Sweetpeacefuldream Wins at the Horseshow

We are very fortunate to have a great group here locally in Wellington, Colorado.  It's called the Rockie Mountain Saddle Club and I have been bringing my young and green horses here for years to experience their first horse shows.  Everyone is very friendly and welcoming, and no one minds if my youngsters are a bit excitable their first time out.

 I didn't have to worry about Sweetpeacefuldream being wild, though!  This mare acted as though she does this every weekend.  We started with hand walking in the arena, followed by some lunging and looking at everything.  The loudspeakers were on and they had music playing, but Miss Pea wasn't phased by that at all. There were several other horses lunging in the arena at the same time but Miss Pea was fine with that too. 

Once we were done checking out the arena, Miss Pea and I went back to the trailer to get dressed while the show began with showmanship.  After the in-hand classes are over they open the arena again for a brief riding warm-up. It was already getting warm, so I warmed up without my coat.

Next we had a little time to waste as we waited for the kids classes and the lower levels to ride.  The leveling system is a more recent development at this club, but it has been a great change.  I ride in the highest level, even if my horse is young or inexperienced, because I'm a professional trainer.  It doesn't feel right to me to compete against my students or the kids who have come to practice their 4-H skills, so I just always ride at this level and ask my horse to do the best she can.  While we waited for our turn we wandered around the show grounds and played with the trail obstacles since the trail judge had not arrived yet.

Finally it was our turn to compete!  Today was a very large turnout for the horse show, and there were easily ten horse and rider pairs in most of the levels.  It is fun to see the big groups, and makes me feel good for supporting our local saddle club which has helped me get so many young thoroughbreds started competing.  Miss Pea and I rode in English Equitation, which was a pattern that was a little too small for Miss Pea to really shine.  She did the best she could, though, and behaved herself very nicely.  She came away with a red second place ribbon in that one.

We also rode in Show Hack, which was a class that had the horses demonstrate extension and collection at all the gaits.  In a slightly oversimplified explanation, that means Miss Pea had to show she has three speeds at the walk, three speeds at the trot, and three speeds at the canter.  In this class she was absolutely spectacular.  All the time we've spent at home working on weight shifts and breathing really paid off.  All I had to do was either slow the motion of my seat or exaggerate my motion, add in either a deep or a fast breath, and Miss Pea responded nearly flawlessly.  She had dramatic collection and extension within each gait, and of course was the very nicest at the hand gallop.  The judge was duly impressed, taking a moment at the end of the class to tell us we had the best variation within each gait, and she awarded us first place.  Miss Pea had her first blue ribbon today! 

The next class was Controlled Riding, which is a longer pattern than the equitation class, but otherwise fairly similar.  Miss Pea went very nicely and even performed her lovely flying lead changes in that section of the pattern.  We had the great opportunity to talk to people at this show about what good race training can do for a horse, and then demonstrate Miss Pea's adjustability.  Her flying lead changes made her look good in Controlled Riding, and people were very impressed with her Show Hack class.  The last class of the day was Hunter Hack, with just two small vertical jumps and working on the rail.  Miss Pea had to take a moment to look hard at the jumps, but then she went right over.  This was really a fabulous successful first show for Miss Pea, and a great step on the way to preparing her for show jumping in Kentucky in October.