May Flowers show

Well, I can now say that a successful school the night before a show has nothing to do with the actual dressage test you end up riding!  Oh well.  It may be May (HA!) but it was still cold so I ended up leaving my fleece jacket on and showing in that.   I thought that my braid came out really well this time although I really need some nicer cold weather and/or wet weather show stuff. 

I had to take Annie to the other indoor to warm up for dressage as people were lunging in the first one.  She snorted for about 10 minutes until she finally settled down and I got some good work out of her, not as nice as the night before, but not bad. 

My suspicions are confirmed that Annie has memorized her dressage test and has figured out that I don't whack her in the dressage ring as she started sucking back almost immediately.  You can see me doing some light whacking and kicking in the video (which is all blurry for some reason).  She tried to pick up her canter ahead of time and made mare faces, and she tried to grind to a halt a few times.

Her canter wasn't too bad though.

After we came down from the right lead canter she almost stopped.  I put leg on, then kicked and she sucked back behind the bit and sulked.  So not wanting to make this a repeat situation for the next show I whacked her.

She gave me mare face and bucked a bit so I figured we were already screwed and I could just go ahead and whack away. Especially since instead of going forward she sulked.   So I really whacked her.

So we came in dead last.  Again.

After that we moved onto jumping.  I was confident and in control warming up for show jumping.  Usually I'm going AHHHHHHH Let's get this over with as fast as possible!

I walked into the ring still calm.  Here are our jumping faces.  Annie's is much cuter. All jumping photos by Lee Ann Zobbe.

 

and had a not very fast but organized, calm, and FUN round over fences!

 

Yayyy!!!!!

We ended up with a 4th place ribbon, which is one notch up from Heartland and NOT LAST!!

After that we did a little XC schooling, which was shortened up by a storm coming in and me falling off.  On the grass.  Not going over a fence.  Or near a fence.  Annie tripped and fell over something on the ground and went all the way down and I came right off.  A little bit of whiplash, a sore shoulder (my bum one, why is it always the bum one?) and what I am pretty sure is a hoofprint shaped bruise on my inner thigh.

I did end up jumping a few XC fences and trotting through the water, and after much encouragement I jumped out of the water up the bank!!!!!!

So we have more work to do in our dressage tests, maybe doing a different test at the next show?  I'd also like to canter my entire round next time since I felt so secure and comfortable at this show.  Then after that maybe BN?