IHSA Update

I am officially ONE POINT away from being qualified for our IHSA Region 1 Championship! This past weekend at our show against OU I won my Saturday equitation class on a very lovely warmblood gelding named Pumba and Sunday I was 3rd after a slightly humiliating class where my draw suddenly stopped dead in the ring, pinned his ears back and refused to go forward. This was an antic he had pulled numerous times already that day...clearly he was cranky after being ridden so many different times by so many different people. Unfortunately, I was the designated point rider for our team (the rider who's placing counts towards team highpoint) and so our team only got 4 points from my placing (at least the other riders from my school, which were also in the same class, didn't place any better.) The third place also left me one point away from qualifying for Regionals. The good news is that we have 4 more days of showing (2 more 2 day shows for this season) in order for me to qualify, so I'm hoping that won't be a problem lol!

Here are a few photo of me winning on Pumba from the show:

 

 

 

He was a great ride! A little lazy off the leg but he was quite a gentlemen once he realized that I was serious about him getting his hind quarters engaged.

In other news, Emmy and Johnny have been very good. They both got the entire weekend off because of the horse show and were happy to get back to work. Johnny had a few good leaps in him but about 10 minutes on the lunge line took care of that pretty quick yesterday. Today he was still pretty fresh and probably should have gotten to play on the line a bit more tonight. His trot and canter are getting sooo much better though! Today he cantered all the way around the ring (balanced!!) on his right lead and he did some bounce poles off the left lead and a set of raised trot poles from both directions. He's finally learning to stretch down and be round, but his stride is still kind of short. Wondering how I might be able to fix that? I think part of it is his conformation...his chest is a little narrow.

Peace.Love.Ponies.