Show Week!

Today we start show week. Satin and I have our first show of the season this Sunday so we are coming down the to the wire. I am very intense about my show week filling it with prep and practice. Though Satin has been schooling so well lately and we had such a good day at Curry last week I am not as crazed about prepping as I usually am. I am feeling much more calm and confident, though lets see if that holds out til Sunday. Usually this disgusting, rainy weather would annoy me much more than usual on show week by disturbing my practice time and creating lots of mud making it hard to keep the pony clean. But this time I am no more bothered by the rain than the normal and just checked the weather to see we have a lovely forecast for the rest of the week and over the weekend. There will be showers tomorrow only in the morning then it will be sunny and 60 and the rest of the week will be high 60s-low 70s with Sunday being sunny and 77! So after tomorrow morning we will have a beautiful show week and a gorgeous show day.

For those of you that don't know at this local show series I have been attending for the past few years I always do the pleasure division which include, horsemanship with pattern, western pleasure, command, and trail. This year they brought back their speed division so I will also be competing in barrels, poles, and keyhole. The speed is first which I am hoping will make her a little tired and slow her down for the pleasure in the afternoon rather than have the opposite effect. We will see what happens Sunday.

Anyway so on Wednesday I have a lesson with R which will give me more confidence for the show to have her advise before we go. She is a very calming influence. I will also on my own be practicing all the stuff for my pleasure division including transitions, lope and jog one handed (I have been lazy riding 2 handed lately), sidepassing, spins (only slow ones are required), lead changes (not always required but good practice), counter canter (usually seen in command), etc. I will also probably have one day of games practice as well. I hope to get my clipping done Thursday or Friday so I have less to do Saturday. It won't be too bad since I did a lot of clipping earlier this month, so just have to do cleanup. Saturday is the big final prep day. I will be of course riding then bathing and grooming (since hopefully clipping will be done), and I will have tack to clean. I am going to try and get an early start on this because we have 6 or 7 new boarders coming that day as well from a barn down the street that is is changing ownership. This will make prep day even crazier than normal so I hope to get an early start.

So to wrap up the riding log of last week, on Wednesday we had a schooling session in the ring. Satin's jog and lope were very nice and did some work one handed. Her transitions were clean and perfect both one and two handed. We did some sidepassing which was nice as well as counter canter which she did nicely as well. I had to go to 2 hands to ask for it but she picked it up and held it as long as I asked without going at full speed. Thursday we did some schooling again and her jog and lope were very nice. We also did some figure eights with simple changes which were perfect and ended with quarter turns. Friday K and I rode Satin and Smokey bareback and jumped. Satin has been jumping very nice. She has stayed quiet and jumped at normal heights instead of rushing through and jumping everything huge. We jumped crossrails, boards, gates, and flowerboxes. Jumping her bareback used to be especially painful due to her bony spine and the fact she would rush and overjump, but on Thursday it was a pleasure. K then got on because she wanted to jump her over the barrels set on their sides. Since she was jumping lazy that day and sometimes hangs her feet I figured she would trip or hit the barrel, plus it was wider than anything else she had jumped, but K insisted on trying it so I told her go right ahead. She made it over but it was quite funny to watch. Satin jumped it like a bunny going way up then down since she had not jumped it before and was unsure how to handle it. She did it a little better the second time but still looked like a bunny of a deer hopping over it. K did a few other jumps with her which she did nicely. I rode Smokey for a bit and did a few jumps with him. I had not been on him in a while since last year at this time I was riding him regularly while K was in her cast after fracturing her ankle. He is a nice horse and fun to ride, very smooth and comfortable.

Saturday I gave Satin a well deserved day off and rode Patty around bareback after returning from a fair at my school. I also rode Patty bareback Friday night when L arrived to keep her company. She was good both times as usual and is getting better with her right lead which I used to have to fight her to give. Yesterday K and I rode Satin and Jewel bareback. We jus did a quick 20 minute ride walk, trot, canter since it was drizzling and had been rainign on and off all day. Plus, we were short on time as we had spent the greater part of the day with my friends from HFF at breakfast than at her farm. Both mares were good as usual. Today it is raining again and all the horses got their spring shots so Satin will get the day off again and start into show week prep tomorrow. Today I will go over and give her a really good grooming to get all that hair off we still have left over from winter.

I also have a new project. I may have mentioned my friend D bought another horse for her daughters last year. She is a QH and bred to death for reining. D asked me for help with her as she was not sure how best to ride a western horse since both her daughters and herself ride english. I went over once or twice and enjoyed the young mare who sidepassed, spun, and rollbacked quite nicely. I gave them some tips on the best ways to ride her and helped them try the reining moves. D had asked me to begin working with her younger daughter and the mare (peppy) on western pleasure as the daughter wants to show that in our local show series. We have not had a chance to do that yet as our schedules keep conflicting, but we have time so we will work it out. Her older daughter rides the mare english but keeps her slow and has started her over crossrails which she is doing well at. The older daughter contacted me yesterday asking if I could come and work with her and peppy on reining as she shows 4H and would like to do at the 4H shows. So I will probably start going over this week and working on that which will be fun. I will let you guys know how it goes.

In other news this is the last week of classes! yay! Unfortunately it will be filled with studying and papers, but the end is near. After that I have to come in 3 more times for exams so I am officially done May 12. This summer I will be interning at Horse News which I think I mentioned, but now its official!