Cowgirls don't cry ♪♪

The fluxuation of life right now has been positively squirrely.  Things are starting to pile up and without the stress reliever of getting to ride Bastian, I too am getting more and more snarky and just a little down in the dumps.  Life goes on however, and in the words of Brooks and Dunn, cowgirls don't cry.  Its that simple. 

Bastian is still off without any visible signs.  He was supposed to see the vet tonight, but the vet was held up at his previous clients and was unable to make it.  So now the vet is coming on Thursday.  Maybe by then I won't need a vet and Bastian will have made a miraculous recovery.  A girl can hope, right? 

Due to a major and I mean major snafu with the bank, my show season has also been cut right down.  With Bastian being unsound its not that big of a deal, but I was so stinkin' excited about this year and now, well, I'll be lucky if I get to go to just two or three local shows instead of the rather hefty list I had posted earlier.  Again, cowgirls don't cry.  (have you noticed a theme yet?)

But enought depressing stuff, on to the fun!  With Bastian being off, I was unable to take him to the dressage schooling show at Grand Haven this past saturday.  I wasn't going to get my entry fees back anyway so one of the trainers at the barn, Tawny, let me take one of her sales horses in Bastian's place.  Meet Goer, a lovely 12 year old chestnut gelding.

Now I won't ride just any horse.  The horse has to be 100% safe and I have to feel 100% safe riding it.  Goer is a saint, I think he even beats out Bastian's safety rating, if only because of age and experience.  This will be Bastian at age 12. 

Let me begin by saying the weather was dismal.  Positively dismal.  It was 43 degrees (and yes I was riding in a short sleeve polo), 40 mph gusts of wind with about 25-30 mph wind happening the rest of the time.  Needless to say there were a lot of scratches that day.  Beth, another boarder at the barn went with me to help groom.  So she got Goer ready for me and I mounted up.  I was hesitant for the first few minutes and for the first lap around the warm up ring.  I didn't know how Goer was going to react to the crazy weather conditions.  He didn't bat an eyelash, so I was able to relax.

This was not the first time I had ridden Goer, but it was the first time I had ridden in over two weeks, and was, I believe only the 6th time I had ever ridden Goer.  When I had ridden him before I was just kind of messing around, enjoying getting to ride a different horse and get a different perspective, we had never actually practiced any of this stuff.  Nor had I ever actually practiced (or even looked at) Training Test 4 or First Level Test 4.  Goer warmed up wonderfully and we rode our first test, Training Level 2. 


 
It rode very nicely and we scored a 63.2%
 
Our second test was First Level 4.  This test rode fairly well too I thought, although I felt the judging was a bit harsh at time, but what are you going to do?  I'm still esctatic about it. We scored a 56%.  Just imagine if I had practiced! LOL
 

 
 
Our last test was ridden during the height of the storm with some hail and vertical rain, some of the arena blew over during our test and I rode too hastily, I needed to just slow down.  I was already soaking wet, rushing my test wasn't going to change that.  It was Training Level Test 4, we scored a 57%.  Had I just taken a breath and not rushed I believe it would have been better.  But it was still a great day despite the weather and I am very thankful that I was able to take Goer.  He is a champ, whoever ends up with him will be very pleased indeed.