And Then There Was Grace...

I have a dread of taking green horses to shows. I was VERY nervous about taking Junebug to his first one and he really didn't do anything crazy and gets better every time. Before Junior I had taken three different horses to their first (or first in a LOOOONG time) shows and all three acted like crazy idiots. Lots of factors are involved in this, but the biggest factors can be classified as 1) mileage (lack of) on the horse and 2) the fear or anxiety (in abundance) of the rider/handler. The first was Gigi who tried to beat me up at the county fair in halter class so I didn't show her in anything else and have only ridden her a few times since. I've spoken of Sonny before. The third was Grace. She was a gorgeous arab filly and sweet as pie. She became my lesson horse during the short time I was at an Arab barn in MN before moving to Ohio. The boss asked if I'd take her to a small open show and I was thrilled. She was fine to load, fine to unload, fine to warm up, fine to braid, fine fine fine. As soon as I remounted to head to our class she started gettin' uppity. We even needed the boss to lead us through the in gate... and then....

Here is the link if you'd rather watch it directly from YouTube.

I still get a little twitchy when I watch that video. She did have some lovely moments but I edited them out for time and because the crazy stuff is much more interesting. Did you notice all those nice paints and QHs we keep passing at warp speed? Yeah... and you wonder why I went and got myself one of those nice calm stock horses?

Grace went on that same summer to win something big at the MN 4-H horse show with a 16 year old kid and is now owned by a kid who takes lessons and shows. She really was a nice mare, we just had a bad, bad ride.