Great Weekend

Diva is a champ!  We arrived about an hour before we thought we would ride, as per the inside scoop text I'd gotten the day before.  Well I would say the epic part of the show was that 30 people had pre-entered and 40 more showed up day of.  Woah!  Our perfect timing ended up being painfully early, as in stand around for 3.5 hours early.  It was good though, the OTTB's got to learn rule number one for shows...patience.  Diva stood with a hind leg cocked, grazed a bit, watched cute ponies, and got compliments for being pretty.  She even stood in line with to get a delicious acai bowl, yum!

She liked the purple bumper and mirrors on the tiny bus.

And getting there so early meant we got to watch all the higher classes, usually local shows peter out at about 3'3", but this one went to 3'9" and there were some great riders.  The craziest thing was this family with a trillion kids that all rode like they lived on horse back.  It was a good slap to the mentality to want all the right 'things' because they had handmedowns (the oldest daughter went through 3'6" with tights and cowboy boots), rope halters (seriously one little arab did the 3'3" in a rope halter), and random breeds (arabs, ponies, a saddlebred, a random brown horse).  They rode the pants off most of the people there, I didn't even get a picture due to being slack jawed the whole time.  I did get to see some of my favorite horses that I used to ride.

Cowboy: an OTTB I rode a few years ago

Reveille: a warmblood/TB mare I rode several years ago

So finally it was time to get on.  We went back to the trailer, put on helmets and bridles and climbed aboard.  A leisurely walk back to the field by the show ring and a quiet walk around until it was nearly our turn and then we braved the edge of the warm-up.  We were entered in ground poles and par for the course warm up was insane so I mostly stayed away.  Finally our number was called and into the big ring we went.

So brave, all by herself in the ring

Not one spook!

She was calm and sensible the first time around and then we waited for the second ground poles class.  Her attention span was shot by that point and she was a bit goofy between the jumps.  That said, the moment I aimed her at her 'jumps' she put her head down and it was all business!  Yes!  I absolutely love a horse who thinks of the jumps as the safe zone, makes showing a blast.

Heels down anyone?

So fancy

Careful now don't want to touch that pole.

Flowers? No problem!

It was a great time...except that I forgot sunscreen...and my face looks like a lobster.  So, I didn't cry as expected, but that may have been due to all moisture evaporating from my body during the long long wait.