W-O-W! Rose just completed her first EVER competition this weekend! All three phases, no mishaps, no refusals, no poles knocked, no escapes, only a little bit of crazy thoroughbred-ness coming out. Rose was a star!
Before I launch into Rose's time, let me just say that another success happened this weekend - Blondie and my mum WON their division! It was so funny and unexpected as she was just going there for fun, not to win! But maybe her let's-not-take-this-seriously attitude paid off, because she and Blondie breezed into first place without hardly trying. Here's them in action on the cross country course:
Before I launch into Rose's time, let me just say that another success happened this weekend - Blondie and my mum WON their division! It was so funny and unexpected as she was just going there for fun, not to win! But maybe her let's-not-take-this-seriously attitude paid off, because she and Blondie breezed into first place without hardly trying. Here's them in action on the cross country course:
They won an embroidered cooler, some polo wraps, a big bag of horse treats, a bucket, a coffee mug, fly spray, and many other things, but most of all my mum won an experience that she's been waiting for for over thirty years. And Blondie could finally give her that this weekend! Here's some photos of them in the winner's circle:
Blondie may have won a real first place ribbon, but Rose won an imaginary "medal of bravery" for her success this weekend.
The first phase was dressage. Just the fact that she didn't jump out of the dressage arena is impressive! The dressage test went okay, although Rose was very distracted and tossing her head around the whole time. I just tried to keep my hands soft and steady throughout the test and not pay attention to her antics. Her rhythm was very nice though, and she had lots of impulsion. I'm also glad she picked up the correct canter lead on the first try both times and that she let me sit down on her back in the canter. Her braided mane made her look very different! Here's the video of Rose's dressage test:
The first phase was dressage. Just the fact that she didn't jump out of the dressage arena is impressive! The dressage test went okay, although Rose was very distracted and tossing her head around the whole time. I just tried to keep my hands soft and steady throughout the test and not pay attention to her antics. Her rhythm was very nice though, and she had lots of impulsion. I'm also glad she picked up the correct canter lead on the first try both times and that she let me sit down on her back in the canter. Her braided mane made her look very different! Here's the video of Rose's dressage test:
The stadium jumping phase was next, and Rose handled it pretty well. It was a very messy round and I lost my stirrup halfway through, but she made it over every jump without knocking any rails and she seemed to be excited about it. I think a little too excited for in the warmup she wanted to gallop around like a maniac. She's starting to think for herself and it was nice to see. Here's the video of Rose's stadium jumping round:
These both happened on the first day, and then Rose had to stay the night at the park. All the horses were outdoors in stall-sized paddocks. Rose had to learn to get along with and respect the space of the other horses around her, because they were all in pretty close quarters. She made fast friends with a big grey horse who was stabled beside her and I even caught Rose and the grey horse sharing some hay together!
There were no problems during the night and we came back the next morning (6am!) to some happy, rested horses. Now time for cross country!!
It definitely wasn't as calm as I would've hoped, but Rose made it through the course and didn't even give any of the jumps a second thought. She was very flighty in the warmup arena and even semi-reared a few times - not good. We'll work on that. The thing about this weekend is that I was going into it with absolutely no idea how Rose would react to most of the things I was planning to ask her to do. I'll know with time what she's like at a show, and in the meantime we'll just take her to every show we can make, even if we're not competing. Just to ride her around and get her used to the whole concept.
Cross country, though crazy, was a blast. We were almost a minute too fast, but that's okay. Rose was rolling and I didn't want to stop her, although I probably should have asked to her slow down/trot in more places on the course so we didn't go so crazy fast.
Right before the start of our cross country course, I was frazzled and Rose was frazzled and I was a bit nervous for what would happen on course, I got reminded of why I was doing this in the first place. As Rose was distractedly marching around, a random girl came up to us and said, "your horse is beautiful!". It reminded me to smile and have fun and that's when I knew Rose was a winner, no matter what place we came in.
It definitely wasn't as calm as I would've hoped, but Rose made it through the course and didn't even give any of the jumps a second thought. She was very flighty in the warmup arena and even semi-reared a few times - not good. We'll work on that. The thing about this weekend is that I was going into it with absolutely no idea how Rose would react to most of the things I was planning to ask her to do. I'll know with time what she's like at a show, and in the meantime we'll just take her to every show we can make, even if we're not competing. Just to ride her around and get her used to the whole concept.
Cross country, though crazy, was a blast. We were almost a minute too fast, but that's okay. Rose was rolling and I didn't want to stop her, although I probably should have asked to her slow down/trot in more places on the course so we didn't go so crazy fast.
Right before the start of our cross country course, I was frazzled and Rose was frazzled and I was a bit nervous for what would happen on course, I got reminded of why I was doing this in the first place. As Rose was distractedly marching around, a random girl came up to us and said, "your horse is beautiful!". It reminded me to smile and have fun and that's when I knew Rose was a winner, no matter what place we came in.
Here's the GoPro video of the course:
Though there were many things that were far from perfect, I'm proud of Rose for taking this huge new thing on without hesitation. She definitely questioned some things but she never lost faith in me or in herself and most importantly, she just kept going.