Act I: Show Recap 5/29

First off, we survived!! There were some rough moments but I'm pumped to have finished our first show together and nothing will be tougher than this first time.

To start off my show "weekend" I planned to get to the barn around 2:30pm on Saturday, bathe the pony, give her some Quietex, and give her a chance to dry before leaving for the show grounds around 4:30pm. On the drive up there I decided that my only goal for the show was to try to make it as good of experience for Katai as I could and to focus on being in the moment and not worrying about anything.

I started off on the right foot when I got to the barn. L was there and I just set to getting my stuff packed and Katai bathed. She was quite offended that I gave her half the tube of paste but then went to a "drugged out" happy place pretty quick. I gave her a bath with no small amount of my purple whitening shampoo and then put her back in her stall with a cooler to dry out.

While I finished getting my tack packed in my car I heard that there was an issue with the hitch for the trailer that L was borrowing and her SO, who was hauling us with his truck, was trying to find a different ball or hitch. There were several phone calls back and forth and then he found a solution and was on his way. He got to the barn pretty quick and we started loading just before 5:00 right after a downpour went through which was a good indicator of how our Sunday would go.

I have been extremely confident that Katai would load (based on the last few experiences) but of course she decided to prove me wrong. We tried the "nice" way first with some grain bribes but eventually I asked for a dressage whip and we had a bit of a "come to jesus" meeting. It wasn't the way that I wanted to start our weekend but eventually she stepped politely on the trailer. She bounced around while L loaded her very quiet and well behaved 4 year old gelding and then we were off.

At the show ground both horses unloaded well, except that Katai was fairly stressy and sweating from her eyeballs, and we put them in their stalls. Katai started eating right away which I was happy about because normally she won't eat at all if she's stressed. She did some screaming and pacing but mostly she wasn't bad. Since she was still pretty stressy we decided to tack up both horses and lunge/walk them over to the ring and see who they were doing before we decided if/when we were going to ride.

Overnight show stabling

Katai was prancy and a bit bratty, but mainly remembering her manners, on the way over to the ring but L's 4 year old was calm and cool as a cucumber. He was calm and sweet and didn't put a foot wrong so was a good example for my 8 year old :) It was drizzling a bit but luckily not raining, which we had been expecting, which was nice!

Main barn

Amazingly, after a little lunging at a walk/trot in each direction in the warm up ring Katai was doing well enough that I climbed on. She was actually really, really, really good once I was on. She listened, was calm, and I rode her all over the warm up ring and small show ring as well as the large show ring. She didn't balk at anything and didn't have any real spooks. I did a bunch of walk, mostly on a loose rein and a bunch of trot. Both L and I kept it pretty short and sweet since we wanted to end while they were still behaving well.

Actually from Sunday while we were hiding from the rain but it's a good picture of the pony in her stall.

We put them back in their stalls and Katai lost her mind. She was throwing herself against the walls and screaming. She nearly took out her bucket twice and wouldn't eat. We fed her her grain and she quieted down and ate and then we left, hoping that she would do better without us standing outside of her stall. Indeed, as we stood out of her site by our vehicles and talked we only heard a scream or two. L and her SO left to get food and I stuck around a little longer to spy on her a little and make sure that she was getting quieter.

I checked on her again after getting my car organized and she was quiet until she spotted me and then got a bit wild again so I made the call to leave and crossed my fingers that I wouldn't get a call that my pony was still wild and screaming later that night. I got home around 8:45, got a few more things organized and packed for the next day and then crawled into bed around 10:00 with an alarm set to wake up around 5:30am.