8/27/2017 - Schooling Show

(this post is media heavy and word-light- I've got at least 5 posts worth of material as of today, and another 3-4 coming up in the next week... so word-light posts are coming!)

As part of my final prep for the recognized show Labor Day weekend, I went to a schooling show to ride 3-1 one more time.

We had a large block of time where we were waiting for the end of the show so the girl I hauled could ride an extra test.
We took selfies.

I did my new prep: mini-phaser, tack up, warm up. Penn felt good to me in warm up, nice and agreeable. He did seem to forget what flying changes were, oops, but I did one each way and he remembered.

We'll go right off to the test:

Link to YouTube

Of course as soon as we got into the ring, he started being a little resistant and disconnected. It showed through all of the trot work: head tilting, gait irregularity, unsteadiness in the bridle. It also showed in all of the halts. Not a single one was square. The trot needed more.

I was super happy with his turn on the haunches though! We've been working so hard on those.

The canter was the highlight of the test really. I didn't push the medium canter at all for some reason, but I really let the extended canter go! Both changes were clean, but the first one had swinging haunches and the second was one against the hand, so not great scores, but 5.5 and 6 are still better than 1s and 2s!

Overall, 61.970%. Too many little things wrong, but he did all the things! Obviously I was a little disappointed in the score, but having the video to fall back on is really meaningful for me. I can go back and say, "Yea, that's about right. Good call judge."

But what we did get out of this show were some awesome pictures!

First centerline.

Half pass right. I love how much he steps forward into it- Mikey's steps always got shorter as he went forward.

Medium trot that's not so mediumy.

Medium canter that's not so mediumy. But it was a pretty picture!

"Against hand" in change. Haha, still clean though!

I liked this pic since my hand is back and his tail is out.

It was a good show though, I saw some friends I haven't seen in years and got to run through 3-1 one more time!

Penn used me as a head rest at one point while we were grazing.