Show results!

Having arrived at Come Again Farm safe and sound, I unloaded the horse and found our stall. There was a little bit of yelling on his part, but as soon as I threw him a few flakes of hay, the screaming and talking stopped for the rest of the day. Good boy!

Because of the drama with the trailer, I had arrived later than I had planned and had only about 30 minutes to clean him and tack up before I wanted to go lunge and warm up for our first test: Training Level Test 1 Novice Horse. I had hoped to at least handwalk him around the show arena (it's an indoor in another barn on the property), but I was out of time. We would have to enter the show ring cold turkey.

Our warm up was ok, but we did battle some tension. He was well behaved but was tense in the back and his strides were short and choppy compared to what his normal gaits were. Surprisingly, he didn't buck into the canter transitions which is normally what happens when he is a bit tense. But the canter was out of balance and "Thoroughbred-like." No offense to TBs, but I think everyone will know the "type" of canter I am referring to when I say it was TB-like. It wasn't ugly, just not has rhythmical as he is capable of. My parents were both there and my father is the ultimate ringmaster  - giving me the time and minutes I had left before my test each time I trotted by. LOL. I said he should be careful or someone is going to rope him into being a warmup ring steward at a rated show.

It was time and we walked over to the show ring.

And to my pleasant surprise, Hampton handled it well - having never seen the ring before in his life. No spooking, although he did want to stop at the big open door a few times. Our test went pretty well, the canter was still icky but we had good moments. 64%!!  First place!

After the first test, things just kept getting better. He really started to relax. Second test was Training Level Test 1 Open. Better canter, more good moments. And more sucking back at the open door. This caused us to break at the canter once, but I had a good recovery. Another 64%. First place!

Last test was Training Level Test 3 Novice Horse. I had a brief moment of panic when, while walking over to the ring, I realized I did not have this test memorized! Damn Karen what kind of moron are you! So I would have to mostly guess at what I could remember from reading it a day or so ago. This time, during the warmup I schooling him past the open door a few times and booted him past it when he sucked back. HA! I thought, fixed that issue.

We started our test and NOW he spooks at the OTHER end of the arena! LOL!!! We had a really good test except the last canter he did one of those spook-canter sideways-deals which then caused me to forget where to do the stretchy circle. So -2 points there. With those bobbles, 62%. First place!

Frankly I could not have been more happy with his behavior and performance. He is green, I am green and rusty. And I consider it a success when you take a young horse to his first show and 1) you do not fall off. 2) you stay in the show ring and 3) you don't plow someone over in the warmup. The good scores and great rides were icing on the cake!

My friend took photos which she will hopefully send to me soon. Hampton was so cute with his mane braided!

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In other news, my friend's father was nice enough to fix my trailer for me while we were there. The door is shut now, but it will need new welds and hinges in order to be usable again. Next week's project is to take the trailer in. If it's going to cost a ton of money, I'm just going to sell it and get a new one. It's not worth putting a lot more money into it, in my opinion. We'll see.