milliepops
Wears headscarf aggressively
I was going to put this in the WPs thread but decided that such a momentous occasion deserved its own thread 
Plus we need more reports on here so I'm going my bit
Anyone who's missed her, I bought Salty as a new project at the cheapy sales at Leominster in November. Reading between the lines I think she's been started a few times and not actually done a lot of actual work, so it's been a slow and steady process teaching her about being a riding horse. She's been doing arena hire most weeks since the new year and having started out being rather wild and prone to rodeos she's now learning to go and do her job in strange places. So time to go and do a show.
I thought we'd go and do a nice quiet prelim 1, ask for early times, steer round in peace and then head home. Hmmm.
It was snowing this morning and blowing a gale but we thought the journey would be OK as mostly motorway, so set off to the show. we were the third lorry into the car park but almost immediately it filled up and suddenly it was chaos! Not ideal, Salty had her eyes on stalks but got her tacked up and scrambled on trying to distract her from the rubbish bin that was trying to take off in the wind
I'd picked a venue which has 2 warm up arenas, usually no one goes in the one round the back so we headed off there and had 10 minutes of peace by which time S was more or less thinking about me rather than gawping at everything flapping around her. I was just about to canter and then the hoards descended and I decided not to push my luck, she has almost no experience of working around other horses because people at our yard seem to like riding on their own, so 5 kids whizzing around on ponies would have been a bit much. I had put a red and a green ribbon in her tail but people were completely oblivious it seemed, so we parked and watched for 10 mins, and then it was our turn.
She was nicely bold walking round the ring up to the judge, very very inattentive to start with and had a little fright when the horse in the neighbouring arena came close by but she pulled her socks up and tried to do as requested, eventually settling into a decent rhythm. At times she felt like an unexploded bomb so I opted to trot through the canter parts thinking I'd prefer that she just tootles along nicely rather than set off with her tail over her back, esp as we hadn't got out of 2nd gear in the warm up. So we scored a couple of zeros but I couldn't be more pleased with her, she coped fabulously and we've got the first one out of the way!
A sensible moment almost looking like a proper horse (there was plenty of giraffing too )
Cute posing afterwards
First out of one so we decided it was a 1st show rosette instead
Plus we need more reports on here so I'm going my bit
Anyone who's missed her, I bought Salty as a new project at the cheapy sales at Leominster in November. Reading between the lines I think she's been started a few times and not actually done a lot of actual work, so it's been a slow and steady process teaching her about being a riding horse. She's been doing arena hire most weeks since the new year and having started out being rather wild and prone to rodeos she's now learning to go and do her job in strange places. So time to go and do a show.
I thought we'd go and do a nice quiet prelim 1, ask for early times, steer round in peace and then head home. Hmmm.
It was snowing this morning and blowing a gale but we thought the journey would be OK as mostly motorway, so set off to the show. we were the third lorry into the car park but almost immediately it filled up and suddenly it was chaos! Not ideal, Salty had her eyes on stalks but got her tacked up and scrambled on trying to distract her from the rubbish bin that was trying to take off in the wind
I'd picked a venue which has 2 warm up arenas, usually no one goes in the one round the back so we headed off there and had 10 minutes of peace by which time S was more or less thinking about me rather than gawping at everything flapping around her. I was just about to canter and then the hoards descended and I decided not to push my luck, she has almost no experience of working around other horses because people at our yard seem to like riding on their own, so 5 kids whizzing around on ponies would have been a bit much. I had put a red and a green ribbon in her tail but people were completely oblivious it seemed, so we parked and watched for 10 mins, and then it was our turn.
She was nicely bold walking round the ring up to the judge, very very inattentive to start with and had a little fright when the horse in the neighbouring arena came close by but she pulled her socks up and tried to do as requested, eventually settling into a decent rhythm. At times she felt like an unexploded bomb so I opted to trot through the canter parts
thinking I'd prefer that she just tootles along nicely rather than set off with her tail over her back, esp as we hadn't got out of 2nd gear in the warm up. So we scored a couple of zeros but I couldn't be more pleased with her, she coped fabulously and we've got the first one out of the way!A sensible moment almost looking like a proper horse (there was plenty of giraffing too
)
Cute posing afterwards
First out of one
so we decided it was a 1st show rosette instead
so I just quickly explained and carried on 
Why oh why isn't it working any more? 
