Pacific Rim All Arabian Horse Show - Saturday Morning Part 2

Note: on these videos there is a delay in the beginning where the schedule was recorded and then a lapse before the class play. My video editor won't work on these files for some reason so I wasn't able to take this out, so hang in there and you'll get to the video of the classes.

Part 1

The Sweepstakes Western Pleasure Amateur Owner to Ride class was the very next class in the ring. I rode Legs out of the ring from the disastrous 40 & over and waited for the last horse to exit. Then I turned the horse around and rode right back into that arena that had scared him so badly.

As the other horses filed in behind me, I rode my Arabian horse straight to the scary corner and parked him. I kept looking over my shoulder to watch for the gate to close but the angle was odd and hurt my back so I asked some observers on the rail to please tell me when the gate was closing.

Technically a judge is not supposed to begin judging the class until the gate is closed. It shouldn't count against a rider for stopping or even schooling as long as that gate is still open. So I thought I'd take advantage of that and let my horse look around that corner and see there was really nothing there to frighten him.

Once the people on the rail told me the gate was closing, I moved my horse off at the jog. He was a bit stronger than he had entered in the previous class and still not quite as fluid as he'd been before the wreck. Under the circumstances, I thought the horse was giving me the best that he had. I just couldn't help but wonder what it was going to take to fix this stuff.

When asked to lope my horse was high headed and a bit strong so I circled the horse at the far end of the arena to get him underneath himself before we went down the rail. That helped to slow the horse up and he did drop his head a bit. However, he wasn't carrying it where he had been earlier.

The horse was just not as smooth as he had been before the disaster in the first class. The second way of the ring the horse raised up again at the transition into the lope. While he stayed nice and slow getting him to drop his head was difficult. The transition down to the jog was reasonable and the jog was reasonable too......a bit faster than we'd been schooling but still better than at the last show.


While the ride was better than the last show, I just didn't have the soft responsive horse I'd had earlier. Although I can't complain with back to back classes after such a wreck having the ride I had says a lot about the horse. I was pleased that he gave me as much as he did.

I think we placed sixth in this class out of 8. Since I wasn't really paying much attention to the horses around me, I couldn't tell you if that was what we deserved or not. The only thing I'm sure of is that my horse still isn't going the way that I would like but we're getting better each time so we're heading in the right direction. Sooner or later we'll get there.

To be continued..............

Walk Trot

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