Gia - sessions 532 and 533 - Show schooling and competition

 I took Gia to the June War Horse schooling and competition this weekend.  We had reserved stalls for the whole weekend, so she got to practice a lot of patience.  She definitely needs to work on that.  Anytime her stall buddy (Annie) left to school or show, she would get very anxious - pawing, running, kicking, hollering.  I worked with her each time to help her become quieter and more still.  Each time she started to throw a fit, I would circle her in the stall several times, really moving her feet around.  Then I would let her stand still and see if she could keep her feet still on her own.  She would for a minute or two, and then she would start back up again.  As soon as she did, I would circle her the other way a few times.  I had to repeat the exercise several times before she got the idea.  She had done this sort of work before when she was younger and stressed out about horses leaving her.  It's pretty typical of most horses.  She was slightly better by the end, but this is definitely something we will need to work on each time until she realizes that the other horses will always come back.

On the schooling day, I lunged Gia first, then tacked her up to school in the stadium ring.  She did fairly well in warm up, although definitely had some tension.  In the arena, she attempted to buck after each jump, at first.  Each time, I quickly positioned her to the right and sent her forward again.  I was a little bit more stern with her this time out as compared to her last event.  By about half way through the course, she calmed down a bit and only threw in a half hearted buck once or twice.

On the show day, I also lunged Gia, but I did it for much longer.  Since she had been in the stall all night, she had built up a bit more energy, and was quite full of herself.  By the time we were done, she was hot and tired and sweaty.  We were a little late for our dressage warm up, so I hopped on and we walked up.  She was much better behaved than I expected.  On our walk up, she was much less anxious about leaving the barn, and about all the stuff she encountered along the way.  Our warm up was fairly good.  We did a lot of walking and stretching, then transitions with positioning whenever she came against my hand.  When we were in the show ring, she was still a bit nervous, but obedient.  We made it through the test fairly well, earning a lot of 8's and even one 9 for her final halt and salute!  Our final score was 24.7% which put us in first place out of 14 riders!

We didn't have much of a break before we had to head back up for stadium.  I pulled her saddle off and sponged her down and let her dry in front of her fan before putting her saddle back on.  Then we headed up for our stadium warm up.  She was a bit more anxious and energetic, partly because she caught glimpses of some of her friends also competing.  I worked on keeping her attention with a lot of bending, changes of direction, leg yields and positioning.  When we started to jump, there was some bucking interspersed.  Each time, I immediately shut it down with positioning and sending her forward.  There was a lone pole on the ground near the warm up jumps, and at one point, I trotted her over it.  I could feel her immediately start to relax a little bit.  So, I did a figure eight, with the ground pole in the middle.  She started to feel more and more relaxed, so I would occasionally aim her at a jump.  The jumps were much better, and there was much less bucking.  When it was our turn in the show ring, she was still a little nervous, but she went through the entire course with no bucking!  She even cantered a lot of it.  We did pull a couple rails, and did get a few time penalties, but all that doesn't really matter since her behavior and attitude was MUCH better!  We did still manage to finish in second place over all though ☺