Arbor Grove Show

Great first show of the season!  We started early, left the barn by 6:30am and got to the show about 7:30.  Two of the college girls were showing, and they both ride the same horse so we loaded Tia and Buddy up and off we went.  My truck is having some battery problems so Rick and Connie were nice enough to let us use their dually to haul, and all we had to do was pay for diesel.  I had hooked up Saturday afternoon so we would be all set Sunday.

I always feel like a badass driving this monster.

It was colder than I though when we got there, but luckily the rain held off all day.  We walked the ponies around a bit before tacking up and warming up. Buddy was really high during warm up and we had a couple discussions about striding in the lines.  The outside lines were a three and a four, both a little long for us.  We could get them, but Buddy was flat and strong on the landing so Jen had us wait and add.  There was also an end fence on the far side of the arena that was just a brick wall box with two tall potted shrubs as standards that we did a few times. Buddy didn't look twice at it but Tia, who is a been, there, done that ex A-circuit hunter spooked at.  Once Buddy had quieted down Nik and I switched so she could get ready for her trot a pole classes.

Luckily Nik was able to school some poles and Bud was nice and quiet for her.  Their rounds went well and they ended up with a 1st and 2nd! 

The ribbons were the size of her torso.

Buddy then got a couple hour break while we waited for my classes. I untacked him and put his sheet back on and brought him to the arena to watch. He literally fell asleep standing up and didn't move for about and hour. While we waited one of the college girls had her rounds.  They did ok, but this was her first show in a few years, and first real show (she had only done shows at her old barn) and she was really nervous.  They ended up going off course in the last round and Katie was pretty disappointed.

They had a schooling break before my classes (the 2'6" pre-adult hunter, eq and mini medal) so I got Buddy re-warmed up and popped over a couple fences.  He was a lot quieter than in the morning which was nice.  We schooled a bending line that we would have to do in our eq and medal classes and called it good.    Our first round was pretty nice, except I had to move him up to the first fence in the one outside line and ended up going for a long three instead of our plan for four.  We did manage to get all our leads and changes. We ended up getting a 4th for that round.

The second hunter round and our eq rounds were a bit of a disaster.  The last stride before the first fence in the hunter round Buddy tripped and we ended up taking the entire fence down. He was a bit discombobulated but luckily we had a long ride to a single diagonal to regroup.  He did jump the rest of the course a lot higher and scopier than normal.  Then in the eq class he ran out of gas and stopped at a fence.  It wasn't a dirty stop, but a slow stop.  I smacked him with my crop then circled back to it.  We made it around the rest of the course but I could tell he was done.  Even with our mini meltdowns we still placed in both classes with a 6th and 4th respectively.  I will say that there were only 6 in all of our classes.

There were two flat classes between my eq round and the mini medal so I got off to walk him out.  Jen and I talked about if I should scratch and she told me as long I was prepared to ride every fence fairly aggressively we could still do it.  Luckily Buddy regained some energy in his 20 minute break and we went first into the medal.  We were a bit slow and conservative in our lines, and I stared down the end box fence getting a funky distance to it, but overall it was a nice round and we got a 3rd.  They had the top two come back for the test and I was disappointed to be one place away from it.



Our loot for the day
 

I was very happy with how we did.  So we had a few oops and mistakes but I wasn't nervous with the fence height or trying too hard to find my distances.  I felt in control (minus the fence demolishing) during all of our rounds and we nailed almost every lead change.  We didn't place the highest, but we placed well and I'm proud of Buddy.  Now he gets today off with his BoT sheet and an easy flat hack tomorrow.