Getting Recognized

Spoiler alert, we finished on a number again!! 

Goggles and I did our first full three phase and first recognized event at Majestic on Saturday. I would've loved to do a schooling show for half the price for his first time out. But the job that lets me have the horses involves a lot of weekends, so it wasn't meant to be. I was originally scheduled to work this weekend as well but got a coworker to switch with me for Saturday. Then due to entry numbers, Majestic ran as a one day. Excellent. I could've played show mom and delivered him to AT for her to ride if they'd kept it as a two day, but it was really nice to be able to take him out myself. 

I had the super relaxed ride times of 1:19, 3:50, and 4:50. I got to the barn around 10 and bathed him and then loaded up. There was a bit of herd bound chaos between him and Ben, but I gave Ben trazodone and left him to sort out his feelings while we were gone, which he did. 

This time I planned right and took him off the trailer pretty quickly to stand around in block one and let him feel feelings. 

Gloves and long line with rope halter, see I can learn

He followed the usual progression- move around with some energy, eat some grass with anxiety still present, try to get too close, finally chill. His moving around was actually limited to walk and trot which was nice, I think we're starting at a better baseline most of the time now. I'd parked by XC warm up and he could see those horses galloping around but didn't care, good boy! 

Then he went back on the trailer, and I applied my white breeches with some difficulty. Seriously, rolling tight white pants up sticky legs is no fun. It's a catch 22, you can either sweat longer in them or be a bit cooler for a while then have a whole fight to get them on. 

I gave myself about 25 minutes for dressage warm up which was about right this time. He came out wired and then settled some when we trotted figure eights. His back had a huge hump in it though and he did some bucking at the canter each time. For a while that was his MO any time we cantered, even at home. To the point where I started to wonder about radiographing his back. But then he found some relaxation over his topline and quit. But when we lose that relaxation it is definitely his go to. We were able to do a few strides of relaxed free walk each time we walked, but then he'd get distracted and we'd have to start doing things again to get him focused. 

Because he seemed better after he'd been trotting a little bit, we trotted straight over to the arena for our test. He was all alone in the rings this time, I don't know whether that is better or worse. We did a few walk transitions and he was less suspicious of the barrel marking the arena number this go round. 

Overall I was happy with the test. He felt like he was trying for me most of the time. I was able to put my leg on and ride him, the exception being the right lead canter. He did have a GIANT spook in the medium walk, past a spot that we had already trotted past once. But at least he spooked into the arena, not out of it. Good lad. 

We fairly scored a 46 for this effort. The judge had some helpful remarks again. It almost feels like when there is this much chaos they want to pat you on the back as much as possible. I did LOL at the collective though "you two will make a nice picture once those two essentials are established" aka - today is not the day where you make a nice picture! 

I do need to practice halts and also work on myself - both horses want to halt with haunches right, must be a me problem. 

Our 46 put us in 10th out of 10, which is actually a pretty relaxing place to be. Nowhere to go but up! Goggles got hosed off and put back on the trailer where he actually did chill and eat some hay while he hung out. I wandered off to see friends and watch a few stadium rounds.