Woodside Show a Success

Sadly I have no pictures to post yet, but the show was fantastic! The highlight of the show was my debut for the first time ever at Fourth Level! Our ride was early on Saturday morning. I got out of bed at 5:45am to make it to the show grounds by 6:30am. I was on by 7:30am with Ellen in my ear coaching me during my warmup. She has this great wireless communication system where she speaks into a small microphone clipped to her coat, and I wear ear buds and can hear her perfectly, even if I'm at the other side of the arena. We had a fantastic warmup. Final felt light, soft, supple!, and forward. Not his usual feeling. :) We cantered down centerline and proceeded to have a really nice test. What was great was that he stayed light and soft thru the whole test. We scored a first place with 65.114%, and that was with late flying changes, darn it, but everything else was so wonderful. At the end of our test the judge stopped us and said "I'm sorry, but you can compete with the best of them!" That was very nice to hear, because usually judges don't speak to the competitors, other than a "hello" or "good luck" kind of thing.

I had a huge fan club on Saturday morning too. Aunt Dee, Uncle Bill, Jennifer, Bob, Maria, Ali & Josh were there to cheer me on which was so great. I also had great support from Ellen, our coach/trainer, Susan, my coach in between Ellen visits, Katie A., my braider & test reader and overall everything lady!, and Katie D. It was a great group to be at a show with, I had a fantastic time. Susan did very well, building on her Para E-Quest towards the WEG. There's a link to her blog if you're interested. Katie A. showed Andy, and beautiful, huge white horse and they did great. Katie D. showed her handsome chestnut horse Willoughby, and did very well.

The rest of my tests went well, I scored a 66.9% at Third Level test 3, and then a 63 & 63% to finish it off. All of my Third Level classes were Second place finishes.

I've got lots of room to improve, but we're off to a great start!