We're HOME! YAY! I love going to shows but I'm always happy to get home again too. Working on getting the pics uploaded, not many that are very good (taken by me that is, the show photog got some really nice ones that I'll buy), but I'll put a couple up anyhow.
I'm really pleased with how Ducati handled himself. We had the green horse bobbles and mistakes, a couple of human errors but all in all, the horse was level headed, got his job done and did it with an awesome attitude. We had a couple of "AW S....." moments and we had a couple of really funny, could only happen at a young, green horse's first big show moments.
He placed 8th in Open Ranch Trail (no surprise, he only started training on that back in Oct.), 7th in Ranch Pleasure Rail (again, no surprise, 2 riders cut him right off and it was pretty much a miracle there wasn't a train wreck) on Friday, his only 2 classes for the day.
On Saturday he went 4th in the Open Pinto Solid Ranch Riding and he did awesome until we got to the green horse moment. That was a Horse Eating Sun Spot on the arena floor and the gate person moved and the shadow moving made that sun spot go on and off like someone switched a light. Ducati threw a MIGHTY buck and then immediately pulled himself together and they finished the pattern, but of course the damage was done.
He then redeemed himself and went 2nd in Open Palomino Ranch Riding, and 6th in Open All Breed Ranch Riding. The first class was really really good, his footwork was spot on, all the technical aspects on the maneuvers were excellent. The only thing he didn't do was a flying change, he's still doing simple changes. If everyone else is nailing the flying ones though, you don't score real high. In the Palomino class he nailed everything and still did the simple change so got 2nd, the horse that won nailed everything including the flying change and everyone else had a problem somewhere along the line. The last one, he was just plain tired and ran out of gas, took a wrong lead and just let us all know that he was done. Not a surprise there either.
As the only 2 year old in the classes, he made us all very proud. Other than the Spot, he took everything in stride and just showed what a good minded and good natured horse he is. His new nickname is Sun Spot, BTW. We really enjoyed watching him, only a little bit sad that I couldn't do my own riding.