Day 7 - Favorite Ribbon

Day 07- Your favorite ribbon won at a show and why


From Clover Ledge Farm

This, for me, is really easy to answer. Clyde and I struggled through Pony Club. As an off the track pacer with only Pony Club instruction we made slow progress through the levels and showing. There was one 3 Day PC Event where I was begging the Technical Delegate to let me continue with the Stadium Phase (It was a true 3 day, Dressage on the first day (DQ'd because I brought in a whip), Cross Country on the 2nd Day (too many refusals) and then Stadium.

Anyway, this isn't about that event, but it does kind of inform you, this horse and I struggled. I remember being at Pony Club camp and we had to switch horses and I was practically gleeful at how easy it was to canter the horse around and around and around the arena.

So back to the story at hand.

Every fall, a farm would host a schooling show with flat and jump classes. It was very popular with the pony clubbers. If you entered the series of the same category you could qualify for a champion ribbon.  You had a flat class, W/T/C, then jumping and maybe a third, I can't remember it's been well over a decade and a half. But I entered all the classes. I dolled Clyde up and into the ring each time we went.

He jumped his heart out, we were on point and we came away with the Reserve Champion Ribbon. Some of our critics were there watching, people who would ask my parents why they didn't just get me a better horse when they saw us struggling in lessons. At this show, they congratulated us on how far we'd come and how well we did. Suck it, Glastonbury. I was a chubby middle class kid on a free horse who could barely canter competing against upper class kids who wintered in Wellington and Ocala on 5 figure ponies. And I fucking won.

That is my favorite ribbon.