When Your Horse Knows He Was Awesome...

So, I'm so glad that I decided to take Dargenzio to PHJA because he was GREAT. No lunging required since he was calm & cool, & knew what was going down. Schooling on Friday was great! Dargenzio didn't spook at ANYTHING. He was completely focused on me & what I was asking him to do. Saturday was... okay. Dargenzio was really pulling & on the forehand in warm up, but otherwise, he was being good. He was really making me ride though :p The people who set the course decided they were going to store the extra standards (sideways, at that) in the corner of the arena where it was already scary enough to horses. So, I went in to my first course with intentions of it being our worst. I was wrong, it was our best of our two courses! He was shying at the standards the whole time & didn't want to go to the rail but other than that, he went around the course really well. He rode soft, & we got all of our striding! That is REALLY hard for Dargenzio & I because the course is designed for horses with a normal stride whereas Dargenzio has a freakishly large stride. BUT, we got our 6 strides into the two of the lines(: Our second course was completely the opposite. The first course was great because Dargenzio thought that it wasn't going to be so easy. We go into the second course & he buffs up & is thinking "I'm taking over, sucks for you." That he did. The speed of the whole course just got faster & faster with me continuously saying "WOAH!" We got FOUR strides down the last line... when it was supposed to be a six. Needless to say, 2'3" is obviously too small for the baby boy & he knew it. The next day, we did the jumpers! Warm up was AWESOME. He was riding soft, getting all of our distances & didn't even attempt to take over the ride. We went in the course after watching many people go off course, have refusals, etc. We got around & didn't get to go to jump off because Dargenzio was a little too lazy over one of the verticals. But thats what I wanted. I wanted him to feel relaxed enough so he wasn't overjumping every single jump. I'm proud of my boy & can't wait to get him out more! Already planning on doing a schooling show in June :D