Good news we found a western saddle in time for me to use! however, D was his normal angle self till the RIDDEN classes in which he almost took off with my 9yr old Niece so I scratched her from her youth w/t class and then in our very last class gave me two bucks. Not huge bucks but they were not small either lol. It really ticked me off because he was so wound up that he kept coming out of fram if I ever even got him back into fram that night. However, all the horses were having issues that night for some reason or other?? I am thinking it's the grain I have been giving D so that he can have his suppliments and gain a couple more lbs. I am going to keep him on the grain and maybe see if I can lunge him before we go to the show either at home or I can try at the show if needed. I am still waiting for pictures to be posted but as soon as they are I will post some pictures of my horses 'hot' night lol. Regardless this is how we did!
Halter Geldings & Stallions Didn't place out of 8 :(
Showmanship Open 1st out of 3 (I am planning on entering Ammy next time because that class always has at least 6 people in it)
English Pleasure w/t Color 1st out of 2 (our race horse class lol)
English Pleasure w/t Open 4th out of 8
English Pleasure Open 2nd out of 8
Western pleasure w/j Color 3th out of 9
Western pleasure w/j Open 4th out of 7
Western Pleasure Open 5th out of 7 (how we placed I don't know other than the judge must have missed his bucks)
Ok now to chat about showmanship a little. I believe D did the pattern almost flawlessly. The one issue I found in this class though was he lifted his head and trotted off a little late. When I have a crop he's a near perfect showmanship machine but he's a cleaver cookie and I think he has figured out when I have a crop and when I don't. We nailed both our pivots perfectly but I also descovered that I tend to over pivot him, so if I do a 90 degree pivot I do more like 92 or 94 so I need to work on that. I also believe that D's back is too slow (to me) but we are backing MUCH MUCH straighter! which makes me very happy and I am hoping that I can get a pattern on video one of these days so that I can show everyone what we're good at and what still needs more work. Something else on our flat and I have failed to talk about is D poping out of frame when we go from walk to canter or trot to canter. If I keep contact with his face then he keeps in frame fairly nicely just a slight lift but if I leave him on a loose rain it get's ugly. I am having problems though because my arena has no sand and has pretty hard ground so I am parannoyed about hurting his joints with lots of canter work. I thought about working him on the trail but that's meant to be relaxing time not work time so I am working on locating an arena that I can maybe ride to, to work him in. That's about where I am now, Oue next show is on the 7th and that will be the last of the SVQHA buckle series shows.
Hi! You left a lovely comment and question on my blog...so I thought I'd catch up with you here about your horse dropping his shoulder in your/his pivots... which way is your horse bending his neck when you face his nose? If your horse is bending his neck in a C then you need to tap his shoulder to gain his attention (I typically do this with a dressage whip behind my back, this way I don't have to take my hand off the lead and the horse doesn't see it coming...)...if your horse is bending his neck like this ) when you walk into his nose then you need to push his nose over using your lead...go underneath his chin when you do this... if you have any more questions, please feel to free to contact me again.
ReplyDeletePleasantly,
Paula