Octoberfest: Sunday

(Prairie's Game Face)

 The second day of the show was mercifully cooler (man I hate complaining about nice weather) which made everything just that much easier (namely eating and drinking... I stop eating when it's too hot).

P2 was relaxed and happy.  She really doesn't get too disrupted by hauling to new spots which is a nice change from my beasties growing up.

Anyway, once again Supermom trekked out to redo the braids and the day was lining up nicely.  S had two final rounds over fences to close out the Baby Green Division, and I had a course and a flat class for both my Long Stirrup Hunter and Long Stirrup Eq.  Pretty full day, but nothing drastically new.

Well, aside from a slightly adjusted pony-eating fence that was causing problems all morning in our ring.

the offending flowers and brick

Kids were falling off. Ponies were bolting, grown women were getting jumped out of the tack, it was a disaster.  And I couldn't quite tell what was so spooky.  It looked pretty darn similar to the rest of the jumps but whatever, flight animals are flight aniumals...

Prairie didn't even bat an eye at it, which was a neat touch.  She did perk up her ears but that was about as much attention as it got.

Actually, the whole first round was pretty decent and somehow S snagged a 2nd place with P2.  (probably because if was everyone's first go with the death-fence so we had the benefit of some refusals and uuuugly jumps).

Here's the video:



The second course was more of the same but since everyone else cleaned up their act over the scary fence, we pinned 4th.  Still strong, still strung out, but still bold!


S took a few minutes and schooled P2 for a little bit after her rides to try and back her off/calm her down a little.  It seemed to work and a big part of that (oddly) seemed to be switching to a bigger spur.  Prairie stepped up a bit more, but actually lightened in the bridle... so the plan was to spur me up for our classes and see if it made a difference.

Our warmup was.... mediocre.  Prairie was much lighter in the bridle and the flat work was fabulous, but her brain was just not functioning over fences.  We weren't getting our leads, we couldn't switch our leads and the mare was horrified whenever I tried to ask for a simple change - trotting was just NOT on her menu.

I tried to wait to ride my courses until the end of the division, so that I could go course, course, then straight into my flat classes... but no such luck.  I got impatient and wanted to be done with the jumping so we ended up just going and then sitting around for another 45 minutes waiting for our flat classes.

The Boy was sleeping, or finally bored or something so he missed the first half of both courses.  It's a little too bad since right now we start better than we finish.  And it was especially too bad for my Eq course because there was a kind of tricky roll back that we took absolutely perfectly.  It felt magical.  But the video doesn't start till the wheels started coming off and I had my hands in my lap and the mare is drama llamaing all over the place.  Such is life.

Not sparing my ego, here are the videos:



Finally, we finished with the Under Saddle.  I dropped my stirrups a hole (which S cautioned me about) and nearly forgot to remove the martingale but we pulled the offending tack and got in the ring.  Prairie was a perfectly mannered, very light and loose mare the whole time.  Transitions were easy and she was right with me on a loose rein.


No surprise, she won it.

The Eq class we had that canter bobble and I could feel her tiring, but as far as her performance, she was still calm, and forward and focused.  I guess we needed a yellow ribbon anyway (our first one!)
 

All in all a fabulous outing, lots of information and lots learned... For now its back home for lots of long and low and getting off the hand and getting rid of that damned Rein Lameness.