Busy Weekend Ahead

So much to do. Very busy few days ahead. Today is my final day of prep before our show/clinic at the barn which means it's also the last day of prep before our first real show of the season. Since I am NOT a morning person I've been getting to bed and getting up earlier and earlier and this week. This morning it was 6:30 and I switch to 6am tomorrow. Hopefully that'll make the early hour on Sunday not as jarring to my delicate princessness and I will be able to eat something and not be a nervous wreck all day. The weather forecast keeps shifting in a positive direction and as of 6:55am EST they are predicting only PM showers tomorrow and party cloudy on Sunday!!! Oh, please oh please let that be true! We have had so much rain. Thankfully not the dangerous amounts that other areas have had, but it is too wet for trail rides and horse shows in the rain are no fun unless you're in an all-enclosed facility. The place on Sunday has an indoor show arena, but only a very small in-gate area, you have to go outside at the out-gate, and though the outdoor warm-up drains really well, who wants to warm up right before a class in the rain wearing all your show gear? Then have to go in the rain after each class? Not me. Not my new saddle.

Yesterday was actually sunny and beautiful. Did you know the sky is actually blue? I had forgotten. The vitamin D deficiency was starting to kick in this week in a bad way. Feel sorry for my coworkers and students. A few of them are missing heads and did not deserve it. I even asked my boss to cancel our weekly Thursday 4pm meeting because none of us needed to be in a building on the only sunny day in what feels like forever. He agreed. WIN.

And since I got to the barn at 1:30 instead of 5:30 I was able to force Junior into a bath just incase it was the last chance to do so before the shows. He wasn't too bad this time and held pretty still, but still tried to bite at me every time I crossed in front of him. Not aggressively, just in his weird touchy-feely-expressive way. He doesn't love me much after a bath but I tried to make amends by hand-grazing him in the overgrown lawn while the sun dried him off.

He is still shedding, but I think he's presentable or at least will be after clipping touch-ups today.

Another joyous realization about roaching his mane: No sleezy needed. He will appreciate not wearing it and I will appreciate having one less thing to lug around and have to wash afterwards.

So tomorrow is our barn's Show-N-Tell Clinic. We're running it like a show but the judge will give oral reasons for placings and give us tips to improve. Not sure if we'll get to re-run patterns or anything, but either way I'm REALLY looking forward to this learning opportunity. We're doing the same classes as we do at the open shows: Showmanship, English Pleasure, Equitation, Western Pleasure, Horsemanship, and Trail. We've not actually shown the Trail class, but since he's pretty good with obstacles I thought we'd take the opportunity to do it in a clinic setting before attempting it at a show.

My BM asked what you'd call the kind of shows I go to. She's from a Dressage/Eventing background, as are some of you. In my background this is a "normal" show so I wasn't really sure how to answer. The best answer I could come up with is "Open Pleasure Show." The shows have a little of all the pleasure type classes and are usually divided into Walk/Trot, Youth, and Open/Adult divisions. I guess they're a lot like AQHA shows minus the breed requirement. So you could also say "Stock Horse Pleasure" but there are a few random breeds in there. I've seen Arabs, Halflingers, Ponies, Appys, and a few draftier warmbloodier types who come for the morning jumping classes and may or may not stay for the English flat classes. You see everything from kids (and adults) who clearly have no business being in a show ring, all the way up to folks that will be showing at Congress in the fall. I find it comforting to be in the middle of the pack.

Then on Sunday a barn mate, B and her reining horse, Zip, are trailering us to an open show. Same location we've shown at 4 times and last time we were High Point 19+ ...which is easy to achieve when it's a small division, and who knows what the turnout will be this time. B is going to do the reining classes and maybe Trail. I'm trying to get her to do the Horsemanship depending on the pattern.

I have a teensy amount of sewing to do this morning, then I'm meeting Max's mom at the tack store because her younger daughter is riding in the clinic and has outgrown ALL of her show clothes. Kids.

I hope to have pictures of the clinic and the show. And I promise to show you what the new Showmanship/Horsemanship shirt looks like. It is done and I hope it looks okay! I'm going to wear it to the clinic as a dress rehearsal, but the rest of the clinic I'll be more casually dressed.

Here's a preview, just to keep you interested...

And by the way, I tend to add links to the body of my posts. Unlike the links on Fugly Blog and others, these are placed by me to reference earlier posts and are not links to random automatically generated advertisements. Also, if you get my posts via Reader or Email you may not have noticed the tabs at the top of the blog page. They are not completely finished yet, but the Timeline gives a summery of the main happenings through the history of this blog, so if you would like a refresher or are newer to this blog, that is a super quick way to get caught up without reading all of my lengthy post ramblings.... like this one...