Quite an Event – Blue Ribbon for Joe Bear!

Joe Bear and Paula win a blue ribbon eventing

Poplar Place CT schooling show. We arrived and I put Joe in the stall and went to get his hay and buckets. When I got back he was calling out and sweating like I had deserted him for hours. My first thought was, “This is going to be a very bad day…” I took him out to look around and found a huge flat area where he could see the competition arenas and lunge. It worked perfectly as his tenseness immediately dissolved.

An hour before my ride time I began to get ready. I wanted a long warm up because that does me as much good as it does him! The test was not too bad, but I felt it was a little tense. The arena felt so small! ?There wasn’t much time after that before the jumping so we warmed up over few jumps and went in for our stadium. Again Joe jumped happily and boldly. What a relief!

To finish the day, I went out to school cross-country. I introduced him first to the water jump, which he loved, and then we went out on the course and jumped anything that didn’t look too scary. He was ready to try anything! What fun!

While hosing him off after we got back they announced the results and to my amazement, Joe and I had won a blue ribbon! I found out that they had split the class because of the number of entries and I won out of my “group.” If I took all scores into account, we would have placed third with only 1 penalty point behind the leader! So it turned out to be a very GOOD day.

Lessons are going to continue as much as possible and we are planning on a show at least once a month. I cannot wait to see how Joe does once I can have him going at shows like he goes at home!

Joe Bear and Paula have been together since 2006. Click here to read their past success stories.