Thank goodness for great helping hands! Our team had 11 rides today, beginning at 8:30 and ending after 4, and I would absolutely have keeled over sometime after lunch were it not for my amazing Stephanie and for my awesome student Allison and her parents, who drove down solely to hang out with us for the weekend. How amazing is that?
And I’m really glad I didn’t keel over, because it was a dang good day. It started with a bit of a fluff—Ella’s first Grand Prix had some great highlights but also some pretty blah piaffe and passage, which is weird because it was AWESOME outside of the ring. Ick.
I’m bummed about it, because I feel like I don’t know what I didn’t do in the ring that I was doing outside the ring, and I hate not knowing what went wrong. She still got a 62 percent, with a LOT of 7s and 8s on the trot and canter stuff, but there’s a whole lot of scores about piaffe and passage that need to come up for higher numbers. So onward and upward.
But that was the lowest note of the day. My students just rocked it—everyone improved from yesterday, rode really forward and accurate tests, and were all rewarded handsomely. Virginia got her first qualifying score today, and we collected a lot more ribbons for our wall.
I am also fiercely proud of Landon, who won a GIGANTIC training level class today on 71 percent. And the comments are really spectacular, from a judge who I know has high standards. I just adore Landon’s owner, and I’m so happy to have brought home a blue ribbon for her!
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We all sat around tonight, eating dinner, drinking champagne (a Sprieser Sporthorse tradition for when a horse does its first Grand Prix), and laughing, laughing, laughing. I got a little chill looking around the circle at all of my wonderful clients and their incredibly supportive families who came to watch.
I know everyone says they have great customers, but I not only have that; I’m in constant awe of how I’ve had so few bad ones. Some of my riders here this weekend are fairly new to me, and some of them have been with me since the beginning, but they all feel like family. It’s a heckofa thing. Whatever I did in a previous life to deserve them, it must have been good.
We’re up early again tomorrow morning, and we go all day—last rider’s a little after 2—but I’m hoping we’ll end on a bang. Landon does one more training level test, and both Ella and Tres do the Grand Prix again in the morning. Fingers crossed!
