Last day for us at the show. Everything is packed up except the horses and their water buckets. Will be up super early, earlier than we had to get up for all the 8 am rides, hoping to be loaded and headed out by 6:00.
Started the day out with Sara’s training level ride. She did great. She moved with much power! It was cold and the skies were grey. It’s tricky on a day like today to push the horse to really give it all and yet have them work hard not blow it. It’s natural for horses to be uptight in weather like this. This “on guard” attitude is what has kept them alive since the beginning of time. Sara came through with flying colors.
Kizzes went next at 11:30. By now the wind was blowing. When she came down the ramp and entered the stadium the flags were blowing and flapping and of course, they were right down by A in arena 3, the one she had to show in. She did great in her test until the canter. She added way more to the test than need be, and got really tight. She did her flying change way to early, when she was supposed to be half passing, in fact. She went sideways in the medium canter down the long side, well, not sideways, but at a 45 degree angle, but really held it together pretty good for the next half pass and flying change and actually did a pretty good medium canter, down center line, trot and halt. Because she didn’t do the flying change in the right place one judge gave her a 0, my first 0 I believe, but her scores took the whole range from 0 to 8! Needless to say she didn’t place in the top ten but both judges had huge grins on their face when we finished, a thumbs up from one. I was glad they allowed us to keep going, I sure didn’t want her to have to quit the test in the middle after her such an ordeal. She needed to finish the test. Judges all have to have ridden successfully to certain levels, depending on their rating, so they all know that sometimes horses will be horses and we, as riders, need to work through and help them learn to be better. The judges had humorous, encouraging comments. Kizzes, of course, was all fine by the end, free walking out of the arena on a long rein as though her ride had been a “sleeper”.
Kaluah rode about 3:30. Unfortunately she had started to tie up yesterday so she wasn’t 100%. We had treated her and she was pretty much back to normal, but when she had to ride all alone in ring 2, all other rings on break, no other horses down there, cold, wind, she was a little nervous. She worked nicely but the top 3 scores were above 70% so that’s hard to beat with all that working against her. She’s looking pretty good after the ride and this evening so she should be fine.
So, no ribbons today. I’ve always said that the national shows are really tough and if we have just one horse in the barn get a Top Ten, we’ve had a great show! We came home with TWO!!!
Looking forward to heading home. We’ll be working on what we’re going to do for our lecture/demo at the Minnesota Equifest October 15 and 16th at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds…..
