Fielding Spring Show- Friday Night

My first class was at 6pm but didn't start until like 6.3 which is pretty typical of the organisation of Fielding. It has to be by far the nicest facility in the lower North Island in terms of surfaced area available and the big indoor. But it is always poorly run in terms of organisation and class flow and other factors. So that part really sucks. If it wasn't so close I would probably drop it from the shows I go to. It was worse because the gorge is closed so instead of an hour it took me an hour and 45 to get there and the was this big hill I had to climb in third gear which is about 35 kms an hour because Truckie is a slightly gutless old lady so it was a fairly stressful trip.

Anyway they couldn't find the outdoor lights and the area for warm up indoors only had room for one horse. It would have barely been 20m wide. Have you noticed that indoors the fences look bigger?? Anyway we had to do the flat portion of our warm up outdoors in the dark which was ridiculous. They couldn't find the light switch. Coinnie was in the middle of a huge tantrum which was related to the fact it was dinner time and she hadn't been fed. At one point she reared so high I thought she would go over but she took some backwards steps and stabilised. It's silly but not being able to see seriously slowed my reactions down and I wasn't able to prevent her going up. Rearing is her new trick and seriously scares the shit out of me. The other thing was I couldn't really see the other horses warming up, only their outlines and white markings so it actually made for a pretty scary situation all round. There was also plenty of bucking but she got into the ring and jumped really nicely for a clear round. The class was 1.05m BTW.

Then back to the truck for Kate. Walking Connie back when the surface changed from lime track to grass she freaked out and I had to lead her back to the truck because she would go no further. So much for horses amazing night vision. Kate is a spooky old mare so by the time she made it to the warm-ups she was pretty beside herself. The other thing with warming up in the dark is it's really hard to gauge your speed and whether or not you have a good canter. So poor old Katie pie by the time she got into the actual indoor was fair freaking out. She was backing off even plain uprights and if I sat up at all she would fall behind my leg and start bouncing but somehow I managed to ride hard and give her enough confidence to jump around the spooky track with just one rail. Raced back to the truck and jumped back onto Connie and got back into the indoor just in time to go in for her jump off. She jumped awesome despite my hindrance and was clear again to snag third place. Lucky for me I had the fore thought to have everything set up during daylight and I was able to just wrap the horses and put them in their already prepared yards ready for the next day.