How to get a 67.5 at your horse's first show ever

1.) Fight with your horse for a week prior to the show. Make sure a couple of these rides happen in a lesson so your trainer loses faith in your abilities, too.

2.) Have horse get all worked up in the trailer, even though the ride is on 15 minutes.

Tortured in the torture box of torture

3.) Unload jigging, yelling, nervous horse. Lead around indoor ring in which dressage tests are to be held in. Make sure the ring is surrounded by stalls, with horses inside, of course. For good measure, you might want a couple of these to be stallions, especially if you have a particularly flirtatious mare. Have horse call to all these 'new friends' incessantly.

4.) Have barn owner tell you that you are welcome to ride in the ring to get horse desensitized, but you only have 10 minutes until a particularly excitable stallion is scheduled to ride. Have trainer run to trailer, get bridle and tell you to just get on bareback. Proceed to have small anxiety attack.

5.) After successfully leaving ring before horny mare and excitable stallion meet, tack up and proceed to warm up ring, which is conveniently located 15 feet from the road, a road which is frequented by motorcycles and fast traffic. Practice walking and trotting, with a few walk-BOLT transitions thrown in (thanks to loud cars) while you hold your breath and forget how to be an effective rider.

6.) Enter another stallion to warm up ring.

7.) Do dressage test. Somehow, horse is amazing, you remember how to ride, judge loves your horse, leave ring beaming as your trainer cries with joy. Proceed to join the cry-fest.

Judge's comment: "Pair has potential! Nice horse!"

TADA!

But seriously, I am BLOWN AWAY by my little horse! For our first show, the goal was literally to get in, get it done, get out. And despite the universe's best efforts to throw everything possible in the way, my little horse was AMAZING - despite the nervousness at first, she settled right down and was so calm once she got the nerves out of her system. After the first half an hour or so, it was just like she'd done this her entire life!!

Our second test was less than stellar, but still alright, ending us with a 62. I made a stupid mistake early on that cost us -2 (after halting and saluting, I thought we trotted at C, but really were supposed to  trot on from X...) and got flustered and just forgot how to ride. Even though a 62 is a VERY respectable score, especially for a first time horse, we got 6th (out of six). And the 67.5 placed us in second, only because I was riding against a professional with a GORGEOUS Morgan stallion, who was warming up doing leg yields in the warm up ring, but then showing at Intro. Um, not fair? But I really don't care how I placed, it was all about the experience, and the great scores were just icing on the already amazing cake!

"WILL NOT EAT HAY, MUST FIND FRIENDS!"

The rest of the day was a little bit of a drag, just because I was done at 9, but I had to wait until the other riders from the barn were done, and they were all doing the two-phase. So we had to wait until 3 to finally head home. I didn't really want her to graze all day, since she is not used to so much green grass and is prone to gas colic, but the show did not offer stall rentals or paddock rentals, and when I tried to put her in the trailer to eat hay and chill, she just freaked out and yelled for her friends/other horses/people/just because, and refused to touch the hay. So I just ended up holding her all day, with periodic breaks provided by my mom. She ended up fine, so I guess I didn't need to worry.

My dad took a ton of pictures, but he is lame and has a film camera (dinosaur much?) so he will need to get them developed/put on a disk before I can see them/post them.

All in all, it was an AMAZING day and I am SOSOSOSOSOSOSOSOSO proud of my little horse!