Sarge's First Show
I could also title this "I Fail At Posting In A Timely Manner", but I guess a week late isn't too horrible.
Anyway! I brought Sarge to his first show last weekend. We've been working decently prior, and he mostly listens, but my goal had been to get him to a show by the end of fall. Now, our biggest issue is that he gets really excited around new horses sometimes. Part of this isn't helped by the fact that whenever we try to ride around at our farm, all the Standardbreds are like "ZOMG NEW HORSE WALKIN' THRU WITH A PERSON ON HIM!" and come running over. The running (or speed trotting, in most cases) gets Sarge all riled up. Once, he bolted with me, though hey, at least he's comfy, and the last time, he almost did but listened. Yay.
Still, I was a bit worried about taking him to a show with a ton of new horses around. I was kind of hoping, though, that the severe overload of newness would just convince him to Deal With It. I was also kind of worried that I was going to be sorely embarrassed in front of my trainer, though-- this was to be her first time seeing him. And, since I've done all of the work with him, the gaps in his training are my fault, hah.
Well, the day came, and he loaded like a pro, as usual. Scotch wouldn't, and we were running late, so we didn't take a friend for Sarge. He didn't really care. Got there, and Laura braided him for me, Kate tacked him, and I worried about my self and tried not to be terrified. My mother tried to convince me to eat things. I declined. Scott took photos., I was super appreciative of my little team of grooms & supporters.
Sarge was being pretty calm about the whole thing. Curious, alert, but calm. When I finally got on, he was looky but listening. He was hesitant to go into the indoor, having never been in one before, but he went in and we did some trotting to warm up in the front of it. (Crazy pony being lunged in the middle... so we stayed away from that.) Then we went out and warmed up in the ring where we'd be showing.
Did I mention that they put this class in the show just for me? Haha. It was English Pleasure. They stuck it in last minute, and just put two other horses in as filler (people that lesson there, so I knew 'em, basically.) My trainer also told the others to keep a good distance from me since Sarge was so new to all of this.
So, we got down to it... and Sarge was a rockstar. He listened. He was a little spooky about some Horse Eating Flowerboxes, but got over it. The classes were just walk-trot-canter, and we mostly got it all down ok. One of our canter leads was kind of a mess, because he was determined to look outside the ring and so inside bend wasn't quite happening, but that's something we can work on.
In the end, I was super thrilled, Sarge had a great first show experience, and my trainer got to see Sarge behaving. I was super proud that the work I've done with him has paid off. YAY, Sargeface!
And now, for the fun part- a couple of photos.
Lookin' sharp
Carole discussing inside bend... note how Sarge is not listening ;)
We're doing the Turkey Trot this weekend, so fingers crossed that he's as good for that!