It had been a really long time since I had taken images I was happy with at a nice horse show. With the heritage Pin Oak Charity Horse Show a mere two hour drive away, I decided to trek out this weekend in search of some AA pony time. And I found ponies, literally. Also junior hunters, adult jumpers, and some AO/junior jumpers. All the pretty horses essentially. Being me, I tried to take a series of photographs to turn into…
First off, thanks everyone for their encouraging comments yesterday. I didn’t get a chance to reply individually to all of them (crazy trying to get ready for vacation and work and life!), but I really appreciate all the support. I am feeling much better about all this! Now, back to day two of the show. Sunday morning rolled in, and I wasn’t exactly feeling bright eyed and bushy tailed. My throat hurt, my head hurt, I was nauseous from worry and…
I have both a ton to say about this show, and nothing at all. Luckily (or not so luckily) for you, I’ll write out the ton I have to say in two parts. For those of you who want the cliff notes, I have both a pessimistic and an optimistic version. Pessimistic: I spent a decent amount of money to go to my year end show, and kinda sucked. Optimistic: I had one of those ‘learning experience’ horse shows that…
When we last left off, I had completed the hunter derby successfully but hadn’t yet fallen off. When do I bust my bum? Stay tuned! After the hunter derby we had what was supposed to be a brief break before the jumpers start, but it ended up being much longer. The 2’0″ jumper division had a decent amount of riders, and they decided to let people take a break before their jump off… which made things take a lot longer….
If you like cliff notes, here’s the high level overview: I had so much fun this weekend. Simon was an absolute rock star. Seriously y’all, he was just so good. I could brag about him for days… and I guess I will be since I’m breaking up the show write up into several posts. There’s just a lot that happened and a ton of photos so I wanted to write everything as detailed as possible without making the show post into a…
I bet I wasn’t the only one who didn’t really know that “big eq” and the Maclay Medal Finals was a really big deal before the Horse Power TV series on Animal Planet. Since I didn’t grow up showing on any type of hunter/jumper (or any) circuit, I had no idea of the big eq world. Even when I did figure out the big eq existed, the classes weren’t usually big in NC and we don’t even have a decent 3’6″…
When we left off yesterday, I had just finished up the ticketed warmup and changed my goal from “hunter derby domination” to “survive hunter derby with a smile on my face.” Since I was almost at the end of the 2’6″ order of go, I put Simon in the trailer (since he could no longer be tied) and watched some of the horse show for a while. The course had a few “surprises” since we couldn’t school all the jumps…
Overall? We did the hunter derby! I had a lot of fun doing it and checking that (hopefully first of many) item off the bucket list. That being said, it was not without any shenanigans. I headed to the show grounds at a reasonable time to meet my trainer and the horses. Since this was a one day show, we didn’t have stalls… which usually isn’t a problem. Historically Simon has been great tied to the trailer. Historically. On my…