#TBT Freeman Farms May 2014

During my blogging break this year Buddy and I went to two local schooling shows.  The first of them was the May Freeman Farms show.  We went to the same show last year, but this year it was just me showing.  No organizing everything, no having to share my horse, no worrying about anyone else....it was very nice!  Unfortunately, like last year we had the same weather.  Pouring down rain, cool and windy.  Not very fun show weather.

 Because of said weather no pics or video was taken. This was from a lesson the week before the show.

We had decided to move up a division at this show, doing the 2'9-3' Low Child/AA jumpers.  We had three rounds, a power and speed and two jump off rounds.  I don't remember much about the courses, except there was one pretty funky bending line from an outside oxer to a diagonal vertical.  We were lucky that we got there early to school and did that line a few times because it was hard.  You had to go straight after the oxer for 2-3 strides, then almost make a 90 degree turn to the second fence.  If you tried to soften the turn, you ended up falling way in on the landing and running into another fence.   I remember that my mantra was "Go Deep!" for that line.

FF show May 2013.  It looked just like this, only the jumps were bigger

While Buddy is normally a horse that doesn't care about ridding in the rain, he took exception that day.  In two of the rounds to get to the first fence you had to canter headfirst into the rain and wind.  He was not a happy pony about that!  I had to circle in front of the timers and beat him with my stick to get him forward.  If he could have cantered backwards, he would have. In another round my reins were so wet I couldn't hold onto them in a turn and we had to circle while I got them back.  We didn't place super great, but if I remember we didn't have rails down (maybe one), we were just slower than everyone else (and the whole circling thing didn't help) but we came home with some satin. I was still super happy with how we did.  His first time showing that big, my first time in 5yrs, and miserable weather, not a recipe for for a good horse show.