Reporting back with an update! The show was today!!
I am so, so proud of her!
We hauled out yesterday and she was pretty nervous at first, but we lunged, walked a lot, and let her take all the time she needed to acclimate. After that we practiced our tests in the show rings, and had decent practice rides.
Today was the big day, she started off really fresh but chilled out totally after lunging and never put a foot wrong the rest of the day!
Our first ride was in the morning, first level test 2. We had a fantastic ride and scored a 68.94 and won the class. I don’t currently have a video of it, something happened and my phone didn’t record even though the person taking the video thought it was
The second ride was a little less fantastic. We had storms overnight, and there was the threat of rain the rest of the day. The morning was beautiful and sunny, but the cold and clouds rolled in during the afternoon hours. My second ride was around 3:22pm and in the warmup we started getting sprinkled on. When I was on deck they called a rain delay and a pretty strong but small cell came through and lasted maybe 20 minutes. When we got back to the warmup we didn’t have much time and she hated the soppy footing. Cantering felt like a fight for every step- sluggish is a good word. Even so, we rode a respectable test, just with a few unfortunate errors that I think were largely a result of everything above. I’m not mad about it, I’m honestly just proud of us for pushing through the cold and wet and still pulling off a 64.72 and 4th place even with some big mistakes!
A couple fun side notes.
SEVEN years ago, I bought this Browband with dreams of it being her show Browband. Since then, she has worn it exactly twice before today for pictures. It made me stupid happy to finally see it on her bridle for real, and I got quite a few compliments on it at the show!
We also hired the show photographer. When I get the official images, I’ll share those here too!
I’m attaching my 1-3 video, the one where we make several mistakes. Even so, I’m proud of what we accomplished!
https://youtu.be/yQ3L4xrdG6g