Flying Hearts Farm

So we've attended three shows so far this year.  The first was a local schooling show at Winton Woods, with just Whisper and I.  It was her first show, and she handled everything surprisingly well - except cantering.  She was great in the chaotic warmup ring, good about the indoor and outdoor rings, loudspeaker, and the people and horses everywhere.  She was up, but she was reasonable.  Well, until it came time for us to canter in our first class...haha, that's when it got interesting! 

So to make a long story short, we spent three classes worth of cantering just leaping and bounding around the ring... we'd get some canter strides in but then we'd go back to leaping.  The announcer was a very nice guy who kept telling me to hang in there haha!  Pictures this.... my huge strided pinto warmblood mare bounding around a class of breed type QH hunters going half our pace with their heads on the ground... it was a pretty funny site 

Overall, it was a success.  Well, not ribbon-wise, but in other ways!  At the end of the day, we got some 5th and 6th place ribbons!

The second show was the Hamilton County 4-H show.  My student Ellie (age 11) and Pepper went and had a fantastic show.  Pepper was good as gold, and Ellie rode him well in a few walk/trot and poles classes.  They ended up with I think 3 first place ribbons and 2 seconds?

The most recent show was another adventure with Whisper, the Walnut Creek Starry Nights #1 Dressage Show.  I decided to keep it simple and just do Intro A, B, and C.  Whisper was fabulous the whole trip, minus our awful cantering (we scored 3's and 4's on our canter haha!).  But the walk/trot work scored a lot of 7's and 8's, and our best score was a 71.125 % at Intro B - not bad for her first dressage show.  We ended up with two blue ribbons and one red, even despite our awful canter lol!

Next time we'll go for Training level.  Her canter at home is doing well, it just seems to be the show environment that makes her act like a silly goose at the canter!  But I think it was actually harder to just try to do the one 20 meter canter circle at a time in Intro C... by the time we'd get the canter going forward on the correct lead, it was time to come back down to the trot again.  In training level we'll have more time to pick it up and keep it going.  I leave you with a couple of photos of our 2011 shows!