The Main Thing is That I Stayed On

So as some of you know I have been back in the saddle for a little over two years now and this year instead of doing a summer musical I am going to (hopefully) do horse shows. We had our first one on Friday May 15th, I took the entire day off so I could be at the barn and get the boy a bath (he's white with some spots (sort of)) so a bath the day of is important cause the second that he rolls he's back to brown and dusty (the same horse that I am riding at the top of the page). Well so I spent the entire day at the barn preparing and getting things together and polished and organized. The show was in Avon Lake on familiar turf, Weiss field (right down the street from my childhood home) This is my first show ever.

I'll take you back several years. When I was a kid my grandparents and aunt all lived in Avon Lake which was easy so I rode (sort of) when I was a kid I wasn't good at it and I wasn't determined to do anything but ride, unfortunately I fell off when I was about ten and didn't go back to it I had school (and I wasn't a good student so extra circulars like horse back riding were not at the top of the list passing school was).

Grandpa moved and Cindy (aunt) along with him they moved to Wakeman (for those of you from Ohio that's out towards Oberlin).
That is awfully far for me and now I had jobs that required me to be there at weird-ish hours and weekends and I didn't have the time or the energy to do anything involving horses. Until about 2 years ago I got a job with the Cleveland Clinic (through a temp agency) Monday - Friday 8 - 4:30 perfect hours for me to get back into it so I go every Saturday and the occasional weekday and ride and clean and help out and get asked this past winter "hey you want to show this summer?" well of course my answer is YES so that brings us to last Friday.

The show is slated to start at 6:30 pm so we get out there and register and tack up and change (when I say we there was another girl from our barn that went as well she did much better then I did).
our class gets called at about 10:30 yes PM, we've been on since about 7:30 ish trying to get some practice in and wear out our horses (which by the way didn't work as well as I would have liked). We're asked to enter the ring at a trot (Holy Crap Run is more like it in my case) I don't know what happened but I have never pulled so hard in my entire life to try and get a horse to stop. I was even being yelled at (not really yelled at but I don't know how else to say it) to "Pull BACK!!!" and trust me I was, my nerves were shot by the end of our first class (and I was signed up for a second class) needless to say I didn't go in for the second class I traded jackets with my aunt and she went in for me there was no way showoff was getting away with running off with me that way, and he did run off with me I know he probably wasn't going as fast as it felt but I might as well have been on a race horse. Even when Cindy came out of the ring she said she had to work really hard to keep showoff in check so she realized just how hard I was pulling. I got major props for just going out there and told that I rode well (I didn't have the control I should have and those are my words no one Else's I don't know if no one else wants to have to say it to me or what but..........) So I did it I'm still alive I stayed on (barely) I didn't run over the judge (cause apparently that was an option at one time) and I wasn't asked to leave the ring (which was really big).

So our next train of thought is "I wonder if showoff would do better in a ring by himself?" so that's the next task at hand we're going to enter into a basic walk trot dressage test and see if we do any better there, in a ring by ourselves, it may be better and not so nerve racking for either of us. So that was my excitement for the weekend no I must go over and see what's making Adam famous.