Friday, June 27, 2014

Arrival Day at PSJ

Last Tuesday Liam and I headed over to the Princeton Show Jumping horse show to get all settled in.  The show grounds take about an hour to get to from my barn with the trailer, but are only 15 minutes from my house. Since I was planning on showing Liam in the first class at 8am for 3 days in a row I decided it would be a good idea to get him a stall on the grounds to save me about 1 1/2 hours of sleep a day and about 2 hours worth of driving a day.  Also, I wanted to see how Liam would be stabled on the show grounds somewhere local first before taking him anywhere far away.  Liam lives outside 24/7 and hasn't been in a stall consistently in about 3 years.  I had know idea what to expect.

I left work around 1pm on Tuesday and picked Liam up.  We arrived on the grounds around 3pm.  I put Liam in his stall and unpacked the trailer.  I didn't get a tack stall, so I kept only the necessities by the stall.  He was really confused about the stall and got really anxious.  I ran to the office to get my number and check in and came back to Liam stall walking and screaming.  Oh boy...

I decided to take him out for a lunge to take the edge off just to hand walk him around the show grounds.

Liam wants to know where he is...?

He actually is never crazy on the lunge. He just trots around with his head up looking around.  After lunging, I hand walked him around for about an hour.  I decided it was in my best interest to not get on him until someone I knew was on the show grounds in case he was fresh in the ring since we were fresh just hand walking around.  What I mean by fresh is leaping in the air to show all the other horses how high we can jump.  Grrrr.  My husband was going to come over after work at about 5pm.

Right before 5pm, I brought Liam pack to stall to start tacking up.  My husband arrived just as we were getting back to the stall.  Oh, I forgot to mention that it was about 95 degrees and very humid, so I was dripping sweat.  Lovely.

Tacked Liam up and headed over to the ring.  Well, the lunging and hand walking didn't do enough, but I am sure it helped.  We trotted around like a giraffe pulling a cart (best way to describe) for a while, then turned into a seahorse carnival ride leaping in the air when other horses got close.  I did my best to get his attention by circling, changing directions, bending, counter bending, and getting him to move off my leg.  For the most part he started listening.  At this point, I was riding around thinking how faint I felt realizing that I was completely dehydrated and how this is NOT very fun.  Liam finally gave a good canter with out any shenanigans and I called it quits.  Headed back to the tent to untack and hose him off.  Hand walked him until he was mostly dry, put him back in the stall with a full bucket of water, hay, and his dinner.

Liam took one sniff of the water and said no way am I drinking that.  It made me smell the water and it stunk like pvc plastic pipe.  The show grounds are relatively new (opened 2 years ago) and in the spring this year they ran all new piping for water and electric to the tents.  I decided to go home and eat some dinner at this point and come back with water from my house in a few hours for night check.  I have 2 five gallon fresh water containers that we used to take camping.  I left the grounds to a stall walking screaming Liam.  I called my friend on my way home and asked her if a horse could possibly stall walk and scream for 3 days, it has got to get better right?  She agreed that he will either adjust or he won't.  Great, perfect confidence booster right there (rolling my eyes).

I came back and checked on Liam around 8:30pm and he still wasn't happy, but dealing.  He still didn't finish dinner, so I decided to just leave it in his bucket for the night.  He is not really a food driven horse and if he is stressed at all he won't even eat treats.

I left that night thinking Liam settling in could have gone better, but it could have gone a lot worse.  He wasn't spinning in his stall like a crazy lunatic, just walking slowly in a circle.  It's got to get better, right?

Stay tuned for day one of showing...


1 comment:

  1. I really think that the show goes better if they are a little crazy on schooling day. Maybe because they wear themselves out a little? I hope that was the case and the show went well. I'm looking forward to reading about it :)

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