Saturday was a big day. We took Otoelene to a horse show for Sadie to show. This is the same show she went to last month but not with Otoelene. Otoelene was a little lame, but I had given her some pain meds the night before and morning of the show. It was enough to get though the few classes she was entering. I was even able to enjoy riding her around in the arena for about 30 minutes before the show started.
This time Allie, Mike, Virginia and Joe all came too. Unlike me at a show, both Allie and Sadie wanted to eat right before the stick horse class.
Isabelle wasn’t there but Sadie showed Allie what to do.
Allie’s horse had a little bucking fit, but she stayed on.
And then the big surprise! Allie’s third time on a horse was at the show. She was begging so much to ride that Virginia decided that she could do the lead line and Sadie would do the judged lead line. During Allie’s class, I lead and Virginia walked next to her. Allie kept telling Virginia to “get out of here”.
Allie was very excited about her ribbon.
Then it was Sadie’s turn for the judged lead line.
I let her hold the reins and she was able to stop and turn Otoelene pretty much by herself.
She did great and ended up 2nd out of 3. The judge told her she needed to work on keeping her heels down.
After a quick tack change Sadie went back in for Juvenile Stock Horse Halter.
I didn’t even tell her to stand straight, she just did that on her own.
We had a disappointing 4th place finish. Virginia thought the judge placed the class more on showmanship than conformation. But it really didn’t matter to Sadie at all.
She was already making plans for the next show.
Then there was more eating back at the trailer before we loaded up to come home.
It must have been a tiring morning, because they both fell asleep on the way back to the house.
Back at the house, Sadie wanted to put on my fancy cowgirl shirt. It was mine when I was a little girl. Sadie thinks she will be able to where it to the show next year.
But for now, it was good to have while cuddling bunnies.
Earlier this year J declared this to be "The Summer of Brother." Therefore, we have been trying to all the riding that we can with him. This weekend was our horse club's last show of the year. There were multiple other horse events close by so we were worried that there wouldn't be much of a turnout for our show. So Brother went to try to fill up some classes.
It was a small show. I entered 3 classes. We placed 2nd in Western Go As You Please out of six. Brother had a bad moment where he threw his head straight up when a horse was behind him. He absolutely hates horses behind him which is quite a handicap at a horse show. It's no fun on a trail ride either but easier to deal with.
Our next class was Jr. Horse Go As You Please. And seeing as we were the only one in the class we came away with the blue ribbon. And because there were no horses behind him he did perfect.
Then came our riding for charity class with 7 entries. He totally lost it when the walking horse flew by and then tried to catch up to it. We ended up 4th. Only his 2nd show this year, he was calmer outside the ring and I got some good riding in. We all got home in one piece so another successful outing. Now J wants to continue on with "The Autumn of Brother."
Our local saddle club had its first show of the year Saturday. Since I had to be there anyway I went ahead and took a couple of horses with me. E had just had her wisdom teeth out and didn't think she should be riding and V was helping a friend photograph a wedding so it was just me and J.
I showed Brother in the Western Pleasure classes and got a 1st, 3rd and 5th. He had moments of brilliance but those were usually outside the ring. Inside the ring he would get tense and speed up when other horses passed or rode up on his tail. I think he is still growing too. I measured him the other day and he is 1/2 inch shy of 16 hands.
I took Otoelene and showed her in the Ranch Pleasure classes. She got 3rd, 4th and 5th.
I think these were the most popular classes of the day. Otoelene did ok except for the pattern class where she was a total embarrassment. There were 4 poles in the middle that we were suppose to side pass then walk over. She acted like she had never seen a pole before in her entire life and refused to side pass then she hit one and spooked herself. I finally got her to walk over them. I'm going to be trying to forget that one for a long time.
The trainer with the other mustang came and carried the flag at the start of the show. She was amazing. She also competed in the ranch pleasure and trail classes and placed in everything. The horse is very nice and the trainer is fearless.
Then this morning I took Hank for a ride. I haven't ridden him in forever and thought he might like a trip out of the field.
I went on a ride around the farm to inspect my thistle spraying. I have obviously missed several. You can see the wilted ones next to the bright green ones. It is very hard to keep up with which ones have been sprayed. I lose my place when I turn around to make another pass. Sometimes I think, remember that patch of 3 together and that's where I left off. Then I get turned back around and guess what, there are about a 100 patches of 3 together, and they all look alike. So after a few days when they start to wilt I go back and spray more.
We also checked on the cattle and had a very pleasant ride.
Our last day started at 8:45 in Waldron Arena with Western Pleasure 2nd go. True to form, Pep trotted in, got 1/2 way around then stopped to poop.
Once again, the competition was great. Usually there is something crazy going on but not this time, everyone was very solid.
Pep was doing her reining horse impression at the lope. She looked beautiful, just way too fast. Had she been able to do sliding stops, faster spins and flying lead changes she would have cleaned up in the reining classes. As it was, she moved up to 5th in pleasure. But there were a lot of other switches. 3rd yesterday went to 9th and 10th yesterday moved to 3rd. Pep managed to beat last years champion that was also high point POA for the east coast. Since the finals were all about the points, we had to wait until they were posted. And yes, she made it to the Classic.
Then it was over to the finals in trail class.
Pep certainly had her game face on.
