> Well--I'm waiting for her to stew on it and decide. What ever way she > decides to go with it is fine with me. > V
Please remember that a lot of the riding experinece at Alex's age is about social interaction with the other kids and being able to participate in the things that all the other kids are doing. It's hard to be the only kid left at the barn on a show weekend - very lonely. I think Gat is a wonderful mount for Alex - teaching her many things and keeping her safe. Another option if she continues to want to go to shows and gets discouraged because she isn't competitive is that she could ride a school horse for the shows for awhile and Gat in her lesson or between lessons. It's better for kids to ride different horses anyway. Believe me, when she does win a ribbon, it will mean more to her becasue it didn't come easy the first time. Horse shows can be a good life lesson about winning and losing and what you are willing to do to win that little scrap of ribbon. My daughters would go to shows and compete against kids whose horses were ridden by a trainer all week and then the kids were stuck up on them just for the show. My girls had the satisfaction of knowing when they won a sixth place ribbon that they had done a lot more to make that happen than most of the others - no one trained their horses for them. You just have to find the good parts of showing for kids and help them weed out the rest. - Laree
