Young Grasshopper

Trask and I completed our first eventing derby-style show! He is officially a little grasshopper now.

A facility that I used to ride at a lot growing up has now started to offer eventing derbies. I think they had one or two before this show, but it's a hard thing to find in our area and sounded low key so I thought I'd enter Trask. We haven't done a whole lot of jumping so I entered him in the teeny-tiniest division, Grasshopper.

We had two really great rides before the show. I've been trying to ride him outside more because he's perfect in the arena, but can get a little fresh and switch his listening off a bit when we're outside. The first few times I ever rode him outside I was pretty sure we had no brakes to speak of... But he's getting much better!

I think a big helper was getting better control of his shoulders. When he has his little baby meltdowns, he just runs his outside shoulder right through my aids, which is very bad if you are, for instance, on a trail ride along the edge of a cliff... Anyways, he's doing much better now that we have been warming up on a "square" where I ask him to bring his shoulders around 90 degrees in the corners. I have much better control over his shoulders now and he's not blowing through my leg as much.

We jumped our first little course right before the show. Mostly we've just been jumping one or two jumps at a time, but we strung together a tiny course of five fences. He was awesome! He sometimes rushes towards the barn, but when we were jumping he loped along without rushing, he did come in a little crooked at times, but never tried to run out and jumped very willingly. I was super happy with him!

Friday I hauled him down for the show. The one thing I didn't quite like about this show was that it was twice the cost of the usual eventing derbies we enter (one division + an overnight stall). I might not attend in the future because of this factor but we'll see. I got him a stall because they charged a haul-in fee and the stall was only $10 more than the haul-in fee. Plus, I figured it would be good for him to be ridden around the grounds beforehand since he can be a little nervous in new environments.

He was super good and we rode in both the dressage arena and outside around the course, we were allowed to jump the warm-up jumps and I got to see how the course was layed out. The course is just a stadium course of 10 jumps, then 8 cross country jumps laid out in a circle. So nothing too exciting or challenging. He absolutely loved jumping the tiny logs they had for the grasshopper division and I even jumped him over the inviting BN log they had out. We spent a majority of the time desensitizing him to the large canopy and strands of plastic flags. It was really breezy so everything was flapping in a terrifying, horse-eating way. Eventually he got used to it and I was very happy when I put him away for the night.

All the horse eating things

Of course once I looked over the course map I worried a bunch all night. The last jump of the stadium was marked as the hay bales... he's never jumped hay bales and they're pretty big for a grasshopper division!

The next day he warmed up pretty tense and worried for dressage. Of course there was a giant tractor moving the manure pile and he could see it from the warm-up arena. It was LOUD and he was distracted by it. But once he relaxed I was really happy with how he felt. My mom and bf came to watch which was fun.

We entered the arena for Intro test B.  We trotted and trotted and trotted around the outside of the dressage ring for what felt like forever. We sniffed the judge's table. And finally we just walked and walked for a while until the judge FINALLY rang the bell. We did our first halt and saluted the judge. And then stood there... and stood there.... and she never nodded back so I just went on, hoping I hadn't missed something. They had given us enough time outside the ring that he was fine with the judges booth and there was no spooking like our first show. He did his first circle, then came walking around the corner facing the stands, where my mother, in her neon orange shirt, was standing at the rail trying to video our round, and halted dead, staring at her. He started backing up and she realized what was happening and sat down. As soon as she did, we were able to continue on, I was cracking up. He is such dumb-dumb sometimes!

Overall, the test was really good. Our free walk was fantastic, he was relaxed and attentive. He wasn't 100% soft and steady in the bridle the whole time, but I was very happy with the test and it was a huge improvement over our first show.

Guess what we scored?? A whopping 80% for a second place. I couldn't help but laugh at how extraordinarily off the judging was. We got mostly 8's and a few 9's. I have no idea who was judging, but she definitely was not a dressage judge. It just made me giggle... especially the walk movement where he halted and backed up, we scored a 7 with the comment "silly horse!" I know it's a schooling show and they want to make it a good experience for the green horses, but it just made me laugh.

We had a whole three and a half hours until jumping so I put Trask away and napped in the truck. I walked the course briefly and saw with relief that the hay bale jump that I was so worried about had been parted so all we had to do was go between the bales. That made me feel a lot better. All the stadium jumps were just poles on the ground with flower boxes. I wasn't worried about the flowers because all the jumps that we've been practicing with at home have flowers and he's never cared about them.

Warming up was very hectic and Trask was pretty worried and kind of freaking out a little. "We're in a field! With other horses! OMG the other horses are cantering! In a field! OMG that horse is cantering by itself all the way over there, what's wrong?!?!?!" <- pretty much his internal monologue the entire time. He absolutely could not handle the warm up stadium jumps and I kept losing his shoulder to the left and he'd refuse the jump, then get extremely upset when I tapped his shoulder with my crop. Finally I ditched my crop as it was just making the problem worse and once we finally got a nice straight jump we just went for a walk. I tried to stand and watch the riders go before us, but he started trying to rear (sigh...) so we just walked.

Once we started the course though, the fun really began. He immediately refused the first fence... twice. Luckily the time didn't start until we did the first jump, so the refusals didn't count. We finally made it over the first jump, but then refused the second jump. When he finally jumped it, he leaped so big I hit the brim of my helmet on his neck. It was wonderful. The third jump was much the same but finally by the fourth jump he was in the groove of things and we were able to just trot around the course. Finally we got through the hay bales and picked up a canter for the cross country part. He was absolutely perfect for this part. I think he really enjoyed himself! Internal monologue was more like "This is awesome! I'm such a champion, look at me go! I'm jumping things! Whoooo!"

I was very happy with him the entire time we were cantering over the logs. He never rushed (there were some scary bolting horses out there) and he never hesitated over the jumps. Even when we got to the very last one... it was decorated with flowers. I was like great, he's gonna refuse the very last fence. He just pricked his ears up and wiggled a little bit but didn't hesitate and popped over it. I was so proud! He easily came back down to a walk too. Good baby!

I had to leave before the final placing was done, but I was pretty sure we were out of the ribbons because none of the other horses had refusals.

I ended up getting second out of six horses! I have no idea how. The scoring makes zero sense to me, but I love ribbons so I'll take it. I picked up my ribbon the next day but I was kinda bummed since they also had separate ribbons for a TB/half TB (Trask is half TB) high point in each division, that we actually won first place in our division for the weekend. But she never gave me that ribbon, nor did we get our prize to go with the ribbon we did get (both first and second place were supposed to get prizes in addition to the ribbons). When I'm paying that much for a schooling show I want all the ribbons/prizes I can get! So I was bummed about that.

For a one-person run show, it did go fairly well. I absolutely know how hard it is to run a show from experience so she gets all my kudos for doing such a good job by herself, but hopefully she can get a few things smoothed out before I come back, namely an actual dressage judge, someone to run the office while she does the timing for jumping, appropriate ribbons, better scoring for the jumping phase, etc. But I had a really fun time and it was really good for Trask!