I have been mainly driving for the past 20 years with my husband and would go to the odd show with some of my other ponies from time to time the past 2 years, but I haven’t had many over fences lessons the past 20 years, I just dabbled around at home and bumped around at the odd schooling show.
I entered WