Ready As We'll Ever Be

Show is on Saturday. Ben is clipped, somewhat clean, and feeling good *knock on wood*  On Friday we'll go for a short ride, get a good scrubbin. I'll gather my tack, give it a clean & condition. Prep the hay nets, get the water buckets, pile it all up for quick execution on Saturday morning.

We're not entering any super crazy classes...but we are trying some new things. The first thing is Showmanship. It should be super fun and a good introduction into the arena. Its our first class first thing in the morning. We've been practicing our in hand work - I think we've got it down. Trotting in hand has been interesting- Ben has such a huge trot stride I basically have to sprint/lunge to make it happen for him- haha!

The other classes are pretty standard- we'll start out with some walk/trot eq classes (eek!) to familiarize ourselves with going in the big arena, without the excitement of the canter. We're also entering some w/t/c classes- both equitation and pleasure.

My goal is to get Ben out in a bigger space, in an off-site location. Re-familiarize going out. I'll be honest, I'm a bit nervous with how he'll behave. I'm 80% sure he'll be okay, but there is that niggling 20% that makes my stomach flutter a bit.

My original plan to go out in hunter tack/outfit has been squashed. I failed in finding a hunter saddle at this point. So my plan right now is to go in dressage tack. I'll braid him with dressage braids, and we'll look the part of a dressage horse instead of some wacky hybrid. Its a warm up show, so i'm not sure it'll matter to much...but I'm hoping to get some useable photos out of this. I think all things being equal we may not pin high because I'm fairly certain they will be looking for hunter eq and hunter pleasure horses. Oh well, this outing is so not about the ribbons. I'm sure there will be highs, lows, and in-betweens. I'm sure there will be plenty of laughs, too.

That's it folks, I probably won't be posting until after the show...I'll see ya on the other side!