Mason Dixon 2006
April 27 through April 29 2006
Headlight's First Show!
Click Here for a Video of Headlight at Mason Dixon!
The Mason Dixon Morgan & Arabian horse show was great! The weather was a bit chilly for me and most riding was done with two layers of pants and some fleece pull overs, it also didn’t help that I was still getting over a cold. Derek and I slept in the car to help cut down some of the shows cost. Although it was very uncomfortable and very cold we survived three nights in the expedition.
I took Thursday and Friday off but we didn’t end up leaving
Out of sheer luck I found a lounge line in the grass with a chain and that seemed to solve all of Headlights balking problems. As soon as he turned to face me he would jam his nose into that chain and soon realized that going forward was better then facing “the chain”. After about an hour on the lounge I got on his back and went for the show ring.
Now anyone who has ever shown in the Quentin ring knows that it is scary for a horse. One whole straight away is lined with large square bushes and nosey box seating areas and the other straight away has big bleachers (which almost always has little kids jumping up and down them). Headlight didn’t seem to mind the scary sights of the ring but the traffic of the other horses was his demise. The ring was packed with 15+ horses going every which way and Headlight’s steering is not very great still so we had some difficulty actually getting around the ring at a steady pace. I managed to get a couple of lope off departures and maybe 20 strides in both directions before I called it quits.
I woke up around 4:00 (yes in the a.m.) so I could work Headlight in the show ring again while it was quiet. He did extremely well and even though I was a bit apprehensive about entering him in a class, I figured he could handle the novice horse class since there would only be two other horses in with him. So I signed him up for the novice western pleasure class. Well imagine my surprise when the gate call came and there were 8 horses! I about freaked and pulled him out of the class but it was too late.
Headlight had some problems going down the shoot into the show ring but when the people just standing there watching started clucking to him he went right in. He was flawless in the class, never even raised his head to look at anything. I almost cried when I was jogging into the line up. To have bought him while he was still "green" and take him all the way to this point was amazing.
When they called my name as the winner I almost fell over....talk about shock!
I ended up entering him into the Amateur owned trained and shown class. There was only one other person in the class and while he was a little spooky we still got first. After his spooking in the AOTS class I lounged him for about 20 minutes before my next class.
Headlight went into the Limit horse class and out of 9 horses he won! I had a little bit of a problem with him wanting to break while in the lope but it wasn’t a major fault (just a couple of jog strides then back into the lope). I was relieved that he didn’t seem to have any trouble with his right lead (which is the case at home) and he nailed it every time.
Headlight went on to claim the Amateur Western Pleasure Championship and the Reserve Open Western Pleasure Championship. What a GREAT first show!
