Well that was interesting

You know it's bad when your trainer gets one look at the horse show judge and says "uh oh". There probably isn't going to be something good following that. Turns out that my trainer had testified against our judge at yesterday's schooling show in a court case regarding an injured horse. Uh oh, is right. I think the judge was professional about it but wasn't particularly inclined to be nice to any of us.

Final results - The kiddo got a 1st in halter, a 2nd in showmanship and a 5th in equitation. I got a 5th in equiation that I was totally not expecting. It was nice to place at all considering my lovely horse was a wreck.

Here's what happened. I'm glad the kiddo did the halter/showmanship classes, and they did well in them but I didn't get a chance to warm up and school Grace. In her first riding class she was so distracted and fast and the niece never corrected her so by the time I got to my eq class (there were no breaks because the classes were small and back to back) I spent most of my time schooling her in my class. I DQed myself in my pleasure class riding with two hands just to get her paying attention but by the end she looked much better. Grace probably had the most potential of any of the stock type horses there. She's so cute and everybody loved her. She's going to do well if we can get her focused. We'll be going to some more shows maybe to just ride in the warm up arena and get her used to it.

My stirrups on my show saddle are still too long and I couldn't keep my saddle straight, but here's the first of the pics. I have better ones coming. The niece looks cute on my looky-loo, head in the air goofy mare. At least we don't look as silly in the clothes as I thought we would. Everyone loved Grace in the halter/showmanship. She was so cute. She and the niece look really good together. Now the niece person just needs to learn to get a little more assertive.