The Daffodil Summer Show........Wrapping Up.......

Part 1

It seems like the Daffodil All Arabian Horse Summer Show happened eons ago and here I haven't even finished posting about it yet. I suppose my ability to get off track so easily reflects my overall feelings about the show. It was a brief respite from a chaotic and stressful life.

I did ride one more class for that show. It was on Sunday morning, so that meant I again got up at the crack of dawn dragging my b*tt down to the Puyallup Fairgrounds to school my horse before the morning session. I fed horses for all those I was stabled with and then Legs and I headed out to the arena to try to fit in some more galloping.

There was one horse out there schooling when we arrived but I was able to get some galloping in before anyone else arrived. Legs seemed to be more responsive to moving out on the second day. I even had to remind him a couple of times that while he could gallop, he wasn't free to just run off. Still it didn't take much to intimidate him. I had to be careful to make my intentions clear.

Once more horses had arrived on the scene, I went to working at getting more collection from my horse. I pushed the horse's hip to the inside. Then I tipped his nose to the inside as well. I had to block his outside shoulder to stop him from dropping it and is was pushing him forward for all I was worth.

Legs was resistive to this at first but gradually settled in to a pretty decent lope before we were through. His jog still left something to be desired but it was way better than it had been the preceding day.

I think it was the select rider class that I had that Sunday morning. I had hoped at least in this class we'd place higher in the ribbons. Despite Legs vast improvement from the other classes, that just didn't happen but at least we had a clean ride.

All in all the Summer Show was nothing more than the distraction it was supposed to be. My horse didn't do nearly as well as he had at the Spring Show and it was a little discouraging.

There was one really good thing about the Summer Show experience. Legs did not spook at one single thing. Not during schooling, in the warm-up or in one single class did my horse jump out from underneath me. I think this is the first clean show I've had since this whole fiasco began with the dropped cell phone in the spring of 2008. That alone was enough to say that our trip to the Summer Show was worthwhile.



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