My last update saw Mr Nobility and I preparing for our first show on Aug. 5, a hunter/jumper show at a local barn nearby. It was meant to be a lovely little schooling show, only 10 minutes away, just a nice outing to see what kind of horse we are working with in the environment. The nice thing about these shows is that you can ship in and school over the jumps the day before, so it’s very friendly to green horses allowing them to see everything. Or so we thought…

Let’s rewind a couple weeks, soon after my last blog came out, eight days before the horse show. The big horse was working really nicely and we were having some of our best rides. On one particular ride, we had just finished a bunch of canter work over poles working on straightness and striding, and he was absolutely perfect and focused. As we rounded our last corner of canter before transitioning down to end the ride, he slipped, or tripped – I’m still not even sure as it happened so fast. All I know is, I felt him struggle and go down. Luckily we were cantering, so as he fell I got pitched forward and didn’t end up underneath another horse. My knee and my head took the brunt of the fall. When I realized what had happened, Mr Nobility was already up and my first thought was “Crap, I’m going to have to chase him around the farm to catch him.” But he immediately turned around and came over to check on me. He looked shell-shocked like he had no clue what just happened.

Displaying the 5th place ribbon. (Courtesy of Lauren Millet-Simpson)

Overall, we were both very lucky: my helmet definitely prevented a major injury and I escaped with only bad bone bruising on my right knee and mild concussion symptoms that really only lasted about 48 hours. Mr Nobility also seemed to escape the incident with minor body soreness and just a small superficial nick on his pastern.

We did a lot of stretching and Bemer treatments for the next four days, and by the time we rode again he looked and felt great. I shoved my swollen, very bruised leg into my half chap and on we went.

We schooled over some jumps at the show venue on the Sunday, the day before the show. The big horse was actually pretty good; we definitely had a lot to work on but there was a lot of positives coming out of the exercise.

Mr Nobility saw two horses schooling in the ring beside us toward the end of the ride, and he no longer could function on the task at hand, so we did opt to drop out of the .60m jumpers and into the cross rail jumpers. Since it was his first show, we knew there might be challenges, and just figured even if he is extremely distracted he can get his 17-hand body around a course of cross rails safely.

My expectations for the show were simple: to gain valuable experience in a show environment, don’t fall off, and to make it in and out of the show ring safely. Two out of three things happened – luckily for me I didn’t fall off! We did NOT make it into the show ring.

What we learned is that we need to start doing all of the things off-property effective immediately, and introduce all of the distractions. Mr Nobility got off the trailer and basically lost his mind and could not handle the atmosphere. Forward was not a direction he remembered – only backwards and spinning in circles. My coach managed to hand walk him with me on him around the warm-up ring but he was not able to function.

We decided to scratch all four classes, untack and simply hang out by the show rings until he relaxed. It took several hours but by the end, the explosions were fewer and far between. Aside from the time when a pony came up behind him and he almost fell down spooking at it, I was hoping he gained enough experience that the next show will be far less shocking for him.

With the Thoroughbred Makeover looming in the very near future, and Mr Nobility needing to learn very quickly that showing is fun and not overwhelming, we entered another local schooling show, this one dressage, on Aug. 17. We kept it simple entering only the three walk/trot classes; wanting him to learn to relax in the environment and go forwards instead of backwards was the main goal, so we just wanted to keep it fun and light.

Well-deserved pat on the back. (Courtesy of Lauren Millet-Simpson)

I am happy to report that his second show was much better than his first. I planned to arrive extra early, just to let him walk around see all the rings, look at everything, graze and relax. This worked very well as we were the first ones there, so he was able to watch the horses trickle in slowly vs. showing up to 50 horses wandering around.

He held it together pretty well, so I tacked up and got on to warm up 30 minutes before our first test. He had a few issues in the warm-up where he was very excited, tense and unfocused but we went forward! We made it to our first test and he surpassed our goal for the day: relax enough to get a warm-up completed and finish a test. He was tense and a bit naughty throughout the test but we finished the whole thing! The judge even commented that he looked like a very talented horse but was a bit of a “challenge.” Boy did she hit that nail on the head!

Mr Nobility completed all three tests and got better and more relaxed every time. We even got a 7 on our free walk! He had some moments of absolute brilliance – even some of the bystanders commented on how nice of a horse he is – and he also had some definitely baby moments. There is still a lot to work on with connection and relaxation, but I was so happy with the change from show 1 to show 2.

There was only one pony at this show, but Mr Nobility did stare it down like it was from outer space, so we do need to work on the fact that despite most ponies being brats, they will in fact not eat him. Thank goodness most OTTBs should be over 13 hands so he hopefully won’t see any little Martians at the Makeover!

The goal for the next few weeks is to participate in more shows – literally ALL OF THE SHOWS – and taking him off property as much as possible to ensure he understands showing is no big deal. I am also looking at an overnight show to give that a trial run, so hopefully that works out as well.

It’s crunch time now as the weeks wind down to the Makeover so fingers crossed we continue to progress hiccup-free for the next six weeks!

The Jockey Club supports many aftercare initiatives including the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance, the only accrediting body in aftercare, and Thoroughbred Incentive Program (T.I.P.), which encourages the retraining of Thoroughbreds into other disciplines upon completion of careers. View all of the initiatives supported by The Jockey Club.