Show and No

Yesterday, I hauled Bandon an hour to a small schooling show. When we arrived I might have needed to take the warning that Bandon was a little more "up" than usual when his clip was hanging from the halter and no leadrope was attached. He'd broken the rope off at some point during the trip.

He came off the trailer on my spare rope interested in his surroundings, jumpy, but still responsive to me. I had made it a point to arrive a good 5 hours before I expected we'd ride, giving him lots of time to settle in the rented stall.

After checking-in and squaring away my horse, I parked my dog show chair under a shade tree and enjoyed watching the hopeful Hunter/Jumper classes.

When it was about 3 hours before our class, I went to get Bandon out and acclimate him closer to the show ring. The barns weren't far from the ring so the sounds weren't really different, just the activity.

Bandon was a mess.

He still handled okay, though he was a little less responsive than he was when he got off the trailer. I tried to tie him to the trailer to start grooming and he sat back after pacing, I grabbed the quick release tab before he broke his halter. So instead of tying, he danced around me in small circles while I tried to make him shine again with the leadrope in one hand and a brush in the other.

After all this pacing and walking and struggling to get the saddle on, my still fairly new tall boots were beginning to wear through the strategically placed band-aids I'd applied that morning. My hands were getting raw from the leadrope when I had the bridle ready to go. A friend from Cindy's barn, Ash, saw me attempting this and came to help. With both of us holding Bandon, we managed to get the bridle on him. Then the doubt kicked-in. He pulled me along like a feather by the reins and it became clear that he wasn't going to settle.

Bandon and I walked, circled, paced. I was looking around at the dozens of horses standing ringside calmly on a loose rein and here I couldn't even get mine to stand.

Hours into this acclimation process, it seemed like he was as good as he was going to get. I decided to get on. Within 2 minutes, it was obviously a bad idea, he had no regard for any sort of direction and there were just way too many potential disasters looming on my explosive horse with no control. A friend grabbed his reins from the ground and as he spun around her I dismounted.

Tack off, he refused to load for a few tries, once he was in he started kicking and pawing so we were out of there.

I debate on disclosing what I did at this point, I'm sure judgement will follow, but here goes. I sobbed for a good hour on the solo drive home. Yeah. Like a child. It's a lot of dream, a lot of work, and a lot of physical effort that goes into training for bigger and better. When you fall off the step you are aiming to climb, it's hard to swallow.

I hadn't expected to "do" anything at the show, I had expected to at least have my horse there and not leave worse off than we came.

I know he is an ex-racehorse and still relatively new off the track still he had worked at the other farm last week. It is a huge undertaking to haul to a show, packing, getting lined up childcare, being away from the family an entire day, and we had worked really hard in training. At home we were riding a full level beyond what I had entered and in practice the night before he was flawless. He had been turned out for 14 hours before we left for the show for plenty of free exercise.

Ugh. I don't know what I did wrong. I know he needs time, but something happened that doesn't make any sense through this and it's driving me nuts. I still want my boy to have a great relationship with me, one that extends to places off our farm. Thankfully I've moved past my initial, "We're never going to be able to show locally like I dreamed with him" and on to, "We need to get out more somehow and figure out what went wrong and hope that one day it'll be there".