Sangria's In Hand & Body Conditioning‏ Course

On Friday morning, Sangria and I participated in our In Hand and Body Conditioning event. I was nervous that we might not perform our tasks well, such as backing through an "L", trotting around a serpentine and picking up her feet. Surprisingly, Sangria did very well. I believe she did step out of the "L", and she broke to a walk when we were supposed to trot the entire path. But she was perfect at trailer loading (and unloading), picking up an object and carrying it a short distance and standing quietly as I picked up all four feet.

I was also nervous about how she would score in the Body Conditioning event. I've had other people familiar with how they score tell me that Sangria was too round. Yikes!

However, when the scoresheets came out later that day, I saw that Sangria and I had placed 8th in the In Hand course and 2nd in the Body Conditioning event!! I was so proud of her and also very surprised as the competition was pretty steep against the other horses. These scores put us in 6th place overall! I quickly realized that if we had a decent ride in the Riding Course the next morning, then there was a chance we might make the Top 10 Finals! Uh oh! I definitley wasn't prepared for that situation!

I went out and rode Sangria that evening - she was really great, though I had a pretty bad headache so I didn't push her very hard. I figured there wasn't any last minute schooling that I could do to make her any better. In fact, I figured riding her hard would only fry her and make her less willing to do well the next morning. So, our ride was short and sweet before putting her away for the night. Here's a few pics from Friday morning's In Hand & Body Conditioning event.