Today was our first outing of the year, at a local schooling combined test. We usually start our year out with this show as it is laid-back, cheap and close to home. We took 6 horses total, and despite the wind and threatening to rain all day, I have to say all the boys were pretty darn wonderful. This is going to be a very fun season!
Pop and I were doing our second Training together, and over the past week C has been working really hard with us on our warmup for dressage and stadium, something we've struggled with before. This time I tried to time our warmup to the second, and WOULD have been perfect if the rings had been running on time. So we had an extra 5 minutes to wait and that was just enough time to lose our swing. Nevertheless, I felt I rode a better test than I have in the past, and even though our score was our highest yet, I know we made progress in areas we had been working on. He did go into the ring and get heavy in my hands, and we missed our first canter transition because I didn't prepare him well enough. It was like we had done maybe, two too many canters before we came in and lost the beautiful trot we'd had in warmup. It's disappointing, but I feel like each time I'm getting closer to the optimum warmup. We'll just have to keep working hard and I have to keep getting better.
Our stadium round, in contrast, was (I think) the BEST one we've had. I was tired of feeling like a big pansy and tired of going into the ring and not giving him a positive ride. So we went in, and we meant business! He was so game and so much fun. We had a great round and I couldn't stop smiling! What a good boy!
The other ponies were also wonderful...Guppy had the winning dressage score in the Training and then dropped a rail to finish 3rd....Val won the Training (his FIRST Training EVER!)...Ardy had one of his best tests to date and jumped a gorgeous round, actually looking very rideable today in the Prelim...Benny scored a 30 and jumped quite well...and Monkee scored a 29 (yay Monkee!) and had one rail. Good start to the year! And I just finished cleaning a monstrous pile of tack...turn your heads sideways!
So the horses are bathed, wrapped, and snuggled into their beds for the night, and I'm overwhelmingly tired and still have to do my Sunday School lesson for tomorrow. Tomorrow I'm hoping to come out after church and help H finish cleaning out the trailer and doing lots of laundry, and getting Scotty cleaned up (Scott is here for a little bit for training...he is an 8 y/o TB gelding that I actually found and sold from Kentucky to a lady here a few years ago. So good to have him in the barn!!!)).
God Bless! Anyone else had their first outing of the year yet?
No comments:
Post a Comment