Valentines II

At 9am on Friday, WallE and I hit the road heading for Tryon International. It was pouring down rain, my lessons had been canceled and I figured we could get there early and maybe get our schooling ride in before lunch. I was very wrong. Upon arriving, I realized that the horse show had a large amount of late entries and we would not be schooling before at least 2pm. 

I fixed WallE's stall and got him all tucked in before unloading the rest of our supplies for the weekend. A few years ago my brother and I built a beautiful tack truck. It has everything I need; space for two saddles, a shelf, wheels and it fits perfectly on my trailer. It is very heavy and in my excitement to get unpacked, I pulled it right into my ankle. Picture a 100 pound shopping cart running up on your heel. Needless to say, I hopped around on one foot for a long while before pulling myself together and pushing (not pulling) the trunk the rest of the way to the stall. After that ordeal, I slowly unloaded the remainder of the items and then sat down for lunch outside WallE's stall. 

We slowly watched the hours tick by, waiting for the show to end. And eventually it did, around 4:00pm. We went into the arena for our schooling ride. Now, if you remember from our Training at Tryon post last September, WallE was NOT well behaved in the warm up. In fact, it is the only time in all of my time riding that I have wanted to hand the horse to someone and just leave. I was a little concerned about how he would behave in the warm up with other horses. 

We entered the schooling side of the arena and someone was lunging their horse (whip a cracking). But I put WallE on a square and we began to walk, before trotting and doing a few lateral movements. During our warm up, the trainer is chasing the horse in the far corner of the arena, cracking the whip, urging the horse to go faster and then ANOTHER trainer and horse come in to lunge right beside us. Talk about infuriating. I walked WallE outdoors all the way to the designated 'lunging area,' so the fact that these people were lunging their horse right beside me as I was riding, made me very irritable (and worried). However, WallE was great. Even in the canter he was great. So we moved on to the main arena. 

In the main arena there were several other horses, but once again WallE continued to behave and just be a great horse. He did not spook at the children running in the stadium, he did not get excited about the horse cantering up behind him and he jumped all the jumps first try. I did not see a reason to continue working and we exited the arena for the day. 

Saturday we awoke to an influx of entries in the horse show and watched in horror as our ride time moved from 12:30pm to 1:30pm to 2:30pm to 4:00pm. WallE and I took several walks, lunging breaks, ganders at the classes going on in the arena and snuggles in the stall. Finally it was time to get on. We tacked up and ventured into the arena. It was booming with atmosphere. Tons of horses, riders and trainers were crammed into a tiny space, warming up. One person was lunging (of course). And the ingate was constantly announcing the order and who was next, trying to keep things on track. 

We had a decent warm up, WallE was surprisingly calm. Perhaps too calm. I was having trouble getting him to go forward. In lessons, we had been doing so well, but on Saturday it was a struggle. Finally we got to go into the arena for our first round (after waiting all day). The buzzer sounded and we headed to the first jump. Refusal. What a bummer. We circled and went right over. The rest of the course was slow, behind the leg, but working. Then we got to the last line. Refusal at the first jump. The buzzer sounded for us to exit, but I had already started the circle and approach, so we jumped the line and then exited the arena. Our first ever disqualification. How exciting... 

Once we exited and cooled down, I hopped off, loosened his girth and watched our video. I cringed as I noted how slowly we were going to every jump and vowed to go more forward in our next class. The next class was a Mini Prix (2'9") and a table IIb format. As I learned from the ingate, this means that you ride a clear round (within time) and you stay in the arena, the buzzer sounds again and you immediately go to the jump off. You have to remember two courses. 

Trying to remember my courses, I got back on WallE to re- warm up. Now, WallE had been great in our warm up thus far. With LOTS and LOTs of commotion and atmosphere, he was a champ - just doing what his rider asked. I realized, that typically I depend on him to be a little 'hot' in the show arena so that we are able to go forward. I also realized, that because he was so chill and calm, I was going to have to have to use all the things that irritate him to make him go a little more forward (collected circle to big canter, shoulder in, leg yield, maybe even a tap with the crop before the jump). This was counter intuitive to everything I have ever done with him at a horse show, however we did it all and even practiced our lead changes over a pole and fence. We were forward and ready by the time we came up in the order of go.