Do you even own matching horses if they don’t win matching ribbons?
Granted, they each earned their ribbons doing very different things. Let’s start with Presto (because the world revolves around him, you know).
A few weeks ago we went back to Majestic for their next schooling show, this time entered in the Modified/Training (so Modified dressage and SJ, Training XC… they don’t run anything higher than T XC at the schooling shows). He’d been so good at the show prior to that, winning the Training on his dressage score, so my trainer suggested we bump back up to the M/T for the next one and see how that went. I was once again disorganized and didn’t really look at the dressage test until the day before. You could probably tell considering I was slightly off my markers in the test itself (whoopsy) but Presto was very well behaved anyway, so we ended up with a 30. There were only 3 of us in the M/T, which may be the smallest division I’ve ever been in at Majestic, but the other person was a professional with two very nice young horses. I was ok sitting in second after dressage.
Once again I was at this show by myself, no trainer or ground help. I also took a work meeting between dressage and the jumping phases (Wednesday morning horse show vibes, ya know) so I ended up not walking SJ or XC at all… I just took Presto over by the ring and watched a few of the Prelim SJ rounds to see the course and how it was riding. The XC at Majestic is in a fairly wide open field with just a little bit of a treed area, so I could vaguely see most of it from the warmup area. I figured I’d find the rest as I went. Truly a fine plan. Follow me for more tips and tricks.
By a stroke of luck Maya Black happened to be standing next to the ring when I went in for my SJ round, and when she saw that I didn’t have anyone at the gate she whipped her phone out and videoed for me. Maya’s wife is my horses’ bodyworker and they’re truly some of my favorite people (side note, it’s also great to see Maya back out eventing again on a nice young horse! She’s one of the good ones.). I greatly appreciate her videoing because it ended up being one of the best rounds Presto and I have had in a long time. That’s two shows in a row where I’ve been by myself and someone has randomly videoed for me without me asking… absolute queens out here saving the day.
As for the round itself, Presto was rideable, I was patient, and we were both consistent and on the same page the whole way. Presto jumped a super clear round and I was really happy with that. He’s jumped a lot of clear rounds that I felt like I didn’t entirely earn, but time it felt justified. It also moved us up into first after SJ.
I saw Maya on the way out of the ring and quickly debriefed with her (she agreed – good, smooth round) and then stopped back by my trailer to put on his XC boots and my vest. The show had been running early so they were just letting people go out whenever they showed up to warmup, and because of that there was no backup of horses waiting. I was the only one out there in that moment, so I did a couple laps of galloping forward and bringing him back, jumped 3 warmup fences, and trotted down to the start box.
The show prior to this I’d felt Presto have a little bit of anxiety on the way to the box/when we were waiting for our countdown, but this time there was none of that. He was LIT and ready to go, with a real “LEMME AT EM” feeling. The startbox volunteer counted us down and he blasted out of there with his eyes already locked on jump one.
He jumped around the whole course feeling exactly the same way. Never one thought of hesitation, never a strayed second of focus. Just a heat seeking missile out for a late morning stroll. Did I know where I was going? Not entirely. But we found all the jumps in the right order with no major straying from the path. Success.
We came home clear about 30 seconds under optimum, and Presto was VERY pleased with himself. Another show with a FOD to take the win! And most importantly of all, we both had fun. No pressure, no worries, just good solid casual confident fun. There’s a lot to be said for that at the moment, because last year felt like a lot of pressure and left me questioning how fun this really was.
Oh, and Presto was back home rolling in his favorite sand pit by noon. You can’t beat that. I do love an Ocala weekday schooling show.
Speaking of which, Bingo made his debut at one this past week! Not a horse trial, but Majestic has jumper rounds one Wednesday a month, and I decided it was time to see what he thought of the whole experience. The shows start at pile of poles and go up throughout the day and it’s $35/round with no other fees. Great for young horses!
My main motivation for taking Bingo to the show was to let him get used to some of the hubbub of a horse show and see what he thought of the warmup ring. He’s a bit horse shy, something I’ve been unable to work on at home since I’m always riding alone. I figured taking him in the morning during the poles/crossrails time would be best since those classes tend to be just a handful of horses and the facility is still quieter that early.
What I didn’t count on was no one else showing up for the poles class. Not a single other trailer was there yet when I pulled in, or by the time I went to the show office, or by the time I tacked up. Since my original plan of getting him used to warmup traffic was clearly going to be a bust, I decided to pivot and instead use the opportunity to let him get acclimated to the ring and the environment while it was nice and quiet, and enter him in the poles class.
They offered to let me warm up in the show ring, so I absolutely took them up on that. Bingo was a little bit on edge at first, so we just walked around for a minute, bending left and right and moving off each leg, giving him some work to focus on. Despite it being an insanely foggy and creepy looking day, he was really brave about everything. There are a lot of jumps and covered seating and signs and people and poles and and and all the stuff that comes with horse shows, but he didn’t spook at anything. Well, until a guy walked out of the portapotty by the ring and let the door BANG shut behind him, then poor Bingy teleported a little bit. That one seemed pretty justified, and he settled right back down immediately.
After a few minutes of walking and trotting and exploring the ring, I told her we were ready to start our super fancy poles class. Keep in mind, Bingo has jumped a few times and done lots of poles, but he’s never done a course. When they’re this green I feel like you’re mostly just hoping to get them between the standards and into the corners. He was a little bit impressed by the first few and jumped over them, but he quickly figured it out as we went along and his overachieving got less and less as he went. He came back down to trot when I asked, was very brave about all of it, and went nice and deep into all of his turns. A totally perfect pole-trotting boy if I’ve ever seen one.
He was the only one in the class so the winner by default, but really… he earned that one I think. A gooder boy does not exist for his first attempt. I briefly considered hanging around for the start time of the crossrails, but that seemed greedy considering he’d been pretty perfect to that point. Instead I took him over to the warmup ring and did 5-10 minutes of w/t/c flatwork in there. I kept it just like we do at home, with changes of bend and circles and leg yields, and to his credit he went pretty much exactly the way he does at home. He’s the kind of horse that settles really well once he’s got a job to focus on, and I was happy to see how quickly he was able to do that in a new environment as well. Gold star for Bingy. Maybe next show he can do the crossrails.
Also, how cute was he as a baby nugget?
His ears didn’t even fit in the frame.
breedrideevent.com 