Team NW Bedrock Show August 2019: Day Two

To be perfectly honest, I woke up on day two of the show and wasn't feeling it.  I was considering scratching and just packing up and heading home.  But I rallied and told myself to longe Peebs and see what horse I had.  If he was still amped up I'd scratch, but if he seemed like his normal chill self we'd show.

Peebs played and cantered for a good long while on the longe. He doesn't buck but dolphin leaps and strikes out with his front legs. I can usually tell when he's got his crazies out and Sunday was no exception.  He finished playing, let out a snort and was back to his usual Peebs.  So I called my trainer with an estimated time of go and decided to stick it out.

I'm a bad blogger and got zero media from the show so enjoy Cinder and Scottie sharing dinner

I was pleasantly surprised to see that they actually had an interesting eq course for us.  Usually this show does the single/outside line/diagonal/outside/diagonal hunter course for their eq classes but this time they had a short turn to a diagonal fence we hadn't jumped in the other course set almost on the center line bending to an outside fence.  Exciting stuff!

When I got on to warm up Peebs felt like his normal first day at the show self.  Awake and energetic, but not spooky and he was listening to me.  We did have some issues over bending right and drifting left when we schooled over the warm up fence but I'll take that over running through my hands.  My trainer told me to let him go and ride forward, but I was still hesitant from the day before.  Our first round started off behind the pace till the fourth fence when I got myself in gear, but overall it was a decent round.  We did add a stride in the lines even though trainer told me we could have easily made it without the add, if I had let him go.

Our second round was the one with the bending line and while Peebs was behind my leg to the first fence I sat up and pushed him forward to #2 which was the start of the bending line. The line rode really well and I proud of myself for making the decision to push him forward.  I need to stop thinking that because he's short that we have to always do the add and let him flow a bit more.  He's capable of making the strides. We did have rub at the first fence in the diagonal line but I think that was Peebs just being lazy. 

There were 14 in my classes (they combined the juniors and ammys, damn them!) so we didn't place in either class. But considering the day before I was super happy with our progress. We might show in early October, or this might have been our last show for the year, but either way I'm planning on working on letting him go and getting the strides so we can hopefully be more competitive. And if we do this same show next year, and it's the same weekend as the Art and Air Festival, we're hauling up on Friday to avoid the balloon invasion!