November 17th - 8:42pm

KLast day of a long week. Got up early and packed up Nixon, Justinian, Virtuso and Benito to go to a schooling show at the Aleman. As usual, my job was getting on and starting the warm up process. Just walk/trot with transitions for the most part. I ended up on Virtuoso while the .70 class was warming up and it was just a tiny bit terrifying. Small warm up rings in general make me a little antsy. Just so many horses in one little area moving at different speeds and directions. But that ring with all the small kids on way to big of horses can probably go down as one of the worst Ive been in. At least when you warm up with professionals most everyone knows how not to get killed. The little kids though are death defying. Swerving across the ring randomly, galloping around cutting between other horses, using other horse's butts to stop and generally scaring the bejezus out of Katie. But Virtuoso was very well behaved and handled the craziness without a problem. Thankfully after the small classes were over the sanity in the warm up ring.
Once the show was over we quickly loaded up and shot over to the Hipico to watch Cylene go in the dressage show. Martin had dashed over and seen Twilight go already with a good test. He finished 2nd and Cylene finished 4th against some tough competition. Including National who use to live at Rancho Pampa. I rode him a few times at home before he sold and he looked great with the new owner. So a good day for current and old Rancho Pampa horses.
Once we got home I had Geologo to ride to help Megg finish up for the day. He was quite good as usual. Which was very good considering the ring held some more excitement (as if I needed more after the warm up ring). Rodrigo is breaking some fillies for the Peruvian police force and has been working with them on the ground for a couple weeks now. Today was their first day undersaddle. And it was accomplished in a slightly different method than with the up and coming jumpers. He got his gaucho friend with a criollo horse to pony each of the fillies around the ring without a rider until they would walk, trot and canter following the other horse. Then Rodrigo would get on and they'd do the same routine. Most caught on really quick and by the end of the afternoon all of them had completed their first rides undersaddle. Definitely a different way to do it than Ive seen but it seemed to work well enough! Rodrigo said theyll be going around the ring by themselves come Monday. It was definitely a bit interesting to ride around but Geologo couldnt have cared less so I just had the job of staying out of the way. Significantly easier than avoiding the children this morning! Good last day of a long week though. Off tomorrow and headed to see a polo game or two!