March Indoor B Show Recap

Wanted to get a recap out of the show I did the weekend before last before I forget details!

I decided to try having my trainer school Maestro Friday during the day to see if her preparing him would make it easier for me to get the strides and changes. Well she had a good ride and said he was brave to all the show fences and got some nice clean changes and the strides. I got on Friday evening to do a quick school and pony said he was spent. So I jumped the course once with adds and we did a little exercise to work on changes using some poles to help me with my line since someone likes to dive. For some reason I can get changes on the flat but ask me to do it after fences and I was struggling – but more on that shortly.

Saturday it was nice enough outside to warm up in a schooling ring so we did that. Maestro was loving being out of the indoor and felt great. I landed after my first fence in the schooling ring, straightened him out, then rode forward to a perfect change. Oh! I realized that due to the shorter distance from jump to corner indoors I was spending so much time straightening (seriously diving drives me nuts) I was underpowered. So at least the rest of the weekend involved several good changes and some that were just slightly late behind versus the sometimes circle hop skip thing we had been doing occassionally.

So we go in the ring and I’m having a great warm up round, we get down the third line and we are heading towards the corner when suddenly…

Can’t blame Maestro for finding that scary, but he did go right back to work acting like nothing had happened which was awesome. Bonus is if you listen with sound you can hear my trainer and the whole situation just makes me laugh every time I watch it.

After that we had a hunter round where I got the strides in the outside lines but failed on the diagonal headed towards boogeyman corner. No big deal. Next was an equitation trip where I swear I had the perfect round going with a great rollback and a nice long run to the oxer out of a line – until I failed to ride my horse properly to the LAST fence and we had a stop because you know he didn’t really want to jump the standard. Circled around and popped over that no issue. Ooops. Our last over fences class of the day was a medal. It was a decent round but not particularly where I shine in a medal since it was literally jumping the oxer out of a line then doing a hunter course. Four people get to test and we held fourth until the last person went and we got dropped to fifth.

Saturday night I watched the two videos my husband took from the day and decided that I was just holding him too much in the name of keeping him straight and organized, essentially micromanaging him. Sunday we warmed up inside since it had gotten cold and windy so we got to warm up down one of the lines. The first time through I added but when we got to go a second time I told myself I needed to do the steps. So we did. Par for us, in the warm up class we got the strides in the outside lines coming home but I failed to get it on the diagonal going away (other diagonal was a single). This continued in my first hunter course since someone decided to get a little gate sour and hop up and down a couple strides before the in. In our last hunter course though I was determined to make it happen and we got the strides down that line even while he pooped, woo hoo! Oh and…

First blue ribbon with the baby boy in the books!

We finished it off with a hunter flat. He still starts out a bit concerned and thus doesn’t reach much until we go the second direction usually so we didn’t place that well. He just needs more time in the ring to get used to things like horses coming up on us and all the distractions.

I am still just so proud of this horse and myself. He has such a great attitude and doesn’t hold my mistakes against me. I’m learning to trust him because as my trainer said getting him down the lines right now takes a bit of a leap of faith for me. After so many years on Stampede I worry that we aren’t going to make it. Stampede always got there easy but Maestro you need to be flowing forward.

I’m proud to say also that we jumped this past Tuesday (first time since the show) and I got my strides in all the lines on the first try (including on the course where my first line was away from home!) and we only had one change where we were more than a stride late behind.

Just a couple weeks until our next show. I’m looking forward to finishing off tax season and then having some more fun in the ring!