September 17, 2011 - Off to the Qualifiers

We went and picked up t the trailer this morning and discovered the right taillight didn't work (Brake and turn).  It turns out that the rental trailer had blown a fuse and once that was replaced everything worked
properly.

I brought Rory in, rinsed the mud off his heels, groomed him, wrapped his legs and hand grazed while waiting for the trailer light/truck fuse issue to be resolved.  It didn't take long to long my gear into the trailer, and once Rory was on board we were shortly on our way.  The nice thing about this trip was that we didn't have to be there until tomorrow morning so there was no major stress over the delays.

We arrived late in the afternoon. Rory travelled like a pro and ate almost all of his hay.  He refused water when we stopped partway, but accepted a couple of carrots.  Before I unloaded him I took the shavings into the barn and set up his stall.  The floors were concrete so I dumped part of a bucket of water on the floor first so the bottom layer of shavings would get a bit damp and be more stable under his feet.  I also put several flakes of hay into the stall before bringing Rory in.  He was interested and looked at everything as we went down the barn aisle.  One horse screamed at Rory as we went by and Rory speeded up a little to get past.  In the stall Rory looked around, peeked out the window and then started munching his hay as if he'd been doing this for years.  I went and got him a bucket of water and he couldn't even wait for me to hang it up before he had his nose in the bucket.  The fact that the water wasn't "his" didn't bother him a bit.

After I unloaded the rest of my gear I rode him in the show arena for about 20 min. There was another horse just finishing up as we went in and the company helped Rory settle.  He was really good with all the sights and the strange venue.  There was a young boy lying on the top of the half wall between arena and bleachers playing video games on his notebook.  The video games must have gotten boring as the boy started scrambling around the bleachers, trying to get all the way around the arena without touching the ground.  Rory didn't mind him at all.  The right lead canter was a little sticky again, but we got it.  At the end Rory settled enough to give me a nice stretched outline at the trot.

I fed him and settled him for the night after deciding to bath in the morning.