One step forward, two steps back

First, the good news: show clothes still fit! Including the white breeches!

The coat is just a smidge tight, but not in the "doesn't fit" way, in the "cut to be restrictive and make you sit up straight" way, and it's always tended that way.

My stock tie has vanished, but as of late last night I have another one on the way from a friend which is a fun story I will blog about later.

I also located my show helmet, hairnet, show gloves, stock pin without difficulty, remembered that I had actually bought a brand new white show shirt out of some technical wizard fabric like all the kids are wearing these days (my old show shirt was a polyester short sleeved thing that worked for IHSA classes in college but was the actual pits of fashion). I had never worn said shirt but a wearing it in the picture above!

I had also (yay past me!) washed and neatly packed away all my white/show saddle pads. So those are good to go too.

Now the bad news: I tried to start Tristan in his snaffle in the dressage ring last night and it was kind of a disaster. He bolted repeatedly, never relaxed, never softened, would not listen to me and as a result our circles were weird half-square half-oval blobs. In fairness, it was ludicrously windy, so that may have keyed him up, but it was still absolutely awful.

I brought him back down to the indoor and schooled the everloving shit out of him. We ran both tests. We ran every movement in both tests. We ran transitions, We cantered. I put on spurs and a whip and forced him forward into a hand gallop. He was tiiiiiired but finally cooperative at the end.

Then we went up to the outdoor jumping arena, and we repeated that, making sure I had brakes and that he was listening to leg and hand in the walk, trot, and canter. Then we went back up to the dressage ring and trotted and cantered around the outside, politely. He was ever so very tired, but cooperative.

So, today: we'll see. I'll start in his snaffle but bring his kimberwicke up. Depending on how the ride goes I'll decide whether to warm him up in his kimberwicke and switch to the snaffle for the actual rides.

Semi-related gripe: I didn't read Training 2 through thoroughly enough, what the hell. How many times can you cross the diagonal in one goddamn test?!