My Life Altering Experiences

Riding Peanut

My friend has a horse named Peanut, and she is a crazy thoroughbred, I've been riding her for the last few years and showing her in open shows as well as on the high school equestrian team. Now, Peanut is just like any other thoroughbred, Hot, Mare-ish and very excitable. Well the first shows we did were great, we never placed in anything but we did great and I was proud of her. But when our equestrian team made it to Regionals things went downhill from there, Everything in Regionals is a pattern and Peanut hates patterns.

So we got up there and we unloaded and I tacked her up and got ready to ride, just to expel some energy before we started in the morning. She did great, no fussing, no dorking around. So I brought her back up the hill and put her away. In the morning my first class was Saddleseat Equitation, so I saddled her up, put my makeup on, got dressed and climbed in the saddle. Since this was going by divisions and we were in C it would take a long time before our turn came around. So I went down to a practice field and started working her, warming up her muscles and trying to work the pattern as best I could before we were to go into the ring and perform it.

She didn't like working the pattern but we got through it with minimal accidents. Then once it got to be near our turn we went back up to the arena to await our turn outside the ring. When it was our turn she did fairly well, she was a little jittery and had to have her attention refocused a few times but overally she did very well

We placed third. As the day wore on I worked with her out in the field as much as possible before my other classes. We had Saddleseat Bareback that day and while we were warming up in the field for it she started being an idiot, she would jump around, spin in circles and rear up on her hind legs. She never managed to dump me but I do think that she was trying to get me off her so that she didn't have to do any work.

Regardless of what she wanted we went into our class and we didn't do too bad. When we had to stand next to the cone she would freak out and do lots of spinning and refusing to go forward. But we did alright and I was happy with her. When It came time for Western Equitation we decided that we would try a different tactic, Tami, our coach walked along the rail with us outside the arena until we had to turn towards the middle and go across the arena. As soon as the comfort of our coach went away she started acting up again and nearly ran over the judge as well as take out several of the other teams horses.

We placed last in that class. The next morning we were down on points and Tami said that she was going to throw me into jumping at the last minute that morning. I was very nervous about this because I hadn't practiced since our last t show in which she managed to dump me off halfway through the course.

But Tami was dead set on me jumping that morning so I hurriedly got ready to ride. We waited and waited and waited and when it was finally our turn to go in for the warmup jump she refused the first two jumps, Tami decided that we were going to try and trick her into feeling like her 'Herd' was around her. She had the other girls on the team bring their horses out and position them around the arena while the parents also positioned themselves at intervals around the arena.

It worked and she went through the course flawlessly and we managed to win under both judges which gave us 18 points and put us in the lead. The rest of the weekend was uneventful and consisted of more of the same acts of naughtiness. And at the end of the weekend we ended up being Regionals Champions and we were going to State in two weeks.

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(Fyi about the video: Skip the first half of it and just watch the second. The first half is mainly just standing. Also if you want to see more vidoes from the championship just check my youtube page. )