Mom's big win!

At our first open show this year I rode in 3 classes.  Western Pleasure walk/trot, Western Horsemanship walk/trot and trail walk/trot.  All 3 were adult classes and I only had 3 others in my class.  I got one 1st, and two seconds.  At the open show last weekend, the day following our Allegan show, I hadn't been on Stanley since the last show!

So Sunday morning I was pretty tired.  Not only had I been show-mom to two the day before and driven home for 2 hours, we'd had a horrible night of storms so I hadn't slept all that great.  After showmanship I got Stanley tacked up in English tack and Equestrian Girl took him out to warm up.  He was a little "up" so this seemed like a good idea.  While she was doing so, our friend Mark rode up on his daughter's horse asking me if I was going to show in the walk/trot classes with him.  Ooops!  I had forgot those classes came first before the hunt seat classes for Equestrian Girl.  I made the decision to scratch from those classes and just do the Hobby Horse class.

The Hobby Horse class  is for rookies - people who have won less than 3 blue ribbons in their show career.  Well that would be me.  It's an equitation class where you first do rail work and then a pattern.  The pattern is the same for this class at every show everywhere!  At first I didn't think I was going to have more than 2 others in the class with me but as they got closer to calling us in, the class grew and grew until there were 10 of us.  I was by far the oldest but that was okay - none of the kids were REAL young so I didn't feel totally out of place.

I went second for doing the pattern.  I knew it wasn't perfect but it was more or less correct.  My circle to the right was a bit too small and the one to the left was a bit too big but they were circles!  Then the others all did their pattern.  All were more or less correct.  But nobody was doing it with an equitation arm like I did.  And some had trouble getting their horses to actually go where they wanted and when they wanted.  Huh.  They dismissed the class.

This club announces the placings from the bottom up.  I wasn't 6th, 5th, 4th, or 3rd.  Did I even place?  I wasn't 2nd.  No, I was FIRST!!!!  What a rush!!  I was first against 9 other people who were all just as green as me.  Wow.

Of course, I hadn't thought to give anyone the camera to take pictures but luckily my friend Tammi came through and got a quick shot of me waiting in the lineup for the patterns to get done.

I didn't have much time to savor my victory - Equestrian Girl still had her western classes but then when she was done...I said I wanted to do the trail class.  I wouldn't be in for high point for the day but I might as well get the point for doing it and we were done so early...  Off we went.  Since it had rained so much and was so muddy, the judge had said show clothes were optional.  While I wore a show shirt and hat for the Hobby Horse class - I went into trail in a t-shirt.  The pattern wasn't bad.

I figured I could handle this and I KNEW Stanley could certainly do it.  He's a trail king - could do that gate blind folded!  We went over the bridge, trotting through the cones down and across the box, through the box and into the chute, back out and through the gate.  Piece of cake!  And a piece of cake it was - we got 1st place!

Yeah, and Equestrian Girl did pretty good too.  But I know darn well she wasn't as excited about any of her wins as I was!!