Showtime! Again, and I'm exhausted...

This last weekend we had our final horse show - I have a few more 3-Day events planned and perhaps an endurance race, but this was it for our final horse show of the year. (At least, this is what my husband thinks...)

My helpers include my 2 year and 4 year daughter, so with them tagging along, I managed to wash 3 horses, work on all the basics and showing classes again and tame the horse's manes (not an easy feat, as you all know) to get them ready to show. By the end of Saturday, that was it - I was exhausted.

I took our 3 year old Curly gelding - Khatmoondhu, our 2 year old gelding Timbuktu and my daughter's mini to Arabian Heritage Farms for their horse show - open to all breeds.

Our results? It was a dual judge show - so everyone received 2 placings depending on the judge's preferences -

Khatmoondhu - Halter Geldings class, 1st and 2nd place
(He is awesome at halter!)
Trail in Hand Class, 3rd and 5th place

Timbuktu - Jumper in Hand Class, 1st and 1st place
Hunter in Hand Class, 1st and 1st place
Trail in Hand Class, 4th and 5th place
My daughter also won an assortment of ribbons, but that's for my personal blog.

Timbuktu jumping the pattern with my encouragement. He had never donet this before!

Coming off our last jump....
Timbuktu - walking to get our awards. Notice his mane, it's all on one side. It takes me 3 days to train it to do that for one show. And about 1 roll to undo it!

Timbuktu doing his Trail in Hand Class - backing through cones over a tarp. Didn't like that one bit!

So, what I learned. Even though the 3 year old and 2 year old geldings are full brothers - I would bet my money on the 2 year old (Timbuktu) being the jumper like his dad. He had never been in a show arena before and he has never seen show jumps (flowers, painted, etc.) and once he knew what I was asking (I kiss before each jump so they know to jump) he absolutely loved it and didn't hesitate once.

His brother on the other hand was disqualified for refusing. Khatmoondhu just needed to see and smell each jump a couple of times before he was willing to jump it. He definitely "thinks" about things more and is more cautious.

Timbuktu is like Traveler, not a lot of things bother him. So it was fun to see and appreciate their differences and this was the first time I had ever asked either one of them to "show" jump. It will be interesting to see how they mature and come along with more training.

So what a wonderful learning experience with some rewards for our effort - and my exhaustion.