Bit of Honey Training: Grace's First Horse Show

Saturday, February 8, 2014

Grace's First Horse Show

This morning Grace and I packed up and went over to campus for a schooling jumping show put on by the English Riding Club at Colorado State University. I felt very grateful that the parking lots had been plowed and I didn't have to worry about getting the rig stuck in the snow! We got there fairly early, we were the second trailer to arrive. I wanted to have plenty of time to work around the jumps with Grace before the bedlam of a jumping warm-up arena began.

I unloaded Grace from the trailer (she loads, hauls, and stands waiting for me like a champion). We then walked over to the arena to discover the doors were still shut and locked. On the way there, however, we passed a sculpture. Grace thought it was terrifying, but I felt grateful it wasn't the evil blue one at the airport.

We walked past it with a lot of honking and snorting, but as long as I was between her and the scary thing she was ok. Once the main arena was open we went in and walked around a bit. I would have been pleased if the only thing accomplished this morning was sniffing the decorative plastic flowers, but it turns out Grace is kind of an over-achiever. I led her up to one of the cross rails and she sniffed the flowers in their box, then once Grace had snurffled the poles she just lifted her feet and walked over them. I was left standing at the flowers, staring at her incredulously. She looked over her shoulder at me saying, "Well, isn't that why we're here?" I told her she was brilliant and asked if she could come back over, and so she sedately turned around and then hopped over the fence going the other way to get back to my side. After that there was no hesitation anywhere, she just marched over everything at which we aimed, and if she thought it merited something more dramatic she would hop over instead of just stepping. There was plenty of support from other trainers and spectators, everyone thought she was simply adorable in how she carefully reasoned through everything and then performed flawlessly.

I decided not to ride her today, since she had PLENTY of new stimuli to process this morning. Just being in an indoor arena of that size, with radio and loudspeakers, other horses cantering/bucking/jumping around her, and the many voices coaching riders from the ground was quite a bit of new stuff. As the morning went on Grace got to watch a group do their walk/trot rail class and the walk/trot over ground poles, listen to the announcer, as well as experience applause. We also had a good group show up from Bit of Honey Training to support Grace, which meant meeting more strangers and being patted by people she didn't know. While she definitely paid attention to everything and more than once had a "Kim, SAVE me!" look on her face, overall she was quite brave. If something was concerning, her first reaction was to look to me for direction, and if I told her it was ok, she just would carry on.