WWU Winter Fun Show Recap - Leo

All media in this post comes from Leah (aka the most awesome person ever, who came and hung out with us and took pictures because she's awesome) unless otherwise noted.

I have been avoiding writing this post for the past few days for several reasons.  For one thing, I have had the past few days off work, which is when I usually take the time to blog.  And for another thing, the show...didn't particularly go well.  It's not something that I have really felt like talking about, both in person and online.  But.  If I only wrote about the good, this blog would be kind of pointless.  So here we go.

one of the only photos I took - note the sweatmarks.

Saturday was a cold (compared to the weather we've been having lately), sunny day.  I got to the barn around 4:45 am to help feed and move horses.  Thanks to the temperature drop, Leo had been blanketed after his bath on Friday, so he was still shiny and clean.  We started loading around 6:15 or so, and it was a vast improvement over the shenanigans the day of the Hunter Pace.  Although Leo didn't exactly hop right onto the trailer, he only took a little extra coaxing before he walked on like a pro.  I think last time it took us about 10 minutes and strong levels of coaxing before he'd get on; this time it took maybe 3.

WWU is about a 30 minute drive from the barn; we arrived and Leo unloaded like an actual pro - none of the panicked pawing and kicking from the Hunter Pace this time around!  However, once out of the trailer, he was a little...squirrely.  He did not want to stand tied to the trailer, or to anything, and tacking did not go particularly smoothly because he kept moving around.  Unfortunately, we were in a bit of a time crunch trying to get on and get warmed up, so there wasn't a whole lot that I could do to reassure him about his life other than to try and keep a calm tone of voice while scrambling to get all of the tack items on in the appropriate order.  I threw a bridle on as quickly as I could, and headed to the warm up ring.

[not an actual photo from the show]

Leo started off in the warm up as a complete mess.  He was in full giraffe mode, did not want to walk at all, and did not want to do things like "stay on the rail" or "go into the terrifying monster-filled corners."  Luckily, we were working in reverse order; the people jumping higher were moving over to the schooling ring first to jump while the jumps were big, so we had a lot of time to trot around and attempt to relax.  By the end of what was probably close to an hour in the warm up ring, he was trotting on a loose rein, not spooking at the mirrors, and standing still at the halt.  I had Barn BFF E walk with us up to the schooling ring (same as the show ring) though anyways, just in case he forgot how to walk on the short trip between the two locations.

The change of scenery set him off again, and the addition of jumps (Scary Flower Covered Monster JUMPS) made things revert to their initial frantic state.  There was lots of trotting in circles to start off, and then Trainer K had us start schooling over fences.  It started with many refusals and much panic, but by the end of it we were cantering through our course - not exactly in a hunterly fashion, but not in a way that would terrify small children, either.  He was jumping the jumps, and had stopped running.

Leo and his fan club before our division started

We quickly discovered that Leo was not a candidate for standing tied to the trailer, and as I had a lack of anything to reinforce good behavior, he got to stand inside with me and watch the lower levels go.  Thankfully, one person from our barn had actually purchased a stall, and she graciously let Leo borrow it while her horse was in the ring, so I wasn't stuck holding him the entire time.  I got to hang out with Leah, my mom, and my boyfriend for half of ground poles and half of cross rails, and then it was time to tack back up and get ready to go.  Leo had chilled out significantly on the ground at this point - proven by the above picture, in which he was deemed safe to be looked after by children. We went back to the warm up ring to pop over a few fences and work on slowing down, and then it was back up to the big barn to get ready to show.

actual proof that some jumping occurred at this show

Things that Leo found terrifying:
- the crowd
- being alone in the arena
- probably the flowers
- the crowd
Things that Leo did during our rounds:
- refused almost every jump he was pointed at
- galloped like a jumper
- half reared the first time I asked him to trot past the side with the crowd
Things that Leo did not do:
- bolt in an out-of-control manner
- run completely sideways or backwards
- completely lose his brain to panic

That jump with the red flowers behind the one we're jumping was THE DEVIL

Basically we were excused from all three of our OF classes - warm up, Hunter I, and Hunter II - for refusals.  We were finally getting somewhere on the third trip, when we realized that adding in a crop would be a good plan, but the red flowered demon jump of death got us again.  It was frantic, and Leo definitely started off scared - not of the jumps but of the being alone and especially of the quite sizable crowd of people watching him.  If we had had another round, I think that we would have been successful - Trainer K commented on this as well - but unfortunately you only get 3 trips.  She didn't want to move us up to 2' because the jumps would gain fillers, which would just add something else for Leo to potentially panic about, but she did ask if I would mind finding someone to catch ride him, just to get him back in the ring one more time.  So we dropped our flat class, and forced politely asked an innocent bystander one of the girls from the barn who was there but not planning to show if she would try to get him through the course.  She went in armed with a crop and instructions to not take any shit from him, and with many refusals the first time and slightly fewer refusals the second, they got through it and managed to snag a 6th place ribbon their second time through.

AT LEAST HE WAS THE BEST LOOKING HORSE THERE

So.  Would I have managed to get him through if I had been able to go back in a fourth time? I would like to think so.  Was he kind of a giant asshole?  Yes.  Was he also scared and out of his element? Yes.  But here's the thing.  As the day went on, horses that were significantly more experienced at shows than Leo were having many, many issues with refusals.  Horses that don't normally refuse were freaking out over that stupid red flowered jump.  And by the time we were packing up Leo to go home, he was standing around half asleep.  I found a bag of baby carrots and worked on standing tied to the trailer, and after about 30 minutes he was munching on hay and standing relatively quietly.  And when the time came to load, he stepped onto the trailer like it was the easiest thing in the world.

Photo by Barn Mom C

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...okay but really, the whole thing kind of sucked at the time and was extremely frustrating, and I was pretty upset about it - to the point where I was considering dropping out of 2'6 and going home because I felt like a failure etc. etc... and the day went on and seasoned show horses were struggling with refusals and Leo turned back into his normal sleepy puppy self and I talked to Leah (who is awesome, btw) and my mom and my boyfriend about it and eventually started to remember that we really weren't expecting any Performances of Greatness when we signed Leo up for this show, and that really it went quite a lot better than it could have gone, and it was a million times better than the Hunter Pace...and there was always, always going to have to be a first show.  If it had gone perfectly, that would have been unexpected.  Despite how difficult it was, it honestly went better than we expected.  It was absolutely better than the first show that we took Griffin to.

I probably won't be showing again until the summer (which is the subject of another post entirely), and the next show is as much of an improvement from this one as this one was from the Hunter Pace, well, I can definitely live with that.

Stay tuned for a recap of WWU Part II - Gracie.