Stampede July 2

So last night had its ups and downs. The person in front of me in line for Rock :( but I got Squirt #120. I hadn't ridden him since December so I was curious to see how the ride would go. He was great for grooming he's just soooo big! And yet he has this tiny synthetic and leather saddle lol. We luckily got to ride outside :) we warmed up and it was a disaster. No one was paying attention. Squirt is all leg cues. I tried really hard to ride him with a loose rein and it seemed too help. After we suffered through warm ups we lined up our drills. I rode 1-1. We only got halfway through. We had a couple horse issues and just people not paying attention. So we cut it short and lined up a new drill. I rode 4-4. This one went okay. Again just people not knowing the drill. Then we lined up the third drill and I was 3-1. I rode that spot until star then I got smashed to the outside and ended up riding 1-6 so I called the second half of the drill. Overall the drills tonight were just bad it was not a good night for us at all. But I was proud of how I was handling squirt and I even rode him with a white flag and never had to shoulder my flag. He really showed me how far I've come as a rider since December but he also showed me how much room I have to improve. My leg cues are good but I could still use less rein. We also played catch up in 12s. It was terrifying cause I was one away from the rail and our inside kept squishing is and we hit the rail once and got smashed out multiple times. Again just adding to the bad ride. Our instructors were not thrilled at all. Then we cooled the horses off and headed up to unsaddle. It started raining as soon as I put Squirt away. Luckily it waited until after our ride. I think we are doing officers next ride so stay tuned!