Horse Academy (1)

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

The beeping of my alarm awakes me, show day is finally here. Saying I am excited is an understatement, I cannot even stay in my bed for 5 seconds.
I throw on a pair of coffee coloured breeches, a polo with some black paddock boots completing my look. Not wanting to freeze to death, I slip on a warm hoodie. I wipe the sleep out of my eyes and brush my wavy blonde hair.

It was currently 5.25am on a Saturday morning, last night I didn't work Storm to hard or long as I didn't want him tired and needed to pack my stuff in the car. I walk to the kitchen and eat my toast quickly before waking my mum. She is working today as a photographer at the show, so at least she'll be there taking photos of me and other people doing there rounds. Thankfully my coach Hailey is letting us borrow her trailer since we don't have one. In return she's getting a lift up to the show with us.

Finally after double checking everything we head to the barn to hook up the trailer. Once the rest of Storms stuff in it, we load him in as well. Hailey wasn't to long, and before I knew it, we were on the road.

Everything goes smoothly and once we were on the highway, the drive only took about an 1 hour. We arrived at the show grounds just after 7am. Storm looked as stunning as ever, after being washed the night before. He had his mane and tail plaited also, however I'll be redoing them later. I had 3 hours before I should be in the ring for my dressage test leaving me with the perfect amount of time to get Storm and myself ready.

I unload Storm and tie him to the side of the trailer where I place his full hay net and water bucket. Afterwards, I checking in and saying good bye to mum as she needed to go see the show manager. We relocate to Storm's assigned stable for the duration of the show. The barn was busy but it didn't prevent me from starting to groom him again. I wanted to make sure he is perfectly clean before redoing his plaits, that's when Emily arrives. She stood by Storms open stall door that I haven't bothered closing. It took me a moment to process my thoughts, I didn't know Emily was coming.

"Hey!!" she says enthusiastically.

I rush over to her and hug her.

"I didn't know you were coming!" I reply smiling excitedly.

"A 'hi how are you' would've been great you know-" Emily jokes.

"-but yeah I came, do you need any help?" she asked.

"Sure! Can you redo the braid in his tail please?" I ask.

"Of course" Emily replies before starting on his tail while I do his mane, I've always found its easier and neater if you do the braids the night before then redo them the next day.

After half an hour of concentrating on Storm we finish up. I then grab my clippers out and clip away the small feathers on his legs making him neater looking before grooming him over again, but mostly his legs because that's where all the saw dust and loose hair was. I make sure not to forget to make the stripe on his face pure white. This takes again, another 30 minutes, leaving me with 2 hours until my dressage test. I decide at this point to get changed into my show clothes, a black jacket, white breeches and black tall boots. I get Emily to do my hair in a fancy way so not only does my hair look neat but it won't go everywhere in the test.

These two processes take an hour which I expected because Emily kept fussing and saying she wasn't doing it right. Now I finally have an hour until my test so Emily and I tack up Storm. As we do this I put a sweater and sweatpants over my clothes so they aren't dirtied.

Once again, Emily and I groom Storm over in certain areas so he looks perfect. The fussy process takes around 15 minutes since the two of us have borderline OCD. That left me with 45 minutes to get warmed up and be at ring 3 to do my test.