Monday, September 5, 2016

Horse Show Hangover

There's something about a horse show.

We pay money to be sleep deprived, exhausted, spending just about every waking moment watching our horses, our friends, being too hot, being too cold, being hungry, or some combination of the above list.

Chili and I had a successful horse show.  I always think it's successful when we remain upright on the horse.  ;)

We won the dressage suitability class (9 on our trot!) and a novice hunt class.  My friend also showed her in the groom's class for blue ribbon.  Also surprising were 2nd places in Arabian halter both days, since while Chili has some good Arabian characteristics, she really doesn't fit the typical Arabian halter horse mold.


Chili as a two year doing the halter horse thing


RH Triana, a very successful Arabian halter mare

So regardless, I was pretty pleased with the ribbons.  The judge on Sunday came up to me after the Arabian halter class and made sure that I knew that he really liked my horse's topline and that I should be proud of that.  I've never had that remark before, so I thought that was interesting.  :)




Overall, we ended up with ribbons in a variety of classes, including halter, showmanship, ground driving obstacles, in-hand trail, hunt seat, open sport horse under saddle, and costume.

When she won the couple of large classes on Saturday, she had enough points to qualify for reserve champion high point Arabian.  Ta dah, fancy (ok, not so fancy) trophy.  :)

I'm going to need to find something to do with these ribbons soon.  I have them hanging on racks where my Breyer horses are, but I am beyond running out of room.  Last year, I began taking down anything that wasn't 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, but not sure if should keep up some more of the sentimental ribbons.

Also unfortunately, I didn't mark which classes were which.  However, I do volunteer and work with this show, so I know that I will be typing up the results for official posting online in the coming weeks, so hopefully I can come back later to record which classes were which.

This morning was definitely a case of major horse show hangover.  I slept until almost 10 am and then couldn't really decide to move until almost 3 pm.  Went to the barn to clean out my trailer, since it looked like a small supernova imploded in there.  I had friends quickly load my tack last night since I was trying to leave, so I didn't have to haul in the dark (because I am still a giant chicken), so that meant my hunt coat was hiding in my tack trunk, horse cookies were kind of gooey in my truck cab, and I am not quite sure where everything else ended up.

But, in the end, it's all worth it to spend time demonstrating the hours of hard work and sweat.  I truly enjoy most of my horse show family and it is a great reunion to see the same people year after year.  We cheered each other on, fixed chaps, corrected wrong numbers, held horses, lint rolled each other, and everything in-between.

I love showing rated breed shows, but sometimes, I think I enjoy this easy going attitude of a well run, well judged open shows too. 

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