Boy.. oh boy.

Update much?
Apologizes, again. I try to set some time aside to keep this updated but it seems my mind wanders and does not return!

Anyways!

I left off with the suspense-filled "I have a show next weekend.." and I did on January 29th.
The day went fantastically and we received Reserve Champion!
Symbah behaved wonderfully throughout the day and had that extra "oomph" needed to pick himself up a bit, and made a nice overall picture.
I was very proud of him and we seemed to be doing great afterwards.
We even competed in one 2'6" course and received a 6th place (out of 14th!). Very proud of him.

We did end up working on getting him to pick up his legs over fences, however it didn't seem to go over well. Most horses will go "Hmm, I knocked the pole with my leg.. it hurt a bit so I'll raise my legs higher next time". But apparently not my horse. No sir, his mind seemed to go "Hmm, I knocked the pole with my leg.. it hurt a bit so I don't want to do that again.".
So on that note, he started becoming more cautious to the jumps because I had to let him figure it out for himself. I'm a very controlling person and had "chosen" which spots for him to take over jumps so now that I had to let him figure it out.. he was lost.

So of course with that, we took two massive steps backwards in our training and things became increasingly fustrating. I resorted back to some old defensive riding but I thought we had found a happy medium to the work.
We had yet another show on February 15th. Perhaps I was too cocky from our previous placings, perhaps I had only managed to 'mask' our training issue and perhaps I had become so fustrated with him that our last few rides leading up to this show had not been too good.. but whatever it was, the show did not go well.
I should say the warning was when the guy who trailers us was late due to some issues with the actual trailer. We did make it to the show but missed our actual warm up so our two outside lines were mere 8" crossrails instead of the 2'0 verticals and oxers.

Okay, no problem.. right? During warm up I was having fun, calm, relaxed. We approached a wide grey oxer and Symbah hit the brakes, ducking out. That would've been warning number 2.
So whatever, I get him over the oxer and pretend nothing happened. When we get into the ring for the flat class, he's acting like a firecracker. Again, this is my usual steady-eddy horse.
Nope. But his upward transitions were fantastic, downward were a bit slow but still okay. However we did not even place on the flat. But, the girl who placed 1st had cantered the entire time on the wrong lead. The girl whom placed 2nd, her horse had bucked a few times infront of the judge's booth. And the girl whom placed 3rd, her horse had taken off and temporarily stopped the class. So that would've been warning number 3 about this show.

A note to everyone: Listen to your gut instincts.

Our first course had been disasterous. He charged and lunged over every fence, snatched at the bit and dragged me everywhere. I had no turning power with him and had to try and yank him off his feet to stop a possible trainwreck. Ontop of that, he refused and deeked out of one of the simplest jumps and proceeded to bolt across the arena and refused to slow down until I pointed him into a wall. However, I did turn him back and complete that course! Obviously, no placings.

The second course was a bit better but I spent the entire time in a defensive position, death grip on the reins trying to pull him back as he continued to launch and charge jumps. Made it through, but it sure wasn't pretty. Again, no placings.

Third was our "stakes" class. Depending on your placing, you can get money back. So after a flat class and two disasterous courses, I finally started to figure him out enough to stay somewhat safe. I was able to ride him a bit better through that course, although it was still terrible. We ended up with a 4th place for that one.
I had signed up in the morning to do one 2'6 class so I went in and scoped out the jumps. We tried over one single and he was acting like a monster still, almost taking down that jump. At that point, I called it a day and left. I was not going to endanger my life nor his with bigger jumps when we obviously had some training faults that needed to be fixed.

So we went home defeated with only a 4th.