Saturday, September 15, 2012

What a good girl!

Zoe was great today!  We got a 1st, two 4ths, and a 5th. She had a nice rhythm, got almost all of her leads, and was complimented by many people too!  Yay mare!

When I got to the show this morning, I was the first one there so I wasn't sure where I needed to park.  I left Zoe in the trailer while I went to the office to ask.  When I came back, my trailer was rocking side to side and Zoe was throwing a major tantrum.  Apparently she doesn't like be hauled by herself.  Once I re-parked and unloaded her, I  notice a big scrape on her head.  I checked the inside of the trailer, but couldn't figure out what she hit her head on.  She mostly just scraped of the hair, but right under where the browband would go there was a tiny little cut that was oozing blood.  The barn owner's were nice enough to let me use their washrack and clean it up.
Don't believe that innocent face.  She can throw a mean tantrum.

Despite her knock to the head, she warmed up really well. We had about a half hour to school in the ring before the show started.  There were a lot of flowers, shrubs, and bushes by the fences that I made sure to let her look at.  She didn't seem to care at that time.  We didn't do a big warm up, just a little walk, trot, canter, and I popped her over a couple fences.

We had a couple hours to wait till my classes went, so I got off and we hung around watching and talking to Deb, her owner.  The barn owner came by to check how her cut was doing and said he had seen us warm up and said she was very cute and liked how chill she was waiting to go.  He was so nice!

I got on about 15 mins before my first round and took her for a couple times around their grass ring to warm her up again.  In our first round she looked hard at some new flowers that had been added to one of the jumps and cut way in to the right.  I could see that we would be getting a very awkward, off center distance so I circled her and came back to it.  The second time around I used a lot of right leg to keep her centered.  She still looked, but went over.

Our second round was much better; no looking or trying to fall in.  I did get her pretty deep to one fence and she ended up knocking it.  Our third round was perfect!  Nailed every lead, had a nice steady rhythm and got good distances to each fence.  Unfortunately she tired out for our fourth and final round and decided that trotting a couple fences would be easier than cantering.  I also had a brain fart and forgot to collect her to the first fence so about two strides out I realized it was going to be really short.  Oops! 

I am so pleased with how she did!  She felt really good and each of the little bobbles we had were minor and mostly rider error.  There was a pro photographer there, so hopefully we can have some nice pics in a couple days.  Since this was probably our last show of the season I'm glad we ended on a great note!

Not pictured the bag of treats we got for getting first.

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