First Show Aftermath

On Saturday, I took Holden to Scarlet Hill with the ambition to school some dressage and take advantage of the facility's beautiful footing. I feel in part that our dressage has been painfully stunted by overcoming the challenging surface that is our hilly ring. It's nice to ride on a groomed surface and realize that Holden is actually more broke than he feels at home.

Collected canter, anyone?

The session went well - except one annoying thing.. my Thinline pad kept pushing forward out from under the saddle.. Really bizarre. He was good and quiet for most of the ride - he had a serious aversion to this loudly striped pole in the ring that we had to have a discussion about. We fiddled around, did some W/T/C and then walked out to the cross country field.

 

 We met up with the gal that used to lease my old TB and had a nice hack around the cross country field.. and she and Mike teamed up to convince (read: coerce) me to enter our first show..... which was tomorrow. "But he hasn't shown before" I objected -- "We haven't even had any professional help in months" I whined "he is barely confirmed in right lead canter" I insisted -- "we can't even maintain consistent contact somedays" I wheezed.. my ostensible self-deprecating comments were swiftly shut down by both parties, with heated insistence. I wasn't expecting such a deluge of support.

"But we aren't ready!"

 So, at 8:30 AM Sunday I woke up, got some extra strong coffee from Starbucks (to steel my conviction I wasn't making a Huge Giant Mistake) and set to braiding Holden. The cool thing about dutch/hooded braids? They take like no time - I was packed up, groomed, braided, and loaded by 10...

Proof that I braided..

 Well, we got there and Holden was really up and alert. It's funny, he doesn't do anything bad.. he just gets so upright and snorty that it sometimes makes me concerned. We walked around for about 45 minutes... just "seeing the sights". The warm up was really busy, so we walked around there until he settled enough to snatch a few bites of grass on our way out.

I still wasn't 100% convinced this wasn't a Huge Giant Mistake, but I was already here. Seriously who decides to attend their first show debut in five years the day before? Not like this type of planning has worked out for me in my life so far.. But we were here, so we tacked up at 11 and I was on him at 11:30. Holden seemed nonplussed once the initial "where-am-I" fear wore off -- we hacked around on a loose rein and did some dallying in W/T/C here and there.

"Is it nap-time yet?"

The funny thing is, he felt way more seasoned than he was. In that chaotic warm up he was with me every step of the way -- soft to the bridle, calm and attentive, he even offered some deep long and low at the canter.. we have trouble doing that at home! I couldn't believe the extraordinary ride he was giving me, and he was so "Ho Hum" about all the screaming children and their pony. He was just "there".

Sadly, I wasn't "there" yet. Our test was just awful, but because of me. I clamped up and stopped riding effectively once I trotted down the center line, which made Holden nervous. Holden's the type that needs a hand-hold (but not chokehold) ride -- and when I withered away he got inverted and stiff -- the judge wrote "out of control" on one of our movements... Whoops. It was kind of like that sudden decline that happens when a pilot steps away from the steering wheel.. Sorry, Holden.

I was really disappointed with how I handled my anxiety - I left the ring and instantly went back to the warm up and tried to get a better ride out of myself. Once again Holden surprised me - with all of my anxiety gone (since the test was done) he picked up the contact on his own and "carried" me - I hadn't had such a good ride out of him before. So the age old adage "it's not you, it's me" is dead on... it's not him, it's me.

I walked away elated though, and couldn't stop smiling for a while. For a horse/rider pair that have had less than four lessons under their belt, I really felt like we accomplished something here: confidence. Hopefully that confidence can develop into competence -- but that's what lessons are for. We tackled a milestone that day, and I'm glad we did it - getting it out of the way has made me feel so much more confident in my abilities as a rider (and Holden's sensibility as a horse) despite a less than stellar test. We got a 48.

At least now we know what to work on. On the 20th, I have a dressage lesson with a local Real Dressage Trainer. Seems like October is the month of firsts for both of us.