Palmerston North Mini Show

Up at 3am on Saturday to load up Alfie, Neo & Violet and head on up to Feilding. It was a great drive (including the service station attendant giving me heaps of free chocolate, yay) and only took a little while to find the correct entrance to the showgrounds. A few minutes after I'd parked Mum turned up in her truck with Sam. Flat classes were a bit of a non-event, both Sam & Violet went really nicely once worked in, but weren't really in the eye of the judges. Good to get the mileage into them though, and good for me to practise plaiting up, and Mum to practise fitting the false tail! After the flat classes I saddled up Alfie and took him for a wander, he was still quite on edge but overall a far happier horse than when I rode him at Waikanae. At the end of the day Alfie went home with Mum, and he'll have some adult riding club type outings - just really low key stuff - to build his confidence in a show environment.


After all the boring flat classes were out of the way it was time for the fun stuff! Mum had decided that I should take Sam in a jumping class (he hasn't been jumped since Feb!), but I hopped on him and went for a walk around while she headed off to enter me. I popped over a few practise fences and as Mum came back we realised with much horror that the class that was finishing was the one we'd entered! We did a mad rush to learn the course (thanks very much to the people ringside to pointed out the course for me before I headed in), and I went straight in. Sam was a super easy ride and seemed to enjoy a bit of a hoon! We did a clear round then had an instant jumpoff. I hadn't had a chance to try Sam for angles or corners but her performend like a little star. The jumps weren't big, but it was a fantastic effort for a horse who has had a long rest and very little work since then! He ended up coming 2nd place! Me & Sam getting to know each other:

Sam with his pretty blue ribbon in the showjumping, and with Mum before heading into the flat classes (excuse his lack of butt muscle, he has only just come back into work!):

Video of Sam's showjumping round:

Neo & Violet showjumped, and had some really good moments on both of them - but was having one of those days where the horses and I were just consistently seeing different strides which was totally frustrating! On the plus side, they both got me out of some very ugly spots! Neo being a super cute dude, and Violet making light work of the double:

Then there were the truck dramas! Oh man. Mum's truck (the white one) got stuck in the mud at the end of the day, so I had to tow her out with my truck, which took several attempts and broken tow ropes. In the process I got my truck stuck in a different patch of mud... and well... the result.. photos:

and the video too (how shameful!):