Sunday, July 24, 2011

Day 43, 44 & 45

The Weekend!


Friday
I started the daily routine of mucking out stalls, filling water buckets and haynets at around 8 am. I finished all of that at just before 10:30 am, then I loaded the trailer up for the show that S.B had this weekend.  At about 11:30 am we begain on our 2 and a half hour journey to Dayton ,Ohio for the Gemwood Horse Trails. S.B would be competeing in the open novice division. We were taking Roman , S.B's eventing thoroughbred!

We got to the show grounds around 4:30-5 pm , we quickly found our stalls and unload the stuff we would need for the night including; bedding, water buckets , fan , mucking out tools and hay. We had to get a battery powered fan because there were not many outlets at the show grounds and it was going to be a hot weekend! S.B and I then walked around the very open show ground to find the show office to get her packet. After getting her packet and feeding Roman we headed to the hotel.

When we got the hotel the first thing we did after checking in was we found the swimming pool. After swimming for about 45 mins. we got changed and went back to the show grounds , because it was so hot we wanted to make sure Roman had full water buckets at all times. When we got to the grounds I filled up his haynet and topped off his water buckets. We then went to find something to eat .  We picked a local Chinese restaurant and had some very yummy food , then we went back to the hotel and crashed (:

Saturday
We woke up and got ready for a long hot day of showing .  We had some quick breakfest at the hotel and we were on are way. When we got to the grounds I got Roman out of his stall and let him eat some grass while S.B's mucked his stall out! After his stall was clean , I started cleaning him up  -  Roman loves to roll and lay in poop and pee /: yay me, but hates to be groomed. Even though he disagreed with what I was doing, I groomed him til he was shining!!  I then got all the dressage tack out of the trailer while S.B's braided his mane.  Her ride time was about 5 mins til 10am.  I tacked him up and had him ready to go at just before 9:30 am , while she started warming him up, I filled his water buckets up!  They had a great dressage test and ended up with a 35 %.
After her test I showered him off and let him rest, because he didn't show jump til 1:00 pm. After watching many of the prelim horses jump, we walked the show jumping course that was on grass at this show.  The first 5 jumps or so had pretty straight lines  but after that they weren't so straight anymore!  We had a riders meeting at about 12 pm where a vet and some other people talked to us about drinking lots of water and how to keep your horses cool!  After that I got all the jumping tack out and tacked him up. S.B then got on and started warming him up. She went in to jump him and it was going well until about the 5 th jump when he slipped after the jump, and it scared him because it was hard to get his footing again because he doesn't have back shoes.  Because he slipped he took a funny line to the next jump which was an up-right then one stride to a oxer - he jumped the up-right but it wasn't pretty, then stopped three times in front of the oxer before crashing into it and going on to the the next one. S.B descded not to jump the last jump and take her self out!

We decided not to stay for Sunday because she was scared that Roman had hurt himself, so we packed up and went home. When we got home, we iced and rapped his legs! I mucked all the other horses stalls out and brought everyone in and fed them.

Sunday
S.B and I went out to the barn and fed everyone and then checked out Roman's leg.  It was swollen like a balloon /:  We cold water hosed it for about 15 mins and then rapped it and put him in his stall for the day. We then put Ransom and Henny out in the front hay field  - they were very excited to go out in the big pasture.  I then turned Ramana out in the boys old pasture.  I started cleaning all the stalls , filling water buckets and haynets. 

I came inside and started to study for my BHS (british horse society) level 1 exam that I will have to take this week. I took 3 pages of front and back notes - I studied for 3 hours! At about 1 pm the sky became really dark.  S.B and I ran outside and brought in all the horses, it only rained for about 20mins ):  Since it did rain a little it cooled down!  So at around 5 pm I got Henny out and S.B gave me a lesson!  He was not too happy about having to work, since he hadn't been riden since Wednesday!  But he got on with it. I took him outside and we worked on 10 meter circles to 10 meter circles! We would do a 10 meter circle to the center line, then a 10 meter circle the opposite direction back to the rail at a trot and then ask him to do a long and low 20 meter circle. Once he started using his back end and stepping through he was doing really good!! Then I did one 20 meter canter circle to the right asking him to shorten and then lenghen his stride and then back to trot... it was wonderful. Then we did it to the left and it was perfect once again . His canter has come so far!  We then ended with a long walk! After untacking him I gave him a bath and and treated all his bites ( which are getting better ).

I then fed all the horses, mucked out stalls again then put everyone to bed for the night!!

1 comment:

Kelly said...

Sounds like you had a great lesson last night! It was cooler here in the afternoon, too :)

Sorry SB's weekend did not go as planned. Hope she gets good news at the vet today and Roman won't be off long.