Madison IHSA Show - Day 2

The last day of showing was definitely better.
We had a great judge today. Our riders took high point and reserve high point riders of the day! Congrats, girls!

I, on the other hand, only got a 6th.
I have to admit, I wasn't that crushed. It was my first time competing in this discipline and I wasn't expecting much. All I wanted out of this class was to get my horse to canter without having to kick a bazillion times and you know what? I did it! The girl in the class before me, not from my school, looked like she had a hard time getting him to canter but my brother gave me a good inspiration: "Just pretend it's Brie and she stopped in the middle of the ring AGAIN." It definitely gave me the desire to show that horse who's boss.
My ride was good and I felt beautiful when we cantered, we even got the correct lead! And I never had to correct my diagonals because they were perfect today. He was just a really bouncy ride and I had a hard time sitting deep in the seat and keeping my heels down, so among trying to get my stirrups back to the balls of my feet, I stopped concentrating on keeping him cantering so he trotted...and I still never got my stirrups back where they needed to be.
I feel like as much as I would love to pat myself on the back and ride easier horses at Nell's, I need to be put on the bouncier ones that she has in order to be competitive in the next show...which is at our barn! Home advantage! I only have two lessons until that show so I need to make them count. I'm not even worried about improving my jumping right now: I need to focus on the flat that way I can point up out of there as fast as possible!

Madison ISHA Show - Day 1

This is ridiculous.
Okay so first off, I had a horrible ride. We draw our mounts out of a box and I drew probably the slowest horse ever. It makes me feel better to know that every rider did poorly on him, though. Not as bad as I did--the girl who has a weak leg because if you kick a Paso you'll die. It was a challenge to even get him to trot! It was hard getting him to canter too, even after using a crop. But apparently I didn't use my leg or my crop hard enough. Hopefully I get a better mount tomorrow. I was so disappointed, I can't even begin to tell you.

But to make matters a little bit better, the entire team didn't do so hot. Not that I know the difference, but we're "equitation" riders and the judge was a "hunter" judge. Since we all rode equitation we all placed extremely low, if at all, mostly keeping to 5th and 6th place with our senior rider taking a 4th place. As an experiment, we made our newest member and last rider, who normally rides hunter seat, ride as she naturally does. And guess what?! She won 3rd place!!

Hopefully tomorrow is a better day for all of us. I really hope that I get a better mount tomorrow. I can't stand slow horses, they're so hard to work with!