Monty At Pendragon Beginner Event

Monty is still available to purchase, you can view his ad here:

http://www.equine.com/horses-for-sale/horse-ad-3643692.html

This weekend we went to Pendragon Stud Equestrian Center for their one-day horse trial.  Monty competed in all three phases, dressage, cross country, and stadium jumping.  I was very impressed with how well organized this event was.  They had many volunteers who were knowledgeable, friendly, and on top of their responsibilities. There were fun thank-you prizes for the volunteers, and excellent prizes for the competitors!  Despite a rain storm just two days before the event causing a major flash flood that created an actual river flowing through their indoor arena, they had a well run competition with very useable footing.  Everyone working the show seemed happy and relaxed, and it made for an incredibly fun day of dressage and jumping. 

We were fortunate to get a lot of fun photos from the day!

 

 Monty thought the cross country jumping warmup was pretty fun, and did decide to do a little playing as we ran up the hill the first time.

But after his one little hop, Monty was so relaxed in the warmup for cross country, we just stood quietly for the last minute or two while the gate person counted us down from the start box.

On course Monty just kept getting better and better.  He started by looking hard at the first few fences and jumping cautiously.  I appreciated that he was careful with the patches of tricky footing from the storm and flash flooding that had come through two days before.  But as we made our way through the course Monty got more and more confident, galloping in a nice balanced rhythm to the last fence.  He is also learning how to gauge how large the fences are, and not overjumping quite so much.  I love his athleticism and scope, but I want him to figure out how to conserve energy on course by jumping more accurately.  This one day show was a great way to teach him that, since he had all three (shortened) phases of this horse triathlon in a matter of a few hours.

The last phase was stadium jumping, and Monty did really well there.  He was much more conservative over the small fences, and listened really well to my weight shifts and breathing to make the turns tight and his lines accurate.  

We had a lot of interest in Monty at this show because he performed so well, and we did hang his big sale poster near the score sheets on the large bulletin board.  I'm hopeful that his new home is waiting for him just a phone call away, since his owner has a few more OTTBs she's interested in bringing to Bit of Honey from the track for retraining to be sold as well.  Monty has been such an absolute pleasure to bring along and is such a fun ride, I'm eager to show him to potential buyers.