Showing

With Rachel's encouragement and assistance, Wendy and I have decided to show Maverick this weekend. So we are trying to get our act together as we have little time to get educated and ready. Rachel is giving us plenty of help, which is good, as neither Wendy or I have much showing experience. Our focus will be on Maverick mostly, and it is really two shows in one at the Great Southwest Equestrian Center, so I will show Maverick on Friday and Wendy will show him on Sunday. I am going to have to leave really early on Friday morning, so I better get plenty of sleep Thursday night. Tomorrow, I need to make a list of everything I will need to bring so I can be properly prepared. I will have to plan on spending some time with Walker on Saturday, as this week I will have to focus most of my efforts with Maverick.

Wendy, Rachel and I got together to talk about what we need to do to get Maverick ready. I had a stressful though successful day at work today, so I was a bit scattered when I arrived. We decided to get Maverick groomed tomorrow, and it looks like I will make a trip to Arcola, probably on Wednesday to pick up a few sundries for prepping Mav for the show. In the meantime, he needs plenty of exercise, so after Wendy left for dinner with her family and Rachel headed home to Needville after helping me bring some obtacles over from the arena, I decided to play with him in the round pen. We started with some hill therapy over two jumps placed across each other on opposite sides of the round pen. Maverick was a bit spooked in there, so moving over the small jumps was good to help dissipate his uneasiness. This is a mostly mindless task for Maverick at this point, so I decided I would eventually play with his transitions on the circle. First, I wanted to play with his forehand around the hindquarters with the porcupine game, as we had not done it in awhile. After a couple of tries he did an entire circle in both directions. Then I asked him to do just a back up, and he assumed I still wanted him to turn on the hindquarters again. He reminded me that it's important I check in with him to make sure he is actually focusing on what I am asking now, not what I was asking a minute ago. Then I asked him to do a walking figure eight, which he did really well. By now, most of his jitters had gone away, so we stood together in the middle of the round pen. He licked my hand while I rubbed his jaw. There was a nice southeasterly breeze with a mild mist coming from low hanging clouds. We could hear the plinking of balls striking aluminum bats at the nearby ball fields. The combined sounds made for a soothing interlude. I then asked him back on the circle and started asking for upward transitions at half circle intervals followed by downward transitions with the carrot stick at half circle intervals. He still is interpreting the stick as a "go" sign, but after about 15 minutes of very consistent communication on my part, Mav slowed to a walk without turning fully to the middle, and finally stopping without turning into the middle. When I praised him with my voice and moved towards him to give him a cookie, he nickered then took in and blew out a big breath. It felt like the perfect time to stop, so I did. After leading him to his stall, I stretched his legs and picked his feet. Though he seems to have no objection to stretching his back legs, he still doesn't like stretching his front legs, which makes me believe they are still sore, but I lightly persisted until he softened slightly, rubbed his neck and told him goodnight. Then I stretched Walker's legs, which he seemed to enjoy quite a bit, picked his feet, fed him cookies and told him goodnight. The last sound I heard as I closed my truck door was the sound of the wind whipping the flags against the flagpole in the barn's courtyard.