Alphabet Soup: Show Recap 8/26

OH MY GOSH YOU GUYS we did the thing, we showed at First level at a rated show in very soupy conditions and my pony tried her heart out.

We looked pretty good doing it too :) Still a little shocked by that actually since I'm the queen of crazy faces and awkward outfits.

Somehow (still not sure how) we ended up being able to load, trailer to the show grounds, warm up, ride our test, and load to head home in a break in the rain. As soon as we left the show grounds it started raining again which was fine by me.

I'm pretty sure now that my unicorn (pooping rainbows) socks and Stubborn Together bracelet are lucky and my pink toes just kicked it up the extra notch we needed today ;)

Katai loaded first try, no hysterics, (since the trailer was completely open like a stock trailer) and we headed out. At the grounds she was pretty good but just a few minutes in started rearing which caused the show secretary to tell me that if she didn't quit I needed to get her a stall. I wasn't against it but I'm not sure it would have helped much beyond containing her. Mostly it just upped my stress level and I felt so bad that we caused her to need to give us a talking to. I untied her and took her to graze over near the ring we'd be riding in.

I was watching the warm up and keeping an eye on how things were going. It was soupy and at first I wanted to try it out to make sure I could actually ride in the equally soupy ring but after seeing multiple horses slipping around I changed my mind. L was showing in the same space and ended up warming up in this driveway area near a building and advised me to do the same.

Warmup

I also took the time to walk her through a few puddles. It's not like she doesn't do that in her pen but I've probably only ridden her in a wet arena once in her life and that's when meltdowns were a common thing so I'm not sure I schooled her through puddles at all.

In this part of the show grounds she was pretty relaxed and quiet. We ended up doing a pretty short warmup and then just walking around and standing a bit. When I first rode her into the arena for First Level test 1 it was pretty clear it was going to be tough to get a good test. She stopped dead at the first puddle and I needed to pony club kick her forward. I took advantage of the chance to walk/trot/canter (although the canter took a few pony club kicks to get going and was so rough) around the ring and then let the judge know I was ready. 

I knew I was doing a lot of bending and being busier with my hands than I like and she was trying to get tense and braced. She's definitely behind the vertical in a lot of these pictures but we're not riding that way at home and Jane isn't too concerned about it. It's just the next thing we need to deal with.

Little on the forehand but MOVING IN THE MUD!!!

So much freer in the shoulder than she was!

We got stretch!!!!

BTV but more lifted in front

We got medium walk and free walk without breaking to trot!!
She thought about it but I shut it down and she listened.

Little tight but we're cantering!

I'm definitely tight through my elbows here so even more btv

The hock action was certainly improved ;)

Love my face here as I was going OH SHIT. There was a
HUGE puddle right along the long side in the middle of
where we needed to do our canter lengthening.
It was either jump over it or go around it at that point for Katai

#notaneventer so I was very thankful when she sort of went around it

Then she was back to business (Darn right toe still didn't want to behave)
and btv (darn elbows)

#actuallygotalengthening Jane was squealing about this one after :)
This is sort of a weird angle but you can see how much higher her front leg is!

Finally, we nailed the halt :)

 In the end we had a few mistakes. She broke to canter in the first lengthening (at least that's a good mistake as far as mistakes go), she broke to trot in our second 15 meter canter circle and then picked up the wrong lead so I needed to shut it down and try again, and then went around the puddle. Not completely a mistake but almost off course. I also had a couple of sloppy corners. I was trying not to upset her or pick a fight over anything especially with the mud.

My judge was great and fair with the conditions and the mistake that was purely condition related (going around the puddle) didn't reduce our score much.

In the end.

Another blue and some more glassware

We're 3 for 3 and while it's awesome and encouraging to win these classes this one was only two people and the other rider was a junior :) However, I did get a really great score of 64.074%!!! If this weren't opportunity that would have been my first Bronze Medal score but/and also certainly not competitive enough for first place. However, with that score at this show, I'm even more confident that we can get our 1st level Bronze scores next year!

Katai got STUFFED FULL of all the treats after since this time I'd remembered to have some in my pocket. After getting her untacked, I walked her around and let her graze and she was really pretty good despite turning into a pony kite a few times. We finally loaded her (she walked right on again) and then went to pick up my tests.

That first halt seems to kill us every time

8 for the final halt and 7.5 for the lengthening!!!!
I'm also happy with 7 for Rider's position despite me feeling floppy with all
the corrections I was needing to give to keep her going the right direction at the right speed haha.

Jane's comment was "yeah for a 70%+, otherwise that's 2nd level".
I love how sassy and protective she is of her students :)
Also, everyone always thinks Katai is a boy...

We had an uneventful ride home with lots of rainy dressage show stories and then I got Katai unloaded, cleaned the trailer and let her roll in the arena a few times before I got her mostly sprayed off. She got even more treats, granola bars this time, and hay and was looking better and less stressed by the time I left.

I'm so so so pleased with how this went. I had almost thought about not braiding because I was just meh about dealing with it in the rain but I'm so glad I did and so glad that I had my friend M there to take all the amazing riding photos. She's not a professional photographer but she's got an AMAZING eye and camera and because she also rides dressage she knows which pictures to take when. It's so incredible to have these pictures and so amazing to have her there to support me. She was really shocked with how much we've improved (so am I) and it was nice to have someone who's seen Katai at her worst (we boarded together right after I left J's) notice how much different she looks.

