♣Ambitious♣

Through a series of complicated and odd events, I ended up going to a schooling show this weekend. I can say, without a doubt, that it was worth it, but man I was not having it with the refusals. Wall twerking on Friday night We took a reasonable amount of students this time as Miss S has been drinking decaf coffee for a few days, accidentally of course, and she came to her senses at one point. Lots of leadliners and walk/trotters, but they all rode in the morning, and, by noon, it was just the advanced riders plus Hannah left to show. Hannah is at the same point in her riding as I was a year ago, still trying to figure out the canter and perfecting trot overs. I have to give her credit though, she did awesome today and had the best canter I've seen her do ever (and I've been riding with her for over a year now). Poor thing couldn't do her over fences classes though because Baby would not trot through the whole thing. That morning, Baby was refusing everything, and it...

But it was ridiculously cold yesterday at that show! I think the highest that it got was 34°F. Lucky for me, I had about four layers on most parts of my body. I'm not the biggest fan of the cold; I never have been and I never will be, and the next time you see me showing in the winter it will be at Wellington, thank you very much. I'm coming for you . . . The show was part of a winter series that I wasn't going to do, but somehow the insane individuals who I ride with managed to talk me into going to this one. I was still a bit apprehensive; the usual "Week Before Nerves" showed up, and it took me all of five days to put together my show bag. After this show, I learned two things. One, showing is like a vacation. No matter how nicely my bag is packed the day before, it ends up being a mess of multiple pairs of pants, gloves, and random sheets of paper in a tote bag. The second revelation will come later in this post. At this particular show, there are two r...

 The inescapable hell that is spreads was quick to throw off my groove and my back. Our jumping today can only be described as sub-sub-par. First off, for our first course, Baby decided to duck out on the very first jump. We got up to it right, we were going a nice pace, and then she just jumped right. Considering the fact that the first jump was more of a glorified ground pole, I wasn't having that. Nope, no reason to duck out. We went around again and I made her go over it, then we did the second jump just fine, then it was a tight turn to an oxer. I took the turn too tightly, and, long story short, those couple of strides felt like a one way ticket to Death Valley. I fell, not hard, but I turned enough to cause my back to go the wrong way, and now I'm sitting here with sore muscles. Ugh, we were doing so well for so long! The rest of the course was poopy; the second time around would have made Richard Spooner look like an equitation god. All in all, five refusals for the ...

Sometimes you've just gotta put the leg on and keep it there. I've been getting annoyed with Baby always cutting to the inside; she has a lot of little kids ride her, so it's not really her fault, but she's just been clear about the fact that she wants to ignore my leg. Today, I took my warm-up time, and made her bend in the corners and in a circle at the walk and the trot. She fought me for the first few times, especially considering that we were the first in the ring and she had spent her entire day relaxing, but, they all give at some point, and she did (eventually). I must say, outside of our disagreement at the start, she did exceptionally well today. She became very soft and responsive in her mouth, and she's already got a fairly soft mouth. I don't recall having any jumps into our transitions. Downward transitions weren't great, and I was surprised considering how well she's done with them our past few rides. That'll be something to focus on...