He Can be Taught!

After Friday's adventures at Loch Moy, I took Satchmo to Full Moon Farm to compete in Baby Beginner Novice. We started off kind of rough in dressage. I thought it was horrible actually. :/ but then I had some time to get my head back in the game. We then went to stadium and I practically beat Satchmo over every fence *lol* At least no refusals!! :P Then we headed to cross country and went clean!! :D There were a few places that we jumped sideways *lol* but we got over none the less!! :D I was SO happy! And SO proud of Satchmo! He really pulled through!! :D We even got 6th place!!! GO US! :D I'm hoping the next Event I actually can get my head in the game starting with Dressage this time....

Cross Country Schooling

Yesterday Cassidy and I went Cross COuntry schooling at Loch Moy with Cathy. (wow that's a lot of Cs) I was terrified I was going to fall off or get hurt or bad things would occur. But it turned out to be an AWESOME day and I LOVE SATCHMO!!! :D First we worked on the ditch. That was scary for Satchmo but Smash practically walked in it *lol* so after a few attempts Satchmo finally tried, too, found out it wasn't so bad and then had no problem! We then went to the Water. dundundun! Our Nemisis! This was much more challenging as Smash was scared, too. We spent the first 10 min getting Smash in the water and then the next 15 getting Satchmo in. The poor thing was SO scared he was shaking!! I've never seen a horse THAT scared of the water! LOL! He finally went in, though, and I think he actually had fun in the water once he got in there! Silly boy! So then we went over to the bank which wasn't a problem at all (weird) and rode a couple made up courses that included all of the elements :) Satchmo was like a real Eventing horse! And Smash did so well, too!! What an awesome day! We got home and poticed them both and they got some star treatment ;) Such good ponies! Today will be show prep day and then tomorrow will be our big event! Here's hoping Satchmo remembers our schooling tomorrow *hope*

Learning

Satchmo and I are slowly learning what we need to do to get over Satchmo's fear of new things. Basically it comes down to the timing of my crop useage and it was off. Yesterday our lesson was so good! Cathy helped me with the timing of the crop and finally we were communicating a bit better. At least there weren't any refusals :P (ok we had 1 but it was better than before)

I'm hoping to get him out cross country schooling on Friday before our Event. I'm terrified of the event :/

2 Shows 1 Post

So I have been a bad blogger. I should've posted all about the Hunter Jumper show we did last month but never got around to it. And now I've also done an Event at Equilibrium. SOOO first paragraph or so will be dedicated to the H/J show and the rest will be about yesterday.

I decided to take Satchmo to CHC for a H/J show for some more practice over fences at a new place. And I wanted him to get experience over the 2'3" fences since we had entered in that division at the Events this year. Well it was probably one of the hottest days in April and one of the slowest shows! Ugh! Poor Satchmo and I had to stand around for hours waiting for our time to ride! We did the 2' division first and placed 5th and 6th O/F. We had no chance at placing in the hack class and I was preparred for that. Then the 2'3" division started and those courses weren't nearly as pretty. But I was looking at the CHC website and it says I placed (4pts) so I'm trying to figure out what my place was to get the ribbon *lol* (we didn't stay long enough to hear the pinnings). So all in all, a very good day for Satchmo! He was actinglike a pro! Not getting too nervous and listening pretty well :)

Yesterday, however, was a whole new ball game. It was raining ALL day long. Miserable. We went into dressage and it was horrendous! He kept slipping on the 20 meter circle and it was SO ugly!! But we got a fairly decent score and the judge LOVED Satchmo :) Then we headed off to try our hand at cross country and that was just disgusting. He was refusing everything because of the footing and at times would jump but mainly not. Finally I pulled out when he down right refused to go over the ditch. I just couldn't take the rearing and backing up and stuff any longer...especially in the rain. Thankfully they allowed us to still do a stadium course and then we called it a day. My mom, however, had an AWESOME day and got 4th place!! :) Very cool!! I'm nervous about Full Moon Farm's upcoming event...but we're going to give it a shot.