The Longest Ride

This is it:  Cisco’s first horse show.  His human birth mommy, Brenda, came all the way from Virginia to see him.  She has not seen him since he was sold some years ago.  

Brenda’s friends and I held her hands as we walked down the aisle to Cisco’s stall.  Brenda melted when she first saw him.  Cisco’s eyes were wide open when she walked into the stalled and rubbed him.  He was very surprised to see her again, especially in this big huge arena foreign place.  Brenda loved on him and groomed him.  She and her friends cheered for Cisco and I during the entire show.  Cisco has had nothing but love and goodness from humans his entire life.  He is a very lucky horse to have had knowledgable and kind people as his caretakers.

I’m the horse show manager.  Not much stress…ha!  There are a million and a half things to remember and do when you are the show manager.  Plus Getting the show started is a nervous time.  I asked Jenny to warm Cisco up for me.  When I took him there early in the morning, I did have about 10 minutes to walk him in the arena.  Jenny also took him into the arena before the show.

This is the first time in my life that my name was called to be “on deck” as I was mounting my horse for my first ride.  Normally, I would have been there two hours early, rode, played on-line and worried.  But, as the show manager, all that wasn’t possible.  I did get my good friend Hope, to move my trail ride appearance to last of the entries.  So I did get ride him for about 10 minutes in the warm-up arena which is just outside of the big arena.

We did perfect in the trail pattern except he was scared of the jump standards that made up the rope gate.  He told me he scared of those big funny shaped wood things, so I decided to skip the rope gate and go on.  I did notice when Cisco and I went into the arena, I had chose the wrong bridle. I had to ride with one hand with an English style bridle,with short “buckle reins. Whoops! We changed bridles in time for Fox Trot Western Pleasure. We looked great!
Later in the rail classes, we had changed back to our classic bridle. My good friend looked at me in the arena and said, where’s you “nose thing”? Whoops we participated in several classes without our beautiful purple designer noseband!

I had entered him in six classes.  His get up and go didn’t really appear the entire show.  I had to urge him to keep going and not slow down a bunch of times.  We did break gait a lot which doesn’t get one a win in the ribbons.  Who cares!  His first show!  He did great!  We won a couple of second places!  In our last class, near the end of the show, we had to canter.  I was just hoping that he would canter.  Not only did he canter, but he didn’t drop down into a slower gait.  Urging him to keep cantering both ways of the arena took a bunch of my energy too.  I was out of breath when the class was over.  Lordy!  So, we were called up to get our second place ribbon.  I decided to give the crowd a thrill and told Cisco to canter off.  We cantered off and I dropped my ribbon.  I’ve never dropped a ribbon.  I don’t recall seeing anyone ever dropping a ribbon.  scream!  The crowd went wild!

Cisco did great!  He’s got the “it factor”.  I have the show bug.  It’s going to be an amazing show season!  Yee Haw