Successful Weekend

I'd call it a successful weekend.

Yesterday was a typical Saturday morning.  Went and did barn chores.  My awesome friend J came up from a few hours away to stay for a day and such.  Barn chores go even faster that way!

The semi feral mare looked less like a grey and more like a pinto, so I went ahead and gave her a bath.  Unfortunately, she already has quite the winter coat so she had to stand around for a while to get reasonably dry so I could put her rain sheet on her.

So J had been working with, lunging, and just generally playing around with the little red filly, who really isn't that little anymore as she is two and a half.  But something I had been working on is having her be comfortable by the mounting block.

So, both J and I gave into temptation and sat on the filly.  

That's me on board.  J was holding the lead rope and trying to take a picture on her phone which didn't work so well.  The filly just wanted another cookie, so was trying to follow J forward to get more food.  So there you go.

Not really on doing anything exciting with the filly, but I can at least say I successfully sat on her.  Maybe I should have picked the saddle that has stirrups on next time, but who's worried.

Now for the fun part.

I survived the dressage show with the semi feral mare.  She was a little loud and obnoxious at times when she was feeling a little left alone (which was mostly in the ring).  I had an error on the first test as I forgot the first circle was on the opposite end, but that is life. 

My goals were 

1. Go the right gait 

2.  Go the right direction

3.  Stay inside the ring

Sometimes more difficult than you think with such a mare.  

I'm glad to say that except for my brief operator error with the starting the wrong circle, I succeeded in my goals.

The second test was pretty successful and we scored 8% better.  ;)  The mare mostly kept her mouth shut too and had a couple good moments of being soft and going on the bit.  We even managed to get an 8 on the medium walk.  I think that may have been generous, but hey I wasn't watching, so who knows.

So, there you go.  I bit the bullet and went to the show with the semi feral mare and survived.  :)  I have some good things to work on, so onwards and upwards.