Crazy Mare Chronicles

The show yesterday went good! Not great, but good 🙂 We got there early in the morning and got settled in. I walked Daisy around the show grounds to show her the facility again-she seemed relaxed. There were a few times she kind of hopped around nervously, but for the most part she either recognized the place or she didn’t care. We got back to her stall and she relaxed for a little bit before we got her tacked up. She tacked well-no major outbursts and she really didn’t try too hard to bite at me 🙂 We got her out to the warm up ring and we rode around for a while. Once our time came up, we went to the ring and walked in. Going into the ring alone with your horse is always kind of a cool feeling. We approached the judge’s box and announced our number, then went about 5 steps further when he rang the bell-that was quick!! We trotted out and re-entered, as normal, and Daisy stiffened up a bit on our way down the centerline. We halted, saluted, and did our test. No problem 🙂 She had a great trot, her canter was as good as it’s ever been, and she was sort of relaxed. Her headset could have been better, but overall we got good scores. She got several 7’s and 6’s in addition to an 8 on her final halt. There were a couple 5’s in there for her second canter circle, though, so our final score was a 61.4%. That’s our first qualifier for next year’s finals! She also got a 7 on her gaits-I can’t remember if she’s ever gotten that good a mark on her gaits before, so I was very happy with that.
Our second test was 3 hours later. She was tired and didn’t want to come out at all, so when we went to tack her up, she gave us a lot of grief. We dragged her out and I warmed up with just a walk. When we got to the ring for the second test, her mood was nothing like the first time-she was grouchy and tired and wouldn’t respond very well to anything I asked her. I ended up using the whip several times just to get her to move! She broke from her canter a few strides early at one point and tried to escape out the back way when we rode by the entrance/exit mark (A). It was sort of funny, but I also felt bad for her. Her canter was actually pretty nice if it hadn’t ended early, but the rest of the test was just difficult. The marks at the end of the test included “rushed” for one of the canters-one where I cracked her on the butt for not responding to 2 cues to go and she ended up leaping into a canter, and at the end the judge wrote something about her being an “Attractive and Willing Horse”. OK on Attractive, but Willing?? She wasn’t willing to do anything at that point! She ended up getting almost straight 5’s with a 6 or two thrown in. Nothing special at all. I wasn’t too upset about that since she already had her qualifier for this show.
Kathie and Heather did their championship rides for combined training at this show and they had their championships for eventing the day before. Both did very well, Kathie got 4th place overall at both shows, and Heather got 2nd place overall at both. Kind of a coincidence-they were totally separate shows and they could have placed differently at both.
Overall, it was a fun time. I always wake up in the morning of a show thinking “why do I keep doing this to myself??” then when we’re done I always think “I can’t wait to do this again!!” I wish I could figure out a way to get her more conditioned to deal with the stress of showing-I think that’s where she really gets tired. I can usually ride her for an hour or more if we want without a problem. She gets so tired after just a half hour of riding for the warm up and riding of one test that she can barely make it to the next. I guess the only way to get her used to it is to keep showing!