Midwinter's Night Ball - Show Day #2

Finally, the last installment of my show report for A Midwinter's Night Ball!  Once again, my apologies that it's taken me so long to do a simple show report blog post.  Life has just been crazy!

So, when we left off, I was rejoicing in my very modest Performance winnings, and the OF Halter winnings that had so far made the show worth attending.  To be honest, there was a part of me that considered skipping the second day of the show altogether.  My collection doesn't include many customs or resins, so my halter line up for Day 2 was pretty small.  After a not-so-stellar day of CM/AR Performance, I was wondering if there was any point in even trying my hand at OF Performance.  The thought of a leisurely ride home early was sort of tempting... but in the end, I figured I shouldn't give up and instead I decided to do what I came there to do - SHOW.

I did decide to take a more leisurely approach to the day however.  Although the show hall opened at 8am and classes started at 9am, Rob dropped me off closer to 9:30am after we enjoyed breakfast together in the hotel.  I was figuring that things would be slow moving as they had been the previous morning, but when we got there, all three Performance Harness classes were already in full swing, so I jumped right into getting my first entry of the day, Class #4 Showmanship, ready.

Arrietty, my DAH seal bay "English Pleasure" Palouse won 2nd Place (out of 5 entries) in Showmanship!

When I came back to find a shiny red ribbon and a pretty pink NAN card next to my horse, it was definitely a good start to the day!

The rest of the Other Performance subdivision was pretty good for me as well.

Kiss Me Kate filled in for Arrietty in the Other Performance - Competitive class since I didn't feel up to the tack changes that would have been required.  She scored 1st Place (out of 3 entries) - not bad!

Arrietty won a 3rd Place (out of 5 entries) for Other Performance - Non-Competitive & Scene.

The next Performance subdivision was Costume, and again I sat out since I don't have any costumes.  I also decided to skip the Western subdivision since I really don't have the right tack to be competitive, especially not in Texas!  But that was ok really, since it meant I could take my time and focus on getting Arrietty in the tack I wanted her in for the English subdivision (I had to do a bridle change after realizing that the one she wore for Other Performance didn't have long enough reins for the doll to hold them properly).  I took lots of time to adjust the rider doll juuuuuust (hopefully) right as well, which I think paid off in the end!  I also had time to wander around and admire everyone else's entries, which I love to do.

The Western subdivision ended right before lunch, but since I wasn't showing during it, I had actually already eaten by the time everyone else took their break.  So, while everyone else ate, I set up my English entries in the Performance ring - there were markers for the first four classes, so I set up everything I could minus the horse from all but the first class.  Then I could sit back and relax - so I thought!  Lunch ended, and the English judging began at a quick pace.

Arrietty won 2nd Place (out of 6 entries) in English Games - off to a good start!

I decided to "cheat" a bit and left my Huntseat rider on for my Cross Country entry.  As fast as the judge wanted the classes to be moving, I knew that taking her off for Cross Country and then having to put her back on for the next class and spend a bunch of time *hopefully* getting her sitting and adjusted properly again just wasn't worth it.  So the rider stayed on, even if she wasn't dressed for a proper Cross Country set up, and I still won 1st Place (out of 3 entries)!

Arrietty won 2nd Place (out of 5 entries) in the Jumper class - proving that with proper documentation, a trotting horse CAN successfully be shown as a show jumper.

And another 2nd Place (out of 10 entries) in the Hunter class.  I was quite pleased at this point!!

The classes were really flying by (turns out our Performance judge had a plane to catch!) so most of my afternoon involved making sure I had as many performance scenes ready to go as space allowed, and then moving my horse from one entry to the next with minor tack changes in between.  I only had a few horses in the Halter division, so I only had to make a few trips here and there to the other end of the show hall.  But my mind was totally focused on the Performance..

Arrietty only managed a 3rd Place (out of 11 entries) for my simple Arena Trail set up.

She bounced back with a 1st Place (out of 4 entries) for Natural Trail.

Impressively, Arrietty won 1st place (out of 8 entries) in the English Pleasure - Sport Type class!

 It was at this point, that I started doing a little math in my head... It seemed to me that I was doing pretty well by now.. and that in most of the classes, the blues and the NAN cards were going either to Arrietty or to Christie Partee's mare Color Me Pretty.  I wondered how our ribbon counts would add up in the end...

Another 1st Place (out of 7 entries) for Arrietty in Dressage.

And we finished out the division strong, with another 1st Place (out of 3 entries) for Other English.

It was finally the moment of truth.. English division call backs.  Color Me Pretty had already been sitting on the callback table with 5 blue ribbons beside her while the Dressage and Other English classes finished up.  But the last two blue ribbons put us on top for sure, and Arrietty won English Performance Champion!

Five Blues, three Reds, and one Yellow earned Arrietty the OF English Performance Championship!

If that wasn't amazing enough.. the Overall Performance callbacks were next.

Christie Partee's Color Me Pretty was the deserving winner of the OF Performance Grand Championship (she had won Costume Champ, Western Reserve Champ, and English Reserve Champ).

And Arrietty won... OF Performance Reserve Grand Champion!

I was truly amazed at how well I had done in OF Performance - it really was well above my best expectations for the day.  I really felt like I went up against the Big Competition and was able to hold my own, which means a lot to me.  :D


By the time the Performance division was finished, my halter horses had finished their classes as well.  There wasn't much exciting to report there - I only had four entries in the Custom division and six entries in the CM Mini division.  The best I did there was my CM Stablemate Mule to a Zebra won 2nd Place, two of my CM Ponies won some 3rd places, and my CM Mini Morgan that I painted myself won 6th Place in Breed and 6th Place in Workmanship which I thought was pretty spiffy considering I had painted him about 16 years ago when I was just a kid.

I also sadly didn't get as many pictures as I would have liked as the day went on.  I was tired and rushing through Performance entries, and often the only chance I had to take pictures was of my own entries to document my placings.  But anyway, all the photos I took from the show can be seen on my Facebook album here.

So, I'd say my first time showing at a Big Texas Show was a success.  Plus, it was a lot of fun, and that's what really matters!  I'm definitely looking forward to coming back to A Midwinter's Night Ball next year!