Great Last Show of the Year!

I competed with Finally and Taison at the Regional Finals at Los Angeles Equestrian Center the weekend of October 7th-10th. The days before the show were, as it has been lately, very shaky. Rain again.... in October! It never rains in October in Los Angeles, but it sure will when there is a show at LAEC! So I felt that I didn't do the work I normally would have done before a show and left a day later than I had planned, since I had good footing at home, so stayed there as long as I could. I went to the show the same day I was going to compete and just hoped it would work.

My classes were huge and a lot of good horses and riders had qualified for the finals. Both Taison and Finally had not been to a show since the National Finals in Gladstone in August, so I wasn't sure how they would be in the ring. Both of them were so good! They stepped up to the plate and just did a great job. Finally was Champion in Intermediare Freestyle with a score of almost 74%. Taison was Reserve Champion with a score of 73.500%. In another huge class, Finally was in a lead for about 5 hours and the last rider of the class beat us, so he was Reserve Champion with a score of 70%. Both Taison and Finally were placed in each class they entered. Great scores, good rides and lovely horses! (Complete results are available on Mette's website.)

So now the plan is just to work harder, so that I can move them up to Grand Prix. I hope to be able to bring them out in Intermediare II and later on to Grand Prix. It's easier said than done, but I'm looking forward to the journey.

This coming weekend, I'm off to give a clinic on the east coast and a couple of weeks later I'm on my way to China to coach my student Diani who will ride in The Asian Games.

I will tell you more about that later on.

So...enjoy.

~Mette