atropa
Well-Known Member
I have had my new part bred (25% TB) Highland Pony since October, and as she lived out for most of winter I just plugged quietly away with her. Yesterday marked our first ‘outing’ together, and I had picked what I thought was an easy ask – a local showing show just 15 minutes down the road, one in-hand class and one walk-only ridden class. I’m not particularly into showing and haven’t done much of it, so I knew our turnout and my outfit wouldn’t be quite up to scratch but I was looking forward to a fun day out and hoping for a positive experience.
My OH and I spent an enjoyable couple of hours in the sun on the Saturday evening bathing her and combing out her tail, then a slightly less enjoyable couple of hours after that frantically tack and boot cleaning.
Sunday morning dawned bright and crisp, we got everything loaded up and got the pony onto the trailer first time – this was a win already for me as I have an older mare who is a total PITA to load, and I have only had the pony on the trailer twice before. We tootled off to the show, with me towing particularly carefully in order to give her a positive ride experience. Now the pony has been a huge hit with me since I bought her, so far she has proven to be really chilled out about most things, therefore I was not expecting the whirlwind of horror that she turned in to once we arrived K
When we first arrived, she would not stand calmly tied up to the trailer, her eyes were on stalks and she was wearing a trench in the ground from pacing from side to side, calling loudly and tossing her head wildly every time we tried to get near her with our various implements of torture, aka hoof oil and a dandy brush. With my OH’s help I managed to get her bridle on her, we took the executive decision that it didn’t matter that half her mane was on the wrong side of her neck, and he took her off on a ‘calming’ walk around the car park whilst I hurriedly changed into my show gear. He returned a short while later with a slightly less irate pony, we spent FIVE.SOLID.MINUTES trying to tuck the loose end of her fastened noseband into it’s keeper (every time we touched it her head went up in the air) and finally managed to wrangle her into the warmup. Now credit where credit is due here, I’m unsure if she has ever done much travelling/working away from home, and the show had turned out to be a lot busier than I expected. There was a single warm up ring for the whole show, several placid looking natives dotted around the top with owners chatting and doing last minute touch ups, some beautifully ridden show ponies in the bottom half of the warm up, and then there was me being towed around by 14.1 hands of unruly partbred Highland.
I started out attempting to walk her around on both reins whilst avoiding parked horses, which really ended up more with me skiing at her shoulder as she jogged circles around me. At one point I asked her to stand and she actually reared, something she hasn’t done before, as OH and I exchanged embarrassed glances. Eventually though, I did get her settled enough to walk around, using a pole on the ground to try and keep her concentrating. I even managed to get her standing by asking her for a couple of seconds at a time and then moving quickly on. By the time we were called into the class, I was a sweaty mess and seriously ready to take her swiftly out again if she started acting up. Luckily, she seemed to have calmed enough at this point to actually complete the class without too much incident, but the extreme head shaking and the extremely loud donkey braying continued for the entire time, and we had to circle every 3 minutes or so during the lineup.
Amazingly, she did stand nicely for the judge to look at her conformation, so I’m hoping at least that I can get a nice professional photo from it. Anyway, needless to say we came a thoroughly deserved last place, and received a nice pink special rosette but unfortunately no comments from the judge which I was a bit miffed about. Obviously her behaviour was terrible and technically she was in the wrong class as a partbred in a M&M class but she does have Highland looks and with it being a local show there were very few suitable classes for her to enter.
Anyway, having survived it, we walked back to the trailer and managed to tie her up with her hay net again. By this point my poor OH was freezing, so we had a roll, cake and tea and Pony alternated between standing quite nicely eating her haynet and pacing/shouting her head off.
There were still around 7 classes to go before my ridden one so I decided for all our sakes to call it a day and end it on a….high? note. We packed up, got her loaded first time again and set off home.
Overall a slightly disappointing first outing – I think I have been spoiled as both my bigger mares, despite being nuttier, both settle really well working away from home, and I just wasn’t expecting Pony to blow her mind so much. But I am trying to focus on the positives (loading and settling from an excitement level of 10 to about a 6) and seeing it as giving me lots to work on.
My plan going forward:
-Excitability: practice a lot more short, easy journeys with her in the trailer. Work as much as I can with her with other horses in the school. Keep taking her out to some quieter, lower key events to try and get her used to it.
-Behaviour: start introducing some groundwork sessions into our work. She can be a little bargey especially with throwing her head around, and I have not done as much work to address this as I should have done as it doesn't translater under saddle. It seemed to be seriously exacerbated on the day of the show, so much so that we wondered if she might actually have been irritated by something we had used the previous day during her bath. In future I will ensure that only water touches her face, and I will be having her teeth, bridle and bit checked just in case there is something there annoying her.
-Show planning: if going showing in future, try to choose classes that are close together!
