This weekend I went to a breast cancer benefit schooling show. The proceeds went to Laurie Nelson, a local dressage trainer with breast cancer and no insurance. Jo, Kaitlyn and I rode while Lindsay coached. It was an exhausting weekend! I worked all day saturday and then went straight from the library to Birchbury. I had Grady loaded and ready to go a bit after 6:30 at made the long journey to the barn the show was being held at. It was about an hour and 45 minutes and it was basically dark when I got there. I brought Grady into the barn and started searching for my stall when all ofasudden I heard galloping hooves and the barn was flooded with horses. Evidently that barn lets all the horses in at once and they find their stalls. Grady and I were caught in the middle of it and I am SO lucky that Grady didn't freak out and that none of the horses attacked us! When an employee came in we were still surrounded by stampeding horses and I just started yelling "help!!!" It's always nice to have something get your adrenaline pumping.
The others had gotten there only a bit earlier and were just finishing up riding in the show ring to get the feel for it. (Side note: On Saturday Lindsay brought her filly to an Oldenburg inspection. Her filly got premium and was the highest scoring horse at the inspection!) I took Grady out and walked him around the arena a bit, but I didn't want to ride since it was pitch black and getting pretty late. I live close enough to the facility that I spent the night at home. On my drive I stopped to get gas and as I was filling up an all out brawl started by the gas station. Cars honking and screeching, girls and guys screaming, swearing, punching, drinking, kicking, slamming... I put in fourth of a tank and got out of there!!
The show went (I think) very well. Grady was 100% well behaved the whole time. He never once spooked or pulled any sort of tricks. Thanks again Lindsay!!! I didn't get any pictures because no one was taking any and I didn't have any parents there to take them for me. But anyhoo, Grady's first test was *ok*. It was actually fairly smooth, but there were certainly things that I could pin point that we needed to improve. It was doing this awful cold drizzle the entire day and the warm up arena was very slick. Grady kept slipping so my warm up for my first test wasn't very comprehensive (although Grady was well behaved!) and my warm up for my second test basically didn't happen. I got on him while the rider before me was doing her test and went in cold turkey - he did well though.
The judge was scoring VERY low. There were only a few people that got above 60%. I got a 59% on my Training 2 test and third place. I got a 57% on my T4 class and WON!!! I think that's very sad that I won with 57%, and there were 8 people in the class. Lindsay saw both my tests and said that if I had had a test like that at a rated show that I would have scored much higher! Both of my tests were fairly good and I was pretty happy with them. There are three things that I need to work on: Keeping a more consistent contact (Grady has gone from pulling on the reins to be a little too soft! Now he has to PUSH to the bit), snappier upward and downward canter transitions (these are generally pretty good at home, but they weren't as sharp in a strange place with no warm up), and not screwing up my halts!! I totally messed up on my last halt and it was so utterly embaressing. He halted very evenly but I thought he was crooked so I bumped him a bit to try and even out his legs and of course he took a huge step. I've decided that when we halt at shows I am not going to worry about straightness after we've gotten the halt!! The halt we get is the halt we'll have - That way I don't risk messing up a perfectly good halt with my stupidity.
The day was a BLAST though. Both Jo and Kaitlyn did very well, and it was very fun to see them ride at the show. Jo is the barn manager at Pferde and Kaitlyn is her daughter. They are both pretty new to dressage so I think they did VERY well. They got some 2nds and 3rds and were scored just as horribly as I was.
During the middle of the day we had a fairly long break between classes so since we were freezing our buns off we decided to sit in the office. I told Lindsay about my chinchilla Jupiter and how he does is girlfriend pink fuzzy slippers... She found this to be quite hilarious and wants videos, so you might be seeing some X rated pink fuzzy slipper videos soon! Lindsay is the queen of burping so she was trying to teach me how to birp, something I've never been able to do very well at all. I downed Dr. Pepper and only had a few small, inaudible birps. No window rattling ones like Lindsay can do. *sigh*
We also watched some equ classes and Lindsay and I chatted about training with Conrad Schumacher. She hopes to go to Chicago for a few days in Oct. to train with him and asked if I would like to come with. I wouldn't be able to ride with him (you have to be invited to), but if I go I would get a chance to have Lindsay introduce me and recomend me for lessons so it would be worth the trip. I'd love to go, I just have to get my work covered!! He's going to be back in Nov. so maybe I could ride then? We'll see. Update you more on this later.
No comments:
Post a Comment