Our First Reserve!

Well our last show had it's ups and downs. It was an extremely unorganized show. They kept changing the order of the divisions with out making any announcements and it was just about impossible to find someone working at the rings to ask about the order. If I had not been sitting at my ring and keeping an eye on what was going on I probably would have missed my division. So we ended up waiting around for almost 2 hours and then having to rush to get ready and warm up since they went from having two more divisions until ours to doing ours immediately. Satin does not enjoy the whole waiting around forever thing. Luckily we were able to distract her with grass up until the time we had to tack up, but by then she had had about enough of this show and decided the fastest way to be done was to go really fast. We had about 15-20 minutes to warm up both on the flat and over fences so that did not give me much time to try and calm her down. She entered the ring the way she used to enter the barrel ring...hopping up and down. Her first course was okay. The pace was a bit quicker than I would have liked, but she was consistent all the way around and got all of her leads and distances. She ended up winning this class. The other two courses were a complete mess. She was extremely worked up and was very quick in one line than I would get her back for the next and then she would go even faster. In the last course I had to pull her up before the first line. She decided to gallop instead of canter down the rail on our way to the first line so I had to get her attention back. There were only three in the jumping so of course she got third in the last two courses after the superman performance. She was still keyed up and muscley in the flat, but I had a few minutes to try and get her head back. Luckily I was able to get a calmer trot and establish the walk before the class began. Her trot started strong and with her head up, after a few minutes of half halting I was able to get her nicer trot that we had been working on at home. It took a bit longer to the right to get this and I was afraid she would break to the canter, but luckily I was able to hold her. The canter was okay. She did not give me much in the way of a head set, but the pace was pretty nice, though I did have to work for it. Our transitions down to the walk were delayed, since she was strong it took me more time than usual to get her settled. The flat had four and she ended up pinning 2nd so that was good. Despite her hyperactivity we ended up reserve for the division, so this was our first reserve as hunters :)