The beginning of the show season is equal parts awesome and terrifying. Kind of the equivalent of heading up that first hill on a roller coaster, knowing that you're about to drop so hard and fast that your stomach will take up a new location in your mouth. (Probably that's not the best example for someone like me to use. I only ride the little kid coasters, and only when forced, but you get what I'm saying.)
The first show is pretty much just knocking the rust off. Figuring out what we all forgot over the winter break, what the new pairings look like, who I have to have a mock beatdown with because they no longer know what a canter lead is, stuff like that. I'm lucky this year in that I have 3 pairs of kids/horses (or ponies) that are standard issue at this point. We're 3 seasons in, they know the game, and it's going to be months of really polishing everything up so that we can rock out at medal finals. The other 2 pairs just need some miles, so by mid-season they'll really be set and hopefully will qualify for finals as well.
We were lucky in some respects that the season started with three weekends of back-to-back showing. It's super exhausting to do it this way, but the kids really benefit from the consistent ring time. When we're showing every 3 weeks or so, they tend to forget a little bit about what they're supposed to do when it comes time to horse show. That said, I don't recommend coming down with the flu between week 2 and week 3 if you're taking 10 horses to the week 3 show. Thankfully I can occasionally function lower than 100% since I have Shelly to back me up (and vice versa), but it wasn't a pretty week. The kids made all my suffering worthwhile though, they came home with some serious ribbons in some HUGE classes.
And now we have a weekend off, which I plan to spend about as far out of the barn as one can get. Time for a little Broadway, family time, and old friends (who may or may not be horse people as well. You can take the girl out of the barn, and all that...)
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