Houghton Spring Dressage I

After having yet another mental meltdown over my truck still being MIA and resigning myself to scratching yet another show, BM offered up her truck for the weekend and then pressured me into actually accepting it. 

Quite frankly, after the shit show of cross country schooling, the pain in my knee, my horse's general shit attitude, and all sorts of other things, I wasn't really feeling the participation vibes. I kind of just wanted to chuck my horse into a field and never look at him again. 

Unfortunately, once BM convinced me to take her truck and go fucking show already it meant I did have to put a ride in on my horse.

It was dreadful!

He warmed up fine until I asked him to do real work at which point he slammed on the brakes and tried his rearing, spinning "not gonna do it" routine so I reached back and cracked him one with my jumping bat. Commence ten minutes of bolting while I kind of sort of steered and BM and I just shrugged like, "What the actual fuck do you do at this point because this is so unnecessary." 

Once he was done galloping around out of control, I put him right back to work and lo and behold he could do the bare minimum. 

He was a rage monster for his bath the day before the show and earned himself a serious ground work session about manners, but he loaded up cool as a cucumber the next morning and arrived at the show totally chill.

horses in turnout on the other side of that truck,
and horses directly behind me grazing and showing.
in short: SURROUNDED BY HORSES.

As always I ended up on a little bit too early. He was so chill I was convinced I had super star #childgenius Show Dopie on my hands. I gave him a brief w/t/c before leaving the warm up ring and strolling around outside it in the grass for awhile so I didn't use him up before our test because it was already hot. 

About ten-fifteen minutes before our test I brought him back into the ring and picked him up. Yup, cue #childsatan. 

I ended up having to reach back and slap him with my hand to put a stop to the running backwards at full speed when ferociously pony club kicking got me nowhere. Obviously his answer to that was to rocket forward, but fortunately I had enough space around me to pull him right onto a tiny circle and shut that down. 

That was the extent of the dramatics, but he was locked up tight as could be and I just straight up quit and headed over to our ring. 

i did feel like our outfit was on point at least

The test itself actually felt alright. I had no forward or relaxation, but he did all the things in all the places and kept all four feet on the ground. 

The judge tho. Would it even be me showing if I didn't have a judge story?

This is the same judge I rode Training 1 under back in 2018. Every comment was "nose out". Apparently he's changed things up now tho!

And if you're like, "God damn, maybe you should get your horse on the bit already!" my friend rode 1-3 under him the next day and her test is identical. He was scoring everyone like shit except the one horse in my 2-3 test that I just knew I was going to beat because her horse's nose was poking skyward the entire test and he didn't have a simple change to save his life. That pair got a 62%, just shy of the two pros scores who rode beautiful tests. 

While I was sitting at the trailer eating my lunch and being disgusted over the comments (the score didn't bother me aside from being meh about not squeaking out a 60%), Opie was having himself a tantrum. Despite being surrounded on all sides by clearly visible groups of horses, he was weaving, chewing on his tongue, and thrashing around like an asshole. He eventually--while basically climbing the side of my trailer--stepped in his water bucket, dumped it all over, and then got the handle hooked around his leg. He smashed the bucket and flung it away while not once acknowledging its existence because that would mean taking his eyes off soul mates. 

I called it quits right fucking there. I put him on the trailer and went to scratch my second test that was still four hours away. 

I debated back and forth the whole drive home on whether or not I wanted to go back to show the next day and even left my trailer hooked up, but I emailed the secretary my scratch a couple hours later. My friend said the judge I was showing under the next day was even worse than the one I'd just ridden with, and I had no desire to sit in blazing hot sun with a horse I don't currently like from 8am until 4pm. 

I then went and scratched the recognized show I had just entered at the end of the month, and got an email back from the secretary who said she was the TD at Houghton and she'd seen my warm up so she understood completely. Well thanks. Well done, Opie. 

sorry your life is so hard

So where do we go from here? Certainly no Bronze this year. No All Breeds. Super pumped I shelled out all that extra money for a PM. I'd still like to go for a year end award at schooling shows which means we have to get at least one 60% at 2-3. 

When BM gets back from VA, I'm going to start weekly lessons and see if she has anyone that needs the vet so I can split the obscene call charge for a Lyme test. Otherwise I don't know. I've got to get a reliable forward button while keeping the rage monster under control which is tough when I don't know what the fuck is going on with this horse.