Off the Track Showman Day

I entered this show back in January so we have been waiting for it to get here for an age. We did it last year and it was Henry's first competition. It consists of dressage, show jumping and in hand and it's free! Thanks Government incentive!

Mum, I'm sleepy!

Henry got a bath and plaited late Saturday arvo and I didn't get home until well after it was dark. He was very good for all the fluffing though, and I did a decent job considering my light kept going off!

When we arrived I took Henry for a walk. He was much more interested in the grass than the buzzing atmosphere and the 3 loose horses that galloped past (from the in hand arena WTF?!). A good sign if I do say so. He was very relaxed for our dressage warm up and he worked well.

Dear hands, what are you doing?!

Our test was not as relaxed, he got tense on the straight lines and from being away from the other horses. We need to work more on getting him into the contact and I need to make sure he is in front of my leg! The test had some nice moments though and he got the correct canter leads both ways, I'll take it. He will improve as he gets more exposure, and the arena was pretty spooky. We did the right things in the right places and I know where we need to improve. He was third after dressage, 0.1% behind the horse in second.

Next I tidied him up for the in hand section, making sure he was perfect and spick and span. We presented to the judge and he did a very nice in hand work out. I was very pleased with how calm he was about it all. We got a 9 for presentation, and a 9 for the halt and rein back. Very good pony. He was second in the in hand section, 2 points behind first.

Enjoy this terrible photo lol

We went right onto jumping from in hand after tacking him up. He was on board from the get go, very willing although he did think about stopping at the warm up oxer for some reason but he didn't when I closed my leg and supported him. Good boy!

Our round was BEAUTIFUL. Henry was responsive, calm and maintained the same rhythm. He landed on the correct canter lead after all but 2 jumps. He wasn't spooky, he was forward and he left all the poles up. We took off from good spots at every jump too. It was really lovely. It wasn't speedy and we were slower than optimum time so I wasn't very surprised to see all the time penalties we had. What I was surprised was the number... 130! That's a few. I chalked it up to going slow and didn't think much else about it. When we looked back at my video though we think that I actually took 90 seconds, and my time was recorded wring. So we think that my third place after show jumping should have been a bit higher up! Not to worry though.

Best horse in the whole wide world!

Over all we came third! We were ONE point behind equal first, so maybe if we had been more onto things we could have won but I'm not sad about it, our dressage test didn't deserve to win.

I was so impressed with Henry, he was relaxed about everything that happened all day. Horses galloping past weren't a problem, a tiny warm up space with horses being ridden at him weren't an issue, he listened even when he was unsure and we had a perfect show jumping round. This was a totally new place for him and he acted like he was an experienced, grow up horse. Pretty big win if you ask me. Oh, and I kept my shit together and had the tiniest flutter of nerves that was so small it hardly registered. Can't wait to get back out there again!

I deserve all the carrots now please!