She really did a great job especially considering how poorly most of the ones that went before her did. We even overheard the judge comment that he had a $60,000 horse that would have trouble with this pattern. That elicited quite a bit of discussion among us as to either his training ability or true value of the horse if it couldn't do a 4-H trail class. With Pep unfortunately, that one step out of the box cost her 2 placings. She ended up 4th out of 45 but was oh so close to 2nd. Still, this was her highest placing in trail ever.
Aunt L had come back to watch day 2 of showing. Pretty sure they were just reliving the trail class.
In Horsemanship, E had an exceptional pattern. I was hopeful for at least 3rd to make the classic but she ended up 4th again. Still, we couldn't have asked any better from Pep.
The Western Pleasure Classic started about 8 pm. You would have thought that after 12 hours of showing that Pep would have been just a little tired. Maybe she thought if she just went faster she would be done sooner. Whatever the reason, she was in a race, except when she stopped to poop. 6th place
I know E was glad of her decision to not take Brother but Pep her last year. Pep stayed sound and gave it her all. It is so sad for me though, this last show. When I was E's age and had my last show in 4-H I was sad too, but it didn't seem that final. When you're young there is so much ahead, so much to look forward to. But now that I'm older, it just makes me sad thinking this was it, the last one.
One last quote from E I forgot yesterday in describing how she feels taking Pep through the Working Western Pattern, "Everyone else seem so calm but with Pep, it's a chaotic whirlwind of nonsense."
E's first day of showing started early with getting ready for showmanship. Pep's scraggly mane took awhile to get under control, but E managed a fine job.
Then it was off to Waldron Arena to perform the pattern she had practiced so will just the previous evening.
I think the theme for today is, "fixed old problems but develop new ones."
Pep has always been a good trotter but has issues with standing still in this arena and backing. So true to our new theme, she broke twice trotting but did everything else fine. E got an ok score but not high enough for top 10.
Grandma and Aunt L came to see the show too. There was a little down time where J and Grandma read the paper.
E and I walked around and watched some dressage.
Then it was time for Western Pleasure Pony, Sr Rider 1st go.
Pep looked better than she had in a long time. Unfortunately for western pleasure Pep looking good means she is going too fast.
There were 10 in the class and this was by far the best competition E has every had in this division. She ended up 6th. Only the top 5 average over 2 classes make it to the finals, so E was a little depressed about that. She'd have to do better tomorrow.
Pep did sail through the trail preliminary. E said she thought Pep probably could have done it by herself. Se just had a click of her back hoof on the standard as she backed to latch the gate.
And no problem on the back through. I knew the judge and she assured me E would have no problem making the finals.
Grandma got close enough to congratulate E (but not Pep)
Then came Working Western. E had a high number so the class was about 1/2 over when I went to check her in. SHE WASN'T ON THE LIST!! I was told to go to the show office to check with them. They didn't have her either even though she was in the printed program, albeit with Brother instead of Pep since she had made that change Sept 1. They finally got her added but that put her at the end of the class so more time for Pep to stand around.
The hard part here was the counter canter (left lead going to the right) at the end which Pep nailed. The easy part was loping a fast the slow circle to the right which Pep failed.
Once again a great lineup and no top 10.
Last thing for the day was $5 to practice for 10 minutes on 7 obstacles (but only 6 stations because one was used as backing through and trotting over) with 5 horses at a time. The others in E's group were all large hunters that kept destroying all of the poles. But E got though everything pretty good and was ready for the trail finals the next day.
We had 2 new girls showing with our county this year. Anna showed in 2 hunter pleasure pony classes. She was 5/10 in the first one and 10/10 (wrong lead) in the second one.
Amelia showed Hunter Pleasure Small Horse. She was reserve (11th) out of 19 in her first class, didn't place in her second, was 9/20 in equitation and in the trail prelim, made it through the gate but couldn't get her horse to back through the poles. They both found out what it takes to show here and I think are looking forward to next year.
I didn't have anything better to do Saturday afternoon so J took me and Brother to a small show about 30 minutes from the house.
You can see how Brother felt about the situation. There were only 3 classes for us and one ended up being a pattern class of sorts.
We started with Go As You Please Western in which he did awesome. (finally got him clean enough to use our new trophy saddle pad we won last year) But we only made it 1/2 way around the ring both directions and I'm not even sure the judge ever looked at us.
But I guess he saw us in the line up and we got 2nd out of 6. We then went in Open Western Pleasure where we almost made it all the way around using all three gates before reversing. He did good here too getting 1st out of 3. But something in the back corner spooked him and he remembered to be scared of it in the last class.
I don't think I usually look like this when I ride, but this is where he spooked and I was trying to get him to lope and stay on the rail. The whole thing was a total disaster. The pattern was all on the rail, jog, walk, lope, extended lope, stop, reverse and repeat. When we got to the extended lope he extended but in the vertical direction. He took off bucking down the entire length of the arena.
My hat blew off and when we came back around he made a beeline for it on the ground only to spook at it and take off bucking again. (should have been wearing my helmet and I wouldn't have to worry about losing it) I only got him stopped by about running him into the fence. One of the spectators said I was the only one in the class not holding onto the saddle horn.
The other two horses in the class were just as terrible and we were called back for rail work. Brother sort of settled down and was respectable and we managed to win the class. The judge said he thought we wanted to do rail work and I said I thought since we were all so bad he just needed to break the tie. The only thing to do after a performance like that is to laugh about it. We won back $26 of the $30 entry fees so it was a fun, cheap evening.