Now, of course, that this went so well and it was my last planned show I'm already looking forward to next year and to a winter of pushing both of us for the next step. This was certainly even better than the way I hoped to end our 2017 show season :)

Relationships

When I read Emma's post and some of the responses to it I knew that I wanted to do a post about this. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot both from the perspective of what I need and how Katai matches that and from the perspective of what I would do differently “next time”.

However, I sat down to type this up and I struggled. I’ve drafted something at least 3-4 times now but it never really captured how I honestly feel about this and that is that Katai is perfect.

Sure I can wish and dream for something “better”, after all the grass is always greener, but ultimately Katai is the perfect horse for me which made this either the longest post or the shortest post. Instead I’ve decided to share a little about how I got here.

 When I chose Katai I was in a very different place. I had found early in life what my limit was and unfortunately ended up with a lot of fear thanks to my first horse. I had conquered maybe 70% of that fear by 2012 when I got my first pony as an adult. Myshla was an incredible pony who was calm, quiet, cute, cuddly, and nearly a perfect kids pony. The only issue is that she was very forward and hadn’t been very well trained so she wasn’t very responsive to halts or half halts which made her feel a bit like a run away. The fact that she was a run away in the body of a small pony/teddy bear made it fun for me to work with her instead of scary.

When I first got her I was finally putting aside peer pressure and getting what I wanted which was a pony. She was the first horse I had after Sora and Sora had taken me on a journey that was way off the beaten path. In many ways Myshla helped me find my way back to riding dressage but even though she did that for me I quickly realized that she wasn’t going to be comfortable as my dressage pony, it just wasn’t her thing and she wasn’t built for it. She was such a perfect kids pony that I decided to find her a home with a kid and find myself a different pony.

 Now (while I wouldn’t change this for the world since it would have meant not finding Katai) I maybe would have done things differently but it felt important to have a dressage pony prospect asap. So with my very tiny budget I started looking. I found Katai’s ad but kept convincing myself to skip over it. I’d had my fill of green horses with Sora and Katai was a bit shorter and possibly not as athletic as I wanted. Now I maybe would have kept Myshla for longer and saved up some additional funds but at that time I decided to go check out Katai.

That’s when something really weird happened, I went to see her and didn’t fall in love with her. I actually felt sort of meh about her and while her size felt better than I thought it would (she was at least a couple inches taller than Myshla) and I liked her brain she was also very resistant, scared, reluctant to be caught or handled, and pretty much feral. Even then I had a pretty good picture of my limits and I just wasn’t confident that I’d be able to successfully train her. I still bought her, or actually traded for her, and after one failure and multiple hours got her on the trailer and home where she proceeded to completely ignore all of the electric fencing and escape to the neighbors.

The first two years where really, really tough and I thought a lot about giving up. Ultimately what made me keep her was that there wasn’t going to be a market for a young, untrained pony and I still saw so much potential in her. My budget was still very low at that point so hiring a professional just wasn’t an option. Eventually I got through the worst of it and was able to move her to a dressage barn (with J) which felt like the right track. Now if I could go back and change anything it would just be to not ever bring her to that barn or take lessons on her with J. I learned from J but it caused issues with Katai that we’re still dealing with to this day. Things went backwards for a bit and then we started to make progress again.

Overall it was another 2 years of struggle before things really started to improve significantly with Jane (plus Katai hit that magical age of 8 which I’m sure helped). However, after 4.5 years of blood, sweat, and tears I can say that my pony is perfect for me.

She’s still tricky, she’s still very forward, still gets tense, still frustrates me, still has meltdowns about things that just shouldn’t be a big deal after 4.5 years but I adore her and she’s good for me. Even though I can think/dream about what’s next and I’m sure Katai won’t be my last pony, I also can’t imagine finding any horse or pony that I would enjoy more than I’m enjoying Katai. Plus, she's still more talented at this dressage thing than I am and I'm still learning from her so it doesn't make sense to look elsewhere even if I weren't completely in love with her.

She’s just the perfect mix of bold, funny, spicy, forward, lazy, powerful, intelligent, cute, naughty for me to have fun and feel challenged but not ever feel scared. She also doesn’t have huge movement that makes me feel like I need to spend tons of hours at the gym. I work out to be a better rider for her, but it’s not another full time job. I never climb on her and wonder if she’s going to be naughty but I’m also not bored when I ride and she always challenges me in a good way. I just can't imagine a better pony for me :)

Thankful

The things I am thankful for this holiday season;

First and foremost friends. Lisa, the person that I rented from for while, not only has been extremely supportive this week (and always) but also knew that my family wasn't available today on Thanksgiving so she invited me to her family's Thanksgiving meal. She also gave me two pairs of winter breeches which is soooo wonderful since I have been freezing when riding but just couldn't afford winter breeches.

Secondly I'm thankful for a good job, a clean place to live, and a working car :-)

I am also extremely thankful for a wonderful barn and boarding situation which is easily the best I have had so far. I know that my pony is being well cared for and I adore the facilities.

Finally, for now, I am thankful for my wonderful pony and buddy Katai and everything that she does for me every day.