T-minus NOW

Oops, it's showtime!

I've been beyond negligent in reporting on show prep.  But mostly it's looked something like this:

Good ride, good ride, good ride, GREAT RIDE!
(new saddle)
Good ride, horrid ride, good ride, SHOW!

The best at tiny jumps

Winds is officially in California and has schooled twice.  My reports are that he has been "perfect" and is jumping "great", only landing on a cross lead a couple of times.  (yay!).

Almost all of the show is on grass, which is pretty for pictures and feels tres fancy - but all the schooling is on sand and the show rings are closed for any prep work. 

From a competitive standpoint - I like it. I hate that Hunters get to school all-the-things before showing, but now that I'm staring at a new horse who's never seen a real Hunter Fence before - I'm wishing for the luxury of not only schooling the ring, but the jumps, an everything in-between.

So we still haven't ridden on grass, but in an attempt to increase experience without jumping the pants off of him, we dropped him down to 3' so he can do both an Open division and the Pre-Greens.

That way he gets a few extra rounds in before I take the reins on Friday and we have to deal with my own panic attacks and not just worry about the horse.

I am officially sunshine bound tomorrow morning at like 4am.  I land at 8:30 (in theory) and Windsy's classes start at 9:15.  hopefully I can get my bag, grab a rental car and get to the rings before I miss his rounds.

That's the plan anyway.

Oh, and we had super fun bloggy time with SprinklerBandit last week which was the last "good ride" in the show prep sequence.  We had breakfast sandwiches and barn time and most importantly - taco time all of which is fun and lovely, and means I actually got some new videos and pictures.

I'll let her do the real posting on that, since, well - she's really good at it and actually edits things, but I've stolen a few photos for the sake of not making your eyes bleed with a boring post.

SEE YOU IN CALI