Horse Show

Today was the 2nd day of the county fair.

Yesterday, Mere had a halter class with Cody. Basically, that means she just led him into the arena and the judge judges the horse. Well, she's still pretty small and has only been working with horses for a few months so she was very nervous about it. She did fine and got a purple ribbon.

Today she had a groom and care class with Dunny. Basically, she just leads the horse in and they stand there and she answers questions from the judge about grooming and caring for him. She was very nervous again. Her nerves were rubbing off on Dunny. He was already kind of antsy anyway. We all got to the waiting part of the arena and she started crying because she didn't want to do it. Her leader and I tried to get her to calm down. I even took the horse and walked him around awhile. We ended up having to yell at her a little and told her she was going in there and it didn't matter whether or not she wanted to. She walked into the ring with him and she was fine. The horse stood there almost perfectly (she did have to circle him every once in a while because it took the judge some time to get down the row to her.) She got another purple.

She always blames the horse for not standing still or says she can't do whatever but I think the problem is she gets stage fright. Standing around waiting for something to happen gets to her and upsets her. Once she's actually doing the thing she's upset about, she is usually fine.