Bit of Honey Training: Obie's First Horse Show

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Obie's First Horse Show

Today was Obie's first horse show. At home he has been schooling up to 2'8" and we just introduced oxers this week, but for his first show we kept to the 2' division so he could feel confident and inspect the jump decorations without nerves about height of the fences. He did really well in the warm-up, I'm pretty sure it was his first time riding in an arena with that many other horses, all going different directions and jumping at the same time and cantering every direction.... It was a lot for Obie to look at, but he just took it all in and thought it was great entertainment.

His flat classes were exciting for him, especially when the whole group cantered together at the same time. There was some finagling for a spot on the rail amongst the ponies and little girls, but he did quite well for his first time ever in this environment. Then, in his first hunter class he was an absolute rock star. He needed two courtesy circles at the beginning to get his rhythm, balance, and lead, but then he proceeded to absolutely nail the whole course! He got all his correct leads, got his distances, and got to the very center of each fence like he'd been doing it for years, nevermind the fact that he just seriously started jumping two weeks ago! He was a little strong to the fences, but that's ok since the eventual goal is to get him eventing and I don't mind a little strong to the cross country fences. A video of his first round can be seen at http://youtu.be/fFoMG1n8O4g

His second round over fences was a little faster, since he was getting fatigued and had been at this for a few hours already. Though he missed a couple leads we were able to correct them and he did hop around his course really confidently. The video of this round can be seen at http://youtu.be/0EqB_EbEIzg Since he was getting tired and we had been doing so well we decided to end there, with a super positive experience.