Sticks Jumped!

My kind of horse show is the kind where I'm home by 1pm after my horse jumps her first show jumping round!!!

Stella's kind of horse show is the kind where she spends most of the time stuffing her face while standing tied to the trailer.  Notice her hay dunking bucket in close reach.

Dressage was so so, she was quite looky and after the 18 inches of rain the night before the ring was soggy in spots, and Stella isn't a fan of soggy.  We still managed to not get last place!!!!  She had some nice moments at the end of our warmup where she came onto the bit and started working in contact, something I was pleased with especially considering how busy shows can be.

I had chosen this location due to its friendly nature.  Everything is kind of open and runs into each other so your horse never really gets the idea it is going somewhere isolated.  It ended up being a small show which I thought was perfect for her, although there were plenty of zippy golf carts to give a hard look to.  After she saw a few of them she didn't care at all, which I liked.

Show jumping was literally right after dressage, as in I did my salute and went right to warm up!  This worked out really well, although I'd like her to get into the routine of being tacked up several times, it was nice to just flow one thing into the other to make it no big deal. I warmed Stella up over two groundpoles first before moving onto the crossrails, she stopped and sniffed the first one, walked over the second one, then she was golden.  She jumped and cantered away, and even used BOTH her leads!  I jumped about 7 warm up fences before deciding she was ready to go, I have always thought that anything you don't have at home you aren't going to find at a show.

She marched right into the show jumping "arena" and got down to business like she'd been doing it for months.  She remained forward, listening, didn't spook at anything, and only needed a little bit of leg and some clucking in front of a few of the fences.  The fences she actually jumped she cantered away from calmly.  Well, why am I telling you when I can show you!!!

What a good girl!  I can't possibly be happier with her.