Thank you to anyone reading this far, I tend not to concentrate too much on what I’ve learned from taking my horses out and about when I really should use it to improve for next time, so I’m writing this here in hopes of any helpful tips and so I can refer back to it in future and (hopefully!) see how far we’ve come.
My OH and I spent an enjoyable couple of hours in the sun on the Saturday evening bathing her and combing out her tail, then a slightly less enjoyable couple of hours after that frantically tack and boot cleaning.
Sunday morning dawned bright and crisp, we got everything loaded up and got the pony onto the trailer first time – this was a win already for me as I have an older mare who is a total PITA to load, and I have only had the pony on the trailer twice before. We tootled off to the show, with me towing particularly carefully in order to give her a positive ride experience. Now the pony has been a huge hit with me since I bought her, so far she has proven to be really chilled out about most things, therefore I was not expecting the whirlwind of horror that she turned in to once we arrived K
When we first arrived, she would not stand calmly tied up to the trailer, her eyes were on stalks and she was wearing a trench in the ground from pacing from side to side, calling loudly and tossing her head wildly every time we tried to get near her with our various implements of torture, aka hoof oil and a dandy brush. With my OH’s help I managed to get her bridle on her, we took the executive decision that it didn’t matter that half her mane was on the wrong side of her neck, and he took her off on a ‘calming’ walk around the car park whilst I hurriedly changed into my show gear. He returned a short while later with a slightly less irate pony, we spent FIVE.SOLID.MINUTES trying to tuck the loose end of her fastened noseband into it’s keeper (every time we touched it her head went up in the air) and finally managed to wrangle her into the warmup. Now credit where credit is due here, I’m unsure if she has ever done much travelling/working away from home, and the show had turned out to be a lot busier than I expected. There was a single warm up ring for the whole show, several placid looking natives dotted around the top with owners chatting and doing last minute touch ups, some beautifully ridden show ponies in the bottom half of the warm up, and then there was me being towed around by 14.1 hands of unruly partbred Highland.
I started out attempting to walk her around on both reins whilst avoiding parked horses, which really ended up more with me skiing at her shoulder as she jogged circles around me. At one point I asked her to stand and she actually reared, something she hasn’t done before, as OH and I exchanged embarrassed glances. Eventually though, I did get her settled enough to walk around, using a pole on the ground to try and keep her concentrating. I even managed to get her standing by asking her for a couple of seconds at a time and then moving quickly on. By the time we were called into the class, I was a sweaty mess and seriously ready to take her swiftly out again if she started acting up. Luckily, she seemed to have calmed enough at this point to actually complete the class without too much incident, but the extreme head shaking and the extremely loud donkey braying continued for the entire time, and we had to circle every 3 minutes or so during the lineup.
Amazingly, she did stand nicely for the judge to look at her conformation, so I’m hoping at least that I can get a nice professional photo from it. Anyway, needless to say we came a thoroughly deserved last place, and received a nice pink special rosette but unfortunately no comments from the judge which I was a bit miffed about. Obviously her behaviour was terrible and technically she was in the wrong class as a partbred in a M&M class but she does have Highland looks and with it being a local show there were very few suitable classes for her to enter.
Anyway, having survived it, we walked back to the trailer and managed to tie her up with her hay net again. By this point my poor OH was freezing, so we had a roll, cake and tea and Pony alternated between standing quite nicely eating her haynet and pacing/shouting her head off.
There were still around 7 classes to go before my ridden one so I decided for all our sakes to call it a day and end it on a….high? note. We packed up, got her loaded first time again and set off home.
Overall a slightly disappointing first outing – I think I have been spoiled as both my bigger mares, despite being nuttier, both settle really well working away from home, and I just wasn’t expecting Pony to blow her mind so much. But I am trying to focus on the positives (loading and settling from an excitement level of 10 to about a 6) and seeing it as giving me lots to work on.
My plan going forward:
-Excitability: practice a lot more short, easy journeys with her in the trailer. Work as much as I can with her with other horses in the school. Keep taking her out to some quieter, lower key events to try and get her used to it.
-Behaviour: start introducing some groundwork sessions into our work. She can be a little bargey especially with throwing her head around, and I have not done as much work to address this as I should have done as it doesn't translater under saddle. It seemed to be seriously exacerbated on the day of the show, so much so that we wondered if she might actually have been irritated by something we had used the previous day during her bath. In future I will ensure that only water touches her face, and I will be having her teeth, bridle and bit checked just in case there is something there annoying her.
-Show planning: if going showing in future, try to choose classes that are close together!
Thank you to anyone reading this far, I tend not to concentrate too much on what I’ve learned from taking my horses out and about when I really should use it to improve for next time, so I’m writing this here in hopes of any helpful tips and so I can refer back to it in future and (hopefully!) see how far we’ve come.