Whoops...

Sorry I missed a few days... Life has been busy!

May I just tell you that my horse had been absolutely AMAZING since I last posted? It's like he's a completely different horse! Although I am sure that it is more I am just riding him better because I have been sore after riding him for a few days in a row now so I must be riding him differently. He has also developed quite a bit more muscle and Mr. Benjamin actually has a topline now! YAY!

So hopefully he will keep all this up at least until after our dressage test at the 2-phase tomorrow... I am so excited for the show season to start! I'm just getting all of my stuff organized to bring to the barn and then I'm headed up there to get Ben all handsomefied for the show tomorrow. I have a 9:30 am dressage time which isn't terrible and the farm the show is at is only a little less than an hour away so all is good! My stadium is about 11:30 and I'm one of the last people in my division to go so we should be out of there by noon.

There are fourteen people in my division which surprised me quite a bit because this is just a tiny little schooling combined test. I believe that last year at a similar combined test at the same place there were only four in the Novice. I guess everybody is ready for the show season to begin!

A few of my goals for this show:

- I would really really really really really like a dressage score that starts with a 3. I don't even care if it was a 39.9 as long as it starts with a three. My lowest dressage score I've ever had with Ben was a 37. I've gotten a 37 twice. Ironically enough, that was at our first two shows, a combined test and full horse trials both at Beginner Novice. 

-Another goal is to have a clean stadium round. That should be simple because even though this is a Novice combined test the prizelist says that the jumps aren't going to be higher than 2'9" as opposed to the normal Novice level height of 2'11". It'd be nice if we had a nice rhythmical round as well.

-And I wouldn't really call this a goal because I'm not one of those people who only shows for the ribbons but it'd be nice to bring one home, even a sixth place one!

So I'm off to finish being obsessive compulsive about organizing everything for the show. My living room is absolutely covered in everything from show shirts, to horse boots, to saddle pads, and everything else you can imagine... I will be sure to give a show update tomorrow with pictures and videos!