Poor little fella has gotten spoiled doing eventing where we only have a handful or so of people warming up at the same time for dressage (and the rings are usually quite large providing plenty of space to maneuver around) or show jumping (which much of the time is in a wide open jump field allowing us plenty of freedom to avoid/be avoided by others). Well let me tell you right now, he wasn't really nervous about being indoors even though I'm sure it was a lot to look at because the warm-up ring is lined with stalls so there is a lot going on right over the railing. However, he was super anxious about having 20-25 horses and ponies all cantering every direction and weaving in and out of lines around the jump standards. Add to that the fact that other people were cutting in front of him to jumps and landing directly on his ass after jumps and it made for a rather shocking experience. I got him around everything (not that it's ever the jumps that are the problem) but the environment was just completely overwhelming. If we go back for anymore of these shows we'll forgo schooling ahead of time. It was a good learning experience for him, but I think he'll be much more relaxed if we avoid the chaos of the schooling ring.
So we were in the first 3 classes, 2 hunter over fences courses at 2'3" and the division hack class. He was still pretty on edge for his first course, I didn't want to just hang on his mouth but he wasn't listening to my half halts very well (a theme that got progressively worse throughout the day) so it was difficult to keep him from rushing through the whole thing. We essentially did the hunter round at jumper pace. I was happy that he got most of his lead changes though and we got half-way decent distances to most of his fences. That single-diagonal we kept getting at long but I think a lot of our problem there was because he wasn't listening well so I just didn't have the adjustibility with him in that state of mind.
We walked around during a couple other people's trips then went back in for our second trip. I honestly couldn't tell you if it was better or worse then the first. He was a little bit less quick but worse about listening to my half halts. We completely missed the lead from the near outside line to the diagonal single because he was so strong I couldn't get him back to a trot for a simple change so, oh well. Again it was really quick and probably looked completely out of control, but honestly I'd still rather try and bring him down to a calm state of mind than have to beat him around the course like I would have to with Boo. Mainly he just needs miles and experiences like this so that he won't feel so nervous in the first place, because for Reily, his first reaction when he gets nervous is to get this huge stride and go quick. In time that'll all be old news and then he'll be back to his wonderful self.
Since we had over an hour before our hack class (there were something like 23 people in each of the o/f classes!) I took him down to the outdoor schooling ring behind the East Complex and we worked on some dressage and transitions to try and burn a little energy and also get him listening to me better. He was still a bit less responsive than I would have liked, but was better now that we had some peace and quiet (thankfully we were the only ones in the ring). He's still fuzzy and probably was 1 of 5 horses total at the show who wasn't clipped and got rather sweaty since the weather was exceptionally nice out (near high of 70 in January!) so I took him back to the trailer and rubbed him down with towels and pulled off his tack so he could take a breather for a while before we had to tack back up for the flat class.
The hack was also his first ever flat class. I've never had a reason to enter him in a hack before because we've been doing all eventing and jumpers. Since there were 20 horses in our class they split the hack, thank goodness, into 2 groups. We ended up in the second group. My only real concern in the hack was to keep him from a) thinking it was a race once we started cantering, and b) not allowing him to push through my leg aids and duck out of the ring because through both o/f trips he almost scooted out the gap at least once during each round. He had pretty decent walk-canter transitions considering how up he was, but since he was barely listening to my half halts I kept having to ask stronger and we broke a couple times. That was fine by me because I would much rather he listen to my aids and break gait than the other way around. We blew his canter lead after breaking at one point but by the time I almost had him under control to try a simple change they called for us to trot, bummer. Going to the right he was a little better at the canter simply because I was pushing him as close to the rail and as deep in the corners as I could get him so that he'd have to slow down some. I couldn't care less about him getting any ribbons but I did want him to learn from the experience or otherwise it was a waste to put him through it. He was pretty strung the whole time but when we finished and I gave him some rein he took it and walked calmly along, so I feel like that's at least a bit of improvement. I was so glad to get out of there! It felt like my arms were gonna fall off by the end.
The sweetest thing that happened all day though was this. The boyfriend held Reily for me outside the barn while I ran into the bathroom and when I was washing my hands some woman at the sink sort of did a double take and stared at me real hard (felt really awkward at first because I was like, "oh man, why's she judging me, I'm just trying to wash my hands!") then pointed at me and said, "You just rode in the 2'3" division right?" I shook my head and said yeah, then she was like, "You rode BEAUTIFULLY! He did not look easy and you handled him beautifully! Really!" I was just shocked because for one thing it felt like anything but beautiful and for another I was so flabbergasted that someone was actually watching us and caring enough to remember us. I felt very grateful for her compliment and I told her it was his first time indoors and his first hunter show so it was a little overwhelming since we're really eventers and she just smiled and said, "Well you did a great job with him". What a nice woman! She totally made my day!!
After our classes we took a nice, super long walk around the grounds. I was hoping to walk him around in the coliseum but there was a dog agility meet in there so that was a no go. Instead we walked around past all of the out door rings, up the hill to the dressage arenas and all the way out to the cross country course. The boyfriend decided to go back to the truck and take a nap while Reily and I hacked out across the XC course. I walked and trotted him through the tiny puddle of water that was left in the water jump and we hopped over a few little things out on the course, but nothing serious. He was still bursting with energy so I let him canter back, which turned into a gallop. We walked across the top of the hill and back to the dressage rings and I let him canter some more in one of the big schooling rings. When he finally decided he was done we took a nice, long, meandering walk winding through the barns and parking lots until we got back to the trailer. He was happy to munch his hay while I took care of him but when we went to the barns to hose him off (it had gotten hot by this point) he was a little brat about going in the wash stall. He walked in just fine, was standing there and when I reached through the opening to turn the water on he up and decided to just drag me back out. Then he wouldn't go back in. I don't know what the deal was but it was pretty rude and particularly odd behavior for him. We ended up walking into the adjacent wash stall instead. Once I got him scraped and towel dried we got him loaded up and headed home.
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