When everything doesn't go as planned

Our 2015 show season didn't start out the way it could have and with that came with quite a bit of disappointment and frustration. With that being said none of it was with my horse, it was purely on me, which only makes it more frustrating!

He thinks living at this place would be acceptable

I was going to wait to post till I got my hands on the video and could watch it but it was pretty obvious while riding it what was missing and it was confirmed with the judges comments, I was in no way riding him like a 2nd level horse. We had a pretty hard lesson on Monday and I thought that I had made some headway on those issues throughout the week but in the ring I just lost it all. And by all, I mean all! I think that two issues going into our test was that I got on him too early (even though we did a lot of walking warm up) and he felt tight and nervous in warm up. Im not sure if it had to due with the more upper level riders in the small arena with us (schooling temps, half passes, etc) that were kind of everywhere but either way our warm up was less than ideal. I felt kind of stuck and unsure of how to get us out of the hole I dug us into!

Pretty proud of this braid!

Before going to do our test I felt like we had made some progress and just tried to focus on keeping him relaxed and moving off my leg. Heading into our test I pretty much just dropped him and couldn't ever get him where I needed him. It wasn't that we didn't do any of the movements it was just that they were all lacking in some area, except our free walk, Pony is always happy for a free walk! Generally we can put in a solid test with areas lacking and areas where we do very well but this one felt like I was fighting a losing battle with nothing coming together. It was more of a close your eyes and pray it ends soon kind of a thing!

Judge commented "SO freaking cute" on his test. Yes, yes he is!

Wouldn't mind this view every day while riding

On the plus side, there is no where to go but up! We still have a lot of work ahead of us and a lot to learn. Our struggles are not in areas such as spookiness or lack of obedience and the judge did comment that it was a "nice, clean test which is super". Now it is just a matter of putting all the pieces together in the show ring like we can at home. I think I need our trainer to make an audio recording that I can listen to while at shows, now that would be helpful! In the end we got a 62% (they didn't calculate it for me so when I first did it I thought we got under that, every little bit helps!). At the end of the day my horse is home, happy, stuffed with treats, and probably calling our trainer to tell her that his mom needs to learn to ride better :)