Cross Horse Show Narrative

It was one cold morning in November ; I woke up to brush my teeth around four a.m. I then proceeded to shower to wake myself up. I then got in my families van full of snacks to drive to the barn to meet up with my instructor. Once we reached the stable, we left for the horse show in Aiken, South Carolina. We reached there around eight that Saturday morning and I started to groom Matt, the show horse I was riding at the time, and fed him. Around eight fifteen we walked around the horse show grounds to find some unique additions to my outfit for the show, like matching ribbon for Matt and for my hair. Once it got closer to show time, around eight thirty that morning, I started to tack up Matt, first by tying him up to his stall. Then, I put the saddle pad on Matt for cushioning,

I started off by taking half a lap around the ring to gain momentum for the first cross rail jump. After that, it was a sharp turn to the right in order to create a hunter flat jump. At this time, Matt and I were both getting nervous and he got spooked by the noise of the jump only to swerve the flat hunter jump and cut through the middle of the ring. He then started to gallop in ginormous strides I had never seen him do before. He topped this off with an Olympic styled jump where both of his legs were tucked to the fullest extent when he jumped the fence that was greatly sloped down hill. The entire horse show grounds went silent and all of the shows stopped. I fell off of Matt soon after the jump and onto my side. If I had fallen onto my back, I could have possibly been paralyzed. Thankfully, Mrs. King was there to stop Matt and calm him down. After I got medical help and felt a little better about an hour later, I got back on Matt and conquered my fear. I placed in seventh place out of thirteen contenders. It was around four in the afternoon when we left. Then went home and straight to dinner followed by