I promise he has done this before

The best-est fruit bat in the whole wide world.

Well... this weekend happened and I definitely laughed more than is healthy or sane. It is always great bringing out a 19 year old seasoned show horse and getting schooled by the 4-year-old OTTB in the same class.  He has people laughing at his squealing and dolphin "bucks" and just general silliness all day.  I got several comments on how young horses act up at their first show, then blank looks when I explained how old he was.  I tried to give him an out by saying that he was just excited to be out again after 4 years, but I do not think they bought it.

He doesn't care what level I enter, he makes his own jumps.

To start the cold snap had the horses feeling FRESH before we even loaded up.  Usually Hillcrest is a super low key and spook free event, and it probably was for everyone else, however, the rain, plus the being somewhere new, equaled a very hyped up horse.  After 20 minutes of power trotting and snorting to knock off some of his energy he settled into a decent warm up.

However, Dutch just could not handle the judge's car - it was a bright yellow hatchback with the windshield whippers going - aka - totally going to fucking kill us.  We got MANY tense comments. Which yeah - he was full body flinching each time the whippers went.  However, he was obedient - and gave a few relaxed steps here and there. I read the judge's comments with a grain of salt, knowing this was not going to be a good representation of anything really.  Two things stood out to me. One: the totally adorable OTTB before us that was cute, calm, and obedient only scored 2 points lower than our spooky mess, which seemed really harsh. Two: Some of the judge's suggestions went against what my trainers have had me working on. Namely to raise my hands whenever he gets tense - the comments about low hands blocking relaxation appeared often.  What do you do when you receive conflicting feedback?

We rode Intro B (for our CT division) and Intro C.  I thought Intro C was the better test, but we scored better on Intro B.

Then it was on to jumping.  I chose to bit up and raise my stirrups for the jumping due to his.... uh exuberance. In hindsight, I think he would have been better without the bit change and I ended up lowering my stirrups to our normal jump height anyway.  Dutch's typical spooky-weird-fruit-bat-style joix de vive was apparent from the get go.  Every jump we pointed at he would lock on squeal and over jump.   I almost died from laughing so hard!

JOMPS!!!

I SEE A JOMPS!!

Happy lil fruit bat!

We jumped clear and finished on our dressage score.  My husband commented he never saw a horse more convinced he was going super fast over actual jumps.  It was the slowest most balanced run-away in the history.  He was SO amped up it took me 3 laps of the warm-up field to stop. It didn't help that he kept locking on to jumps in the XC field right next to us and getting all excited all over again. 

Such a pretty fruit bat.

We borrowed his brother's cooler - which was a "bit" small.

And his shoes stayed on and his legs have been cold and tight every day since!