joflasher | I need another weekend to recover from the last one

Big horse show this weekend. I'm still drained.

a) Lots and lots of gorgeous horses.
b) Scotty, Carol's 2 year old stallion, won Most Classic Stallion...his price tag just jumped a good thousand dollars
c) watching Scotty try to chew on EVERYTHING. His handler, his show halter, the ribbons dangling off of his show halter, you name it, he tried to eat it.
d) Getting to see the Native Costume class AND go over a costume in detail with its creator. I think I'm going to make one.
e) Finding out Tisa CAN do a flying lead change. I know this because she got the wrong lead and refused to stop cantering long enough to do a simple change. Luckily, she did it right before the judge turned to look at us, so as far as the judge knew, we didn't blow a lead at all. You band people, think the little skip step you do to get on the right foot while marching. Now think of doing it with two set of feet at once. Its kind of a cross between a skip and a full blown buck. That's a flying change. A simple one would be similar to the marcher stopping for a beat and then starting on the correct foot.

a) Bathing a black horse in the pitch dark during a thunderstorm
b) Getting to the fair grounds only to find out that Carol had forgotten water buckets and my girth. Note to self, never believe Carol when she says "I have everything". Always double check. Thank god there was a tack shop set up at on the show grounds. I now own a water bucket and a spiffy new girth.
c) Trying to convince Tisa that the horses in the native costumes were not going to eat her. The one had bells sewn all over and she was utterly terrified of it. I thought she was going to faint when the horse underneathe it all whickered at her.
d) Trying to slow Tisa down while cantering in the ring. Everytime we went past the stands with the crowds cheering, Tisa threw herself out of a controlled canter into a headlong gallop. She also tried to race all the other horses.
e) Riding Tisa at for an 1.5 hours Saturday afternoon in 98 degree weather and 99% humidity while wearing a long sleeve cotton shirt with a choker collar, knee high leather boots and a wool jacket. I thought I was going to pass out when I finally got off. I'm pretty sure Tisa had sun stroke too.
f) Spending all day sunday recovering from the dehydration caused by "e".

All in all, it was an interesting experience. I was definitely outclassed as a rider and Tisa was outclassed training wise. I did get some complements from some professional trainers on what I had done with her. One of the trainers had actually looked into buying her 8 months ago but decided she was too young for what he wanted. He couldn't believe how far she'd come since then. Most of the horses we were competing against have been in training every day for the last 2 years. Tisa's been ridden 2 - 3 times a week for the last 5 months. We didn't embarrass ourselves.

I also got a new appreciation of how BIG Tisa is for an arabian. For some reason, I always think of her as a little horse, maybe because I've known her since she was only a few hundred pounds and a year old. I kept seeing all these big horses at the show and thinking "wow, HUGE arabian". Then I'd see Tisa next to them and realise that she was just as big, if not bigger, than most of them. My little horse isn't so little. Weird.