Proxy showing performance

 I had a plan. It was a good plan, both color coded and detailed. When I said I would proxy show my friend Fabian's new Knightly Cadence resin at Quabbin Valley Performance Open in the hopes of getting him some NAN cards so he could show there this year I was confident I could snag him some cards. I am a pretty good performance shower most of the time so I figured I could do it. Then after I said I could probably do it (no guarantees though, I live in the real world where you can't always win even if you work hard at it) I started to get nervous. Not only was I going to show a horse I don't own IN PERFORMANCE but this was the difference between NAN and no NAN for a good friend. Holy crap, what did I get myself into! So I made a plan. As I mentioned it was color coded; my horses and what they were doing in each class were listed in blue. Fabian's horse was in green. Details (tack, doll, etc) that needed to be changed was listed after each in red so I couldn't miss it if I spaced out a bit. Did I mention it was detailed?
   QVPO is a very cool performance show with a Stockhorse, Western, Other Performance, Sporthorse, English and Costume division in both OF and CM. Really, if you have never gone and get the chance to be in Region X at the end of April (it is always held the last weekend before the NAN cutoff) it is absolutely worth attending. So since I was still showing my own horses, though I did keep my entries down to make it easier on myself, I decided to show Fabian's horse in Western, English and a class in Other performance. There was a reason for this but I will get to that later. So the first class was western arena trail. I think I did a carry the bucket from on barrel to another but I forgot to pay attention to the doll (I had to borrow one because I didn't have enough. Yes, I am ashamed) and she wasn't looking at anything in particular. The class was huge so that detail really mattered. Crap, time to start paying more attention. The next class was western games and I decided to do a rescue race because that is often my lazy go-to set-up for a fast moving horse. Well he got honors (the show places to 6th) in a very large class but still no NAN card.

The good news on this is Fabian had never seen the set-up before and was interested. It IS a good one for a faster moving horse...just not overly interesting.
   The next class was other western performance and I decided to do western riding because while it's a fairly simple class it often does really well. We managed 4th place on that one. Still no NAN card and I am almost out of western classes!

My last chance for the western card was in western pleasure-other type. I was a bit nervous because I was really hoping to do well for Fabian. The classes were HUGE and as anyone that has shown in Region X knows, the competition is fierce (friendly, but fierce). But the good news is...

...I managed to snag second in western pleasure-other type! I was so excited! I grabbed my camera and my cell phone so I could text Fabian the good news about the western card. I almost didn't make it but I was VERY happy to have gotten it in the end.
   After the western division was the other performance division. I put Fabian's horse in a Liberty set-up because again, it was what I could think of that was sort of easy. And this wasn't about a NAN card so the placing didn't matter overly much.

I did at least make up some Morgan horse specific liberty documentation but that was also my downfall! The judge pointed out that in the second line of my documentation it says the exhibitor will wear the show number. I didn't put a show number on my guy or the set-up would probably have placed higher according to the judge. It really does come down to teeny tiny details at times. But we got 5th which is placing and that was cool.
   After that I had to wait through the sporthorse division (not really "wait" I showed my horses in all the divisions) for the English division. That started off with English games. I decided ahead of time that I would show Fabian's horse in side saddle because side saddle is his thing and I have learned A TON from him about side saddle. Plus it gave me a chance to show my awesome side saddle tack made by Jennifer Buxton on another horse. That was a bit of a challenge because the stuff I am used to is with a standing horse! So For Fabian's horse I did a simple looking tennis ball carry game. You ride to the first cone (which has a tall extension for the tennis ball) and pick up the ball. Then you ride to the second cone and put the ball on it. My beautiful side-saddle specific (with a photo) documentation says walk to the second cone. Crap! So last minute I covered that up with a hand written piece that says generically to move it to the next cone. Well it was worth it.

The set-up got 1st and I got to text Fabian a picture of his English NAN card! Boy was I excited about that! My two biggest goals for the show were complete! 
   Next was other English performance and I did a side saddle riding lesson. I had only a card saying side saddle riding lesson, I had to do a doll change and play with all those reins but I thought it was kind of cool.

and placing at all in the classes was fantastic because they were very large and full of awesomeness. 
   I was getting a little bit stressed then and since I had the English card now and I didn't have a cool set-up for arena trail I skipped it and just got the horse ready for English pleasure-other type. I got third in that one but that class as well was very large.

So my last goal of the day was to try for one of the special awards. For the Versatility Challenge you needed to have 2 western classes, 2 English classes and an other performance class. You pick the classes that you want to count towards the award at the beginning of the show and write them on an index card with the owner and horse info. At the end of the day the hostess tallied the points from the people that entered the special performance challenges and awarded rosettes for champ and reserve. And this is what Fabian's horse got

Reserve Champion in the CM Versatility Challenge. I wanted to be able to send one of the beautiful rosettes to him with his (still really new) horse. I was very happy to have gotten both the Western and the English card and then a really pretty rosette to send back to Colorado. Proxy showing performance is a bit scary since it's not my horse and I want to do well for a friend. But it was fun and not too crazy. I might even be willing to do it again sometime.