Simon’s Thoughts on Flat Classes

September 18, 2013 Lauren Mauldin Comments 23 comments

After four beautiful rounds of jumping this past weekend, my trainer informed me that I needed to do the under saddle classes as well.

Simon and I hate flatting.

People say that it’s the race horse in him, but he never really raced and the truth is he’s almost as bad schooling at home as he is in the ring. I just don’t think he’s quite figured out what under saddle classes are all about.

but as soon as we pick up some speed, we both get a little nervous

“I will trot like no other horse has trotted before!”

“Maybe the goal of a flat class is to look like an Arabian?”

“Maybe you have to be yellow to win a flat class!”

9800933733_dc006d389a_c — “What? There are two of these!?!”

9800876214_3f5452df31_c — “I will dressage this flat class to death. See my dressage? My dressage is awesome.”

9800857165_d907bc92b5_c — “Hey… I think this is a horse race I can actually win!”

9800890466_279550a123_c — Saddlebred country pleasure anyone?

9800887014_69bbf22514_c — “I don’t know what to doooooooo… Imma just going to curl my head and canter until it’s over.”

9800891824_5eccfa6e3a_c — And then we both think “oh thank you Jesus this is over!”

23 thoughts on “Simon’s Thoughts on Flat Classes”

Love the captions. 🙂

Oh Simon!

Lauren Mauldin says:
September 18, 2013 at 11:36 am
Pretty much 🙂
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Y’all look great in the photos!! Poor Simon..I think him and Spirit would get along great. Spirit’s favorite thing to to pretend he is a race horse/giraffe. Red always has the expression of the yellow horse. “I’m just going to sleep.”

LOL. this cracks me up particularly because Prair LOVES flat classes. She knows what to do in those. (so do I) it’s the whole jumping thing that we have to work on….

Lauren Mauldin says:
September 18, 2013 at 11:37 am
Do you think she could give Simon a call and let him know? hah
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Lol under saddle= imitating every other breed 😉

Flat classes in the grass are the worst! That tells a horse ‘go, go!’ haha. I love the photos and captions, sooo funny. You feel about flat classes what I pretty much feel about dressage… lets just get on to the jumping, please? 🙂

Poor Simon — you can definitely see how stressed he is in his eyes. Guess he wasn’t destined to be the hack winner! But we love him anyways.

Lauren Mauldin says:
September 18, 2013 at 12:52 pm
Yeah… the rapid transitions just fire him up or something. I’m going to have to work on it a lot, but I’m hoping for a calm Simon that can get a piece of the hack one day.
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1. Tracy says:
  September 19, 2013 at 9:29 am
  He’s certainly cute enough to place in the hack I think! Especially from your videos at home, his movement is quite nice (when he’s relaxed, haha)
  Reply

LOL at the captions. Max is usually totally fine in flat classes but I always overthink my position trying to look perfect, therefore becoming stiff. In O/F classes, it’s usually just kind of just go, go, go and over before I know it! Only time to react 🙂

In my one and only show on the Archer, my trainer let me scratch the flat class last minute. Her reasoning was that he was “up”, but I really think she was concerned about us chasing down little persons on ponies.

Love the Arabian-esque picture! He’s a good actor at least 🙂

This post is awesome. I love how much he matches your captions to the “T”.

Your pics from the flat class look like my OTTB’s first dressage test! Haha!!! Her trot work has gotten a little better, but we still have explosive canter transitions… Simon will get the hack class one day- he might be a little grey-er but I have confidence! He’s such a cutie 🙂