And for our last trick, the BLM Championships! With two students! And seven horses! For five days!
(Heaven help us.)
Five of those horses call Sprieser Sporthorse home, and as my biggest trailer has a capacity of four, we had to caravan. Nicole drove my two-horse, pulled by my dad’s shiny new used truck (thanks, Dad!), and I took our big rig, a four-horse. And even with all that room, packing still felt like Tetris. As it was, we had to order most of our bedding at the show.
But it was an uneventful trip, and the horses travelled great and settled in fine. We schooled everyone but Tres on Wednesday. As Tres doesn’t show until Friday, I figured a day off couldn’t kill him. Schooling was interrupted briefly by a trip to Dairy Queen for dinner, during which we learned that the fate of the next generation is in dire straights because the guy who took my order couldn’t figure out how to make change from 10.02 for a meal of 8.92. Yikes.
But horses were good. Fender had a minor 4-Year-Old Temper Tantrum where he believed it quite impossible to only canter on one lead at a time past the Scary Judge’s Booth, but eventually he got over it and behaved like an adult. Ella was quite hot, but she didn’t do anything dreadful and had no contact issues—my biggest fear. She did only have two options at trot, trot and piaffe, with no real in-between, but it’s pretty normal (at the moment) for the passage to take a hike when the back is tight. Nicole is here to ride my mom’s wonderful Indy, who was, to no one’s surprise, wonderful. And Midge was himself—tight as all get-out, but improved from beginning to end.
Last year we really struggled with the warm-up in the dark. This show (which alternates back and forth between hosting the BLM Championships and the Region 1 Championships, but the punchline is pretty much the same) holds the Championship classes in two indoor arenas, the larger of which has an extensive covered, lit warm-up. Trouble is that when people come to the warm-up, to Midge’s eyes, they appear rather suddenly ringside, due to the lack of lights outside of the warm-up. It’s something he’s just got to deal with, but last year I didn’t anticipate what drama it would cause, and it cost us his freestyle championship. His PSG Saturday is at 8:30 p.m. Ick. So I decided to school him last on Wednesday to have a chance at riding him in the dark. We’ll see if it pays off Saturday night, I guess.
Certainly it paid off in his PSG today. His championship classes are Saturday and Sunday, but I wanted him to have lots of practice going into that arena. He was a total star today, Mr. Uncomplicated. So much so that I sort of forgot to show up and ride. I spent most of my test going, “Wow, isn’t this nice that he’s not spooking, or leaping, or plunging, or carrying on!” instead of, you know, applying leg. Whoops. His mistake-free test still won a reasonably big class with a very lackluster but deserved 64 percent, which gives me great hopes for things to come.
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Fender stole the show. He felt good, though admittedly he’s felt better, and had no issues in his training level test. And the judge agreed—a whopper 76.8 percent, which I think is the highest score I’ve ever gotten in recognized competition in my entire life. Dang! I’m pretty sure he was the highest score of the day as well by a hefty margin. Atta boy! Judge wanted the contact to stabilize a little more for 9s. Huzzah! Well-timed for his championship class tomorrow.
Tres was super in schooling, so we kept it short and sweet. And Nicole made her third level debut, in which she rode lovely trotwork, and had one bobble in the walk, before her brain fell out in the canter, and she forgot how to both steer and apply driving leg aids simultaneously. It’s cool. She and I are both on fire to actually RIDE OUR HORSES FORWARD tomorrow.
Ella was last, a simple I2. She actually warmed up quite well, and went around the show ring like a pro, before coming down the centerline and, abruptly and without warning, spitting the bit out. We made a few terrible movements before I saluted out. I would be more unnerved—this would be the second time this has happened—if she hadn’t worked so beautifully once I returned to the warm-up and made a minor tack adjustment. Crap.
Here’s the reality of training, guys: It ain’t always pretty. Horses get tired, or wise, or insecure, and because they’re sentient beings instead of robots, they act out. She’s a 9-year-old Grand Prix horse. Poop happens. The training has ups and downs, and sometimes they’re poorly timed. I decided that even though tomorrow’s class is a reasonably big deal, it’s really not, and I need to make sure that I get the most of it, so I’m going to show her in the snaffle and see how it goes.
If she feels horrid in warm-up, I won’t ride her at all. But I want her to know three things: 1, come what may, I’ll always be on her team; 2, the show ring is not a bad, scary place; and 3, even though she’s scared, she still has to do her best. Hopefully tomorrow will help her understand that a little better—she was working super in the snaffle, and so I’m cautiously optimistic that we’ll at least have a positive experience in there. She did, at least, execute both piaffe AND passage in the ring, even with her contact issue. So it’s not a back problem, as much as it is a submission problem. We’ll find our way.
Things that are swell: our tack-room set up. I whipped out the curtains big-time, and since we have so many horses I got two tack stalls. We really look classy. (Looks can be deceiving, eh?) I’ll have photos tomorrow—left my camera at the barn when we went for night check, and since Nicole, student Mel and I get on and off 11 horses tomorrow, I’m not going back. Sorry. And so far, only one run to Walmart, though admittedly that run was done at 6:30 a.m. Purchased: Pop Tarts, orange juice, wrist watch. God bless America.
