County District Disaster – Part 3
The story so far: little Lauren and Lydia get a 3rd in Mare halter because they copied showmanship skills from another girl in the class. Little Lauren and Lydia then get called back in the hunter hack class, but Lauren makes an ass of herself by riding poorly… a trend that will continue.
Now let me tell you a little bit about myself: I was probably at least 20-21 years old before I made it through a horse show without going off course and I have been showing horses since I was 14.
The easier the course, the more likely I am to forget it. If each jump is a different color or has different colored flowers, to the point where you can say “outside blue to the inside yellow”… I will do something like this:
1 2 Canter. Blue. 1 2 Canter Blue. 1 2 Canter Blue. 1 2 Canter Green? Yellow? OH MY GOD WHERE IS THE JUMP?!?
For my first two shows with Simon, my goals were simple: get over all the jumps and get over them in the correct order.
My goal during this 4h show? Jump as slowly as possible, because I had convinced myself that my mare was the FASTEST horse at the horse show and we were going to LOSE and be OUT OF CONTROL by maintaining a decent pace.
The course was quite typical – outside, inside, outside, inside. That’s it. I started down the outside line. Omg too fast! Pull pull pull. I turned to the inside line (probably on the wrong lead). Omg too fast! Pull pull pull. Then I turned… to the other inside line.
I was so busy trying to control my “speedy” thoroughbred that I barely heard them excuse me out of the class for going off course.
As for photos, I don’t have any photographic proof that I actually jumped a fence at that horse show, but lucky for you I have some other gems from that era. I am not going to lead you to believe that I jumped any more successfully or with better eq at the show – the reality is it probably looked a lot like this:
Not pretty. After the brief but blazing jumping class, all I had left were two under saddle classes. No jumping. No confusing showmanship patterns, just your normal walk trot canter. How could that go wrong?
Oh, you have no idea.
4 thoughts on “County District Disaster – Part 3”
Haha I just love reading this because it reminds me so much of my own self growing up!! I got my first real horse when I was 11 (before, I had just been riding a 30 year old app who had two speeds, slow and slower) and he was quite the quick one too. Of course, he was a saint for putting up with all of my BS, but poor guy and his poor mouth! Especially when we used harsher bits 🙁 Eventually, when I got older and wiser, we put a snaffle in his mouth and I realized hell, I can control his body with MY body and not tugging on his mouth and all was well. Of course by this time he was 20 and nearing the end 🙁 In our defense, I think its hard to use your body correctly when you’re a tiny pre-teen lacking muscle strength and coordination! And I have many jumping pictures that look quite similar, hee.
Also, I use to forget every course like mad as well. Especially in jumpers. That’s one thing I LOVE about eventing- they freaking number the fences! woo!
I too wonder how I survived the first several years of showing and lived to love showing.
This reminds me so much of a show I did as a teenager!! In my class, there were 4 jumps, 2 on each long side. It was a very simple course – just follow the rails of the arena and go over the jumps, all straight lines, no steering necessary basically. We were supposed to go around twice. Well, I was having so much fun that I went around 3 times! I was so proud of myself and my mare for doing such a good job, imagine my disbelief when they announced over the loudspeaker that I had been disqualified for going off course!! After that, whenever I completed the course, my trainer and family would cheer LOUDLY so I’d know to stop, lol!
Even though it seemed like a disaster, I would have killed to have shown as a teenager. I hope you had fun anyway! :0)