Enter at A- Screaming!

Kat's idea of enter at A was to do it screaming to announce his arrival in the arena.  He was a bit fiesty and a tad pissed off because we were the last to go and all of the other ponies had left the warm up and holding area. He was pretty much alone and wondering why? Where had his new herd of friends gone?

We entered at A, halted at X pretty nicely and did our test. For the most part- I don't really remember much of it. It wasn't all that outstanding in my mind apparently, but for the most part it is pretty foggy in my brain as to how things went.  I usually pick a theme song to sing to Kat in the arena. It makes me breathe, gives him a tempo to work with and for the most part- I had nothing.

I do remember laughing out loud at Kat a few times, because he was screaming his way around the arena, screaming down the rail, screaming through the circles, screaming through the turns and I was telling him to STFU already, nobody cares and all the screaming is getting a bit obnoxious. I felt he did pretty well otherwise, but for the most part I only really remember I was looking down at his feet a few times to see if we were actually trotting.  The footing was a bit squishy in some places, even being on the grass.  Just before E and in the corner by F were especially bad and towards the end of the day the centerline was a muddy rut.

We turned on the centerline and headed to X for our halt before backing up. I told Kat there was a halt coming up and when we got there he wasn't so much responding. I pulled him into the halt and he was beyond mad. He fussed and fidgeted, threw his head in protest, stepping a bit to the left while also offering to rear. Can't really get after him in the center of the arena with all eyes on us, so I scolded him and told him to "Knock it off and Straighten Up!" Again he was screaming the whole time and I was laughing at him and asking where the hell that BS came from? He finally stood still long enough for me to count and then ask for the back. We walked to G, saluted the judge and picked up the trot to leave the arena.

After saluting the judge and as we passed by the corner of the arena, Gary yelled to me- "Way to go! Just laugh it off and have a good time."  Sometimes that is about all you CAN do given the circumstances. Between the weather, the footing, his screaming and everything else- our score under Craig Kellog was a 74 point something and under Mike McLennan we rocked it with a 53 point something.  Since we don't get our score sheets until the last day, my cell phone crapped out and then I forgot to pick them up- I can't tell you what my scores for each movement were or the comments. Yay Me!  I am hoping for a Plan B and to be able to get the score sheets at some point, but who knows when that may happen.

After dressage we were in 4th place of 5 entries. Not exactly how I wanted to kick off the event, since we all hope to do well, but we got through it. We didn't get eliminated, didn't have any injuries to Kat because of the footing and I know dressage is not his strong point anyways.  It was about as good as we could have done so I took him back to the barn to let him finish his breakfast and relax.

With all of the rain, there were quite a few puddles and a couple of lakes. It's a good thing Kat has learned to go through water, because if he didn't before then, he would now! I don't think there was any 'clean' way out of the barn area and there weren't many dry areas between there and the dressage arena, holding area or warm up. Surprisingly enough, the warm up was all dirt, but under the water the footing was pretty good. The holding area was grass, but pretty wet and by mid day it was rutted, deep and slick.  As it was- he no longer had 4 white socks.