Showing Star

Sometime back in June, I got it in my head that I wanted to show Star in a couple of the schooling shows that my barn hosts.  The organizer of the shows had decided to add two evening shows during the week in addition to the regular weekend shows.  I had signed Gemma and Star up for those regular shows, but I thought it might be fun if Star and I did the week night shows.  It was just two shows, and I'd be at the barn anyway, so why not do the shows?

The first show was scheduled for early July and as the day of the show approached, I remembered why I don't like showing.  I get anxious about remembering the test and all sorts of other little things.  And that isn't really any fun.  And I wondered what the hell I was thinking to have signed myself up for such torture.  (I go through this process literally every time I sign up for a show...you would think I would have learned by now, but all evidence suggests that I am a slow learner when it comes to horse stuff.)

The universe smiled on me, though, and the show ended up being cancelled because of some storms in the area.  I breathed a sigh of relief and unequivocally ignored the fact that I was scheduled to show again in a month, at the beginning of August.

A few days before the August show, I once again started feeling my anxiety start to rise, even as I reminded myself that I would be showing Star.  Star is hyper-dependable, and as far as I know, is incapable of bucking, rearing, spooking, or any other behavior that could be remotely challenging to handle.  The test was ridiculously easy and required only the most basic skills.  On the other hand, I hadn't actually ridden Star that much, and I lacked a little confidence in my ability to show a horse that I hadn't spent years riding several times a week.

The day of the show finally arrived, and I was horrified to discover that we would only be using the standard dressage arena.  Normally, the show uses the small size arena for introductory level tests and the standard size for the rest of the levels.  But because the show was small, and only running for about three hours, the organizer wanted to keep things simple.  Which was totally understandable.  Except I wasn't sure how Star would do if we had to add a lot more trotting to the test; we'd only practiced the test with the small arena.  The long side of the arena now looked like it stretched forever.

When I rode Star, I typically only rode her for 20-25 minutes.  It has been hot and humid and we are really just working on basic walk and trot, with a very little canter.  She is 24 years old and I'm not a lightweight rider, so I felt like I should stick to the minimum amount of effort.  So I had spent a lot more time working on transitions than just trotting around for minutes at a time.

I decided to keep our warm-up as brief as possible, and I spent about 15 minutes mostly walking and trotting, with a few canter transitions thrown in.  Star seemed energetic enough, but I still worried that maybe I was asking too much.

When it was time for our test, I was strategic about how I set us up to start to avoid any extra trotting.  I checked in with the judge just a smidge early so I could start walking down the long side to get close to the entrance before the bell rang to let us know the judge was ready for us to start.  That way I could keep the extra trotting to get into the arena to a minimum.  I kept Star near the entrance until I heard the bell, and then I asked her to start trotting.

As we turned to enter the arena to come down the center line, I was surprised to find that Star had been hiding another gear to her trot!  She blasted down the center line like she was on fire and it was good that the test didn't call for a halt at the beginning, or we might have missed it!

Unbelievably, this little mare seemed to know exactly what was going on (even though she has only been shown in one other dressage show by Gemma), and she was very energetic.  So energetic, that she tried to turn one of our trot half-circles into a canter circle!  I found myself laughing at her exuberance, and aside from the attempts at canter, she did pretty much a perfect test in terms of listening to my requests and performing movements and transitions accurately.

We ended up with a really respectable score of 66.818% in the Western Dressage Intro Test 1, which ended up being the second highest score of the show.  We were penalized because of the canter, of course, but the judge gave us really nice comments, and I was so pleased with how Star did.  I realized I had seriously underestimated her, and I'm so glad I had the opportunity to ride her.

Star is powering up the center line!

Free walk

This halt was darn near perfect, and it earned us an 8.

For the sake of my nerves, I think I'm going to take a break from showing for another couple of years, but Star was a wonderful partner.  And I think I'm going to start asking her for a little more during our rides, because she demonstrated that age is just a number, and she still has a lot of life in her!