Gia - sessions 951 and 952 - War Horse Schooling and Show

 Gia and I went to the War Horse Schooling and Show this weekend at the Carolina Horse Park.  This was our first show since she has been in training at CDP.  When I first got on her on Saturday morning to head out for stadium schooling, she was VERY charged.  She felt like she was going to go up in the front and up in the back, all at the same time.  Forward was very hard to get as well.  Kicking or smacking with a whip were not going to work because she felt extremely overreactive.  My goal was to help her relax, and become less reactive to my aids.  I had her follow Butch up to stadium, so that gave her something to focus on for a little bit.  Once in warm up, I just had her walk back and forth over a pole, encouraging her to reach low and deep until she started to let go.  Once she did, we tried the same thing at the trot.  That helped her a lot, so we were able to get over a few warm up jumps before it was our turn in the ring.  Once in the ring, she got nervous again, and started to get resistant to going forward again.  When I did get her to go forward, and over the jump, she then rushed away from the jumps, almost bolting.  I ended up having to do a lot of circling in between the lines of jumps to help get her back together.  She was quite wild.  We made it through round one, but decided to go back and do another round to try to clean things up.  It was a little bit better, and she did listen a little better the second time.  I was able to get by with fewer circles.  

Moving on, we went to school cross country.  Luckily, once we got out there, her demeanor seemed to change, not right away, but gradually, from jump to jump.  She started to relax and enjoy herself a little more, and by the end, she was very relaxed and much more obedient!

On show day, we started our warm up in a quieter area near the barns.  We did a lot of walk/trot transitions, and leg yields and haunches-in.  She was very obedient.  We did a little bit of canter transitions before we moved to the main warm up area.  She was about the same in there until I added the canter transitions again.  She started to throw in some bucks during her transitions.  I was able to get maybe one ok canter in each direction before we had to go in the show ring.  Somehow we managed to pull off a pretty decent test. I thought it felt horrible - very sloppy in my geometry and position, but after looking at the video and test scores, it was apparently not that bad.  We ended up scoring a 29.7% and started our day out in first place!

Our stadium warm up was much better than the day before.  Gia came out much quieter and much more relaxed and obedient.  We warmed up with a little bit of trot in each direction, with a little bit of lengthening and collecting at the trot.  Then I put her over the crossrail, vertical and oxer a few times.  She jumped beautifully and relaxed, and even cantered off nicely a few times.  In the show ring, we had a fairly nice round!  They had added a few more decorations since the day before, and she was a little nervous, but I asked to go forward, and she did, and then she responded to my aids very well - going forward, and half halting when I asked.  The turns were quite sharp, but she came back fairly well.  We ended up going double clear!  Our cross country round also felt quite nice!  It was fast, but she jumped everything well.  She was only worried about one or two things, and she galloped through the water with no problems at all!  We also jumped double clear, so we ended up finishing on our dressage score and help on to our first place!