Woodland Wind and Winning

It was an extremely windy day at the top of the Central Valley yesterday! We decided that we weren't going to be 'wussey' about showing, we'd go anyway! So we loaded the wily beasts into the trailer and headed out at the butt crack of dawn to get to the horse show in Woodland.

The wind was a blowin'!

Lil Mama kept her cool though and saddled up to work out. Bob was calm and in frame, and we hoped he would stay that a way.

The video is the warm up and he always does good in there. You can hear the wind blowing and see the whiffs of dust being drug away from under his hooves.

She kept calm and took him in the main arena during that warm up and he still stayed calm. I had my hood up, my three layers bundled up to my nose, when they announced the show would go on in the covered arena!

Say what! So over Lil Mama goes to warm up there. It was a little more scary, but I couldn't get photos, too dark and there were no overhead lights.

BUT it wasn't windy and in the sun we even began to thaw out a little.

I didn't mention that it had rained on Saturday, and the Great Sierra Mountains to our East about 100 miles were covered down to the foothills with snow! The wind from the East was just that cold too!

Lil Mama took a deep breath and began to show. She received a 5th, then a 4th and then two firsts! Fantastic!!

Desi on the other hand was not on his best game.

He will not pee when we are at theses one day shows where he is tied up to a trailer all day. About 2 PM he starts doing the pee pee dance, kicking and shaking his head and rearing. By the time we are going into the ring, about 4 pm he is just a frightful mess. He is resistant, and belligerent. He reared, and spun and bucked and would not turn to the left.

During our class he kept resisting, but I was getting him around the pen, no tic's, and at our last obstacle- the gate, he balked. He refused to go through the gate! He backed up to the limit of the rope, which I eventually had to let go of. Of course a balk is a DQ, letting go of the rope was a DQ, and cursing a blue streak like a drunken sailer (should) have been a DQ too.

I took him into another pen to make his life even more miserable, and he reared and bucked and spun in there too. He flat refused to go forward! So after about 15 minutes of 'punishment circles to the left, I had to finally just be finished with him. We scratched our last class.

We tried putting shaving into the trailer and then putting him into the trailer to pee- Nuthin.

We tried putting shaving under his feet where he is tied to the trailer- nuthin.

We tried taking him on a walk so he could smell other horse pee- nuthin.

The only thing that might work is getting a stall for the day ( expensive for a one day show) and letting him stand in a stall all day. Then he'll pee and then he will feel comfortable to compete.

What I am really afraid of is that this resistant behavior will show up again at the next non- one day show. That would be a disaster! I'd really have to kill him them, turn his worthless hide into a nice pair of Uggs!

I am also open to suggestions from you all.