained, so it felt better to me, but, as a result, wasn't as brilliant to the judge's eye. Fair enough. Our only snafu was when two people on dirt bikes decided to be a little bit evil and rev their engines right behind the ring (which was maybe 10 feet from the road). B jumped in the air, but then came right back to me. I definitely didn't blame him for that one.
Both of my tests are up on my you tube channel. You can access them on this page directly or go to my channel: youtube.com/jhmctaggart. The tests aren't exactly polished and perfect, but I think it was a delightful first outing.
I can put a big check mark beside another rite of passage in this Baby's career. Yahhh B!
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