Jumper show yesterday. I was my first show in 2 years that my instructor had to be somewhere else, thus I was instructor-less. As first, when I learned I was on my own, I had an 'oh-no' moment but Mace and I have become a team so that worry was short lived. I had my good friend Catherine help me out and be my moral support! I think it is important to have someone come with you to a show. They provide moral support, can set up the warm up jumps, remind you to breath and stay hydrated, and take videos!
The show started 1 1/2 hours late due to rain. The rain left 2 very large and sloppy wet spots on 2 sides of the arena. I already started my plan on how to avoid those. For several hours we just watched the show. Mace just hung out with me, munched on grass, fell alseep once.
Our first class was optimum time and Mace jumped super. Very calm, took nice wide turns. My deal is I either get right on the opt.time or miss it by several seconds. I missed by several seconds! I felt like we were in the ring forever so I let him speed up the last 3 fences. Opt time was 67, we had 63 seconds.
The next class was our division class. For the first round, it was fairly easy to avoid the large wet, slick spots in that you could go wide. But for the jump off, you would need to turn very tightly after the 2nd and 5th fence since you had to do a roll back to get to the 3rd and 6th fence. If you did not turn immediately, you would be in the wet, slick spots so it was turn immediately or go around which would have added several seconds. There were about 15 horse in the class, we were 10th to go. 2 horses before me went into the slick wet spots, went to turn and fell down. So I really had a plan for the jump off. We went clean the first round so on to the jump off. Mace would have to really listen and turn other wise I would have to ride the roll backs very wide. He often is a bit backed off of the first fence so I used more leg but then I had to immediately collect him for the second fence since he had to be ready to turn immediately! He got a little head flippy at the point but still was listening. I leg yeild him a bit to the left as we came up to the fence and then as he jumped it, I told him we were turning right and he did it wonderfully! Tight Right turns have often been a bit of a challenge in the past but he has been doing much better with them since I starting using the Micklem bridle. We did the roll back, avoided the wet spot and onto the 4 the fence. I let him go and use his wonderful huge stride to get there. Then I had to collect him for fence 5 in that we had to again, do a tight right rollback. IF not, we would be in the wet slick spot or have to go wide. He did it with ease and off to the last fence. He was a super star! We placed 1st.
This blog is dedicated to Off The Track Thoroughbreds. I will warn those that visit this blog that these are my ramblings, my personal experiences with my OTTBs and my future plans or dreams that involve OTTBs. Nothing here is meant to be a 'solution' or professional advice in regards to the training of these wonderful horses, for I am just an amateur.