Horse Show Recap--Saturday

Mort was still pretty up for our hand-walk Saturday morning, but I am better at calming him down when I'm riding so I was still cautiously hopeful. I should not have been. Poor guy was so overwhelmed by the environment that he was very on edge. I had to have someone help me mount and have my instructor lead us to the warm-up ring. He jigged the whole way there and just felt like a powder keg. We did eventually start to get moments where he'd release at the base of his neck and take some deep breaths. Then his girlfriend left to ride her test. Mort was almost back to square one of tension. We continued to circle and try to make riding boring and give him something easy to focus on. It worked but only so much. She came out and we walked in and I've never felt Mort so tense in the four years I've had him. I couldn't get him to release and breathe. His back was as solid as rock and his stride was short and choppy. We entered the arena to start our test, but instead of being able to halt and salute--Mort reared. I was shocked and didn't even know what to do, so I just circled and started our test without a halt. The whole test was filled with tension and a couple minor explosions. I added a circle after our first canter depart and took a rider error to make sure we didn't exit the arena. Mort and his girlfriend screamed for each other several times. We got a 50% and my first score of a 1. But we both stayed in the arena and I stayed on. I did not want to ride our next test, but I knew that I had to. Thankfully, his girlfriend rode at noon and we didn't ride until 2:30, so we didn't warm-up together. This made a huge difference. Mort was still tense, but didn't have the added frantic fear of losing his girlfriend. I rode very conservatively and didn't ask for anything other than moments of relaxation. We pulled a 61% with comments that I would have gotten higher if I had done any sort of lengthenings (which was fair because I didn't try to do a single one). I was exhausted and didn't know what to expect on Sunday. I felt much better after our second ride as that was the kind of tension that I knew I could work us through. But the first ride of the day was back-to-back with his girlfriend again which would cause the same trigger-stacking as it had that morning. We both were having very similar problems and were very much on the same page that we needed to keep our horses apart as much as possible (with them being stalled next to each other) to have any sort of good experience.