Memory Monday: Jumping In the Deep End

Most people have seen a photo or seven of the filly.  There is one if you haven't.

Well, let's go back a few years.  I wanted to breed my mare.  It wasn't a passing thought and she is a very well bred, proven broodmare.  I thought about my goals and I wanted a "sport horse".  OK, a little ambiguous, but I wanted something that could comfortably do dressage and be shown on the Arabian sport horse circuit. 

A friend and I sat online and chatted for hours about various stallions we liked and pros and cons.  I went ahead and visited a local stallion and was impressed by his accomplishments and his movement.  He was bred for trot, a la Arabian english pleasure style, but had a good strong body and good engagement behind.  

So there you go.  But in talking to the stallion owner, I learned that he was nominated to a futurity program.  The idea being that if the resulting foal was nominated in-utero, it would be eligible to enter this competition and be eligible for payback money.  I was able to purchase the auction breeding (more selective and more potential money to win) and off we went.

Let's fast forward a little.  The filly was born and husband and I still wanted to go to this futurity.

Only problem is I had never even shown a horse in halter.  Ever.

OK, step one.  Found a halter trainer.  Her trainer was kind and focused a lot more on showing sport horses in hand which is cool because really, while I wanted to show at this futurity, I didn't want a horse that would just stand and quiver whenever a whip was present.

OK, at least the horse was getting trained.

My husband went ahead and decided to show her at a schooling show for experience.  He is pretty proud of the fact that he beat other horses, including a young child.  He had actually never even seen a halter class until he showed up that day.  Goof ball.

We packed up the yearling filly, the equipment, and headed out an epic journey.  Unfortunately, the trainer had a conflict so it was just going to be us.  Oh geeze.

You know normal people work on going to schooling shows first and then do say, you know major events later in their career.  I apparently decided to do things backwards.

We survived.  We had good compliments and a few people were very surprised on her breeding as she is bred to be quite an athlete, not just primarily "pretty".  ;)  

I was happy to get through it with the help of a very kind gate keeper and ring steward.  The judges were pretty cool too.  The thing is I am hard of hearing and I didn't realize how much you truly do have to hear to even stand a horse up in the arena, let alone a major event with online streaming and international attention.  So, in a hobbled together kind of way, we made it work.  :)  I didn't place, but it was a very large, very deep class with major money horses.  It also lasted forever, or so it seemed.  I think it was about an hour or so. 

So there you go.  That was my first show and class ever.  I survived, horse survived, and it makes for a good story. 

We did end up showing in another halter class and won.  OK, so we were the only entries...but hey, we were still there! 

How about everyone else?  How did your first show go?