Bart: I thought you said you wanted a challenge.
Lisa: Duh. A challenge I can do!
That's about where I am right now. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, I will be riding Marve in the schooling show next month. And I'm already getting nervous.
It doesn't help that my riding has been uneven lately. I haven't written any updates in a while, and it's been tricky because I guess you could see I've been feeling a little bipolar about my riding. My lesson last week went great. My ride yesterday was awesome. But all the other rides in the last week have been really rocky and I felt frustrated for not doing well.
Plus, I am just starting to realize this show is going to be trickier for Marve and me than I thought. Here are the challenges we need to work on:
1. Convincing Marve he does NOT want to chase down the horse in front of him and ride right. on. its. tail. I made this #1 because it has the potential to be a big problem at the show. He's fine until I ride him behind another horse, and then he decides he just HAS to become best friends with the horse's butt. That, coupled with his huge strides, might make our classes kind of...interesting. I do not want to be that girl constantly circling to get away from other horses. I also don't want to forget everything else about my riding for the sake of holding him back. So I need to work on this. It was better the last few times I rode, but sometimes he will revert back to his tail-chasing ways and he becomes difficult to bring back.
2. Sitting trot. This is another tough one. Marve has a horribly rough, bouncy trot. Some of the girls at the stable told me they have a hard time posting to it. (Although, wtf?) I have been practicing sitting to his trot with mixed results. If I slow down his trot (is that cheating?) and get him nice and round (if I'm lucky) then I don't have a big problem sitting to his trot. But when he speeds up or gets a little excited, there is enough room between my ass and the saddle for a little league game. And my position looks horrible in general. Not cool. In the last schooling show I was in, the judge made us go around and around forever at the sitting trot, so I'm kind of dreading this.
3. Showmanship. I have never entered a showmanship class before, but I figured it might be fun. Uh yeah, and I'm just now finding out that Marve seems totally unwilling to trot in hand. I've tried everything but he just walks along with his huge Thoroughbred stride and stares at me and I jog along, pleading with him to pick up the pace. I've never dealt with this before -- usually, if I'm leading a horse and ask him to trot, there's no problems. So I don't know how to fix this. Any help? But almost as embarrassing as the trotting issue is the general emphasis on appearances. I can't imagine what his poor mane will look like when I'm through braiding it. Plus, he's gray (why why WHY couldn't he be chestnut or bay?) and perpetually dirty and no matter how much I curry, he doesn't exactly look show quality.
I guess I better get practicing -- on half halts, sitting the trot, braiding, etc. -- and not get too worked up over a little schooling show. Again, I'm exciting about it...I'm just also a little nervous. I'll keep you updated on our progress.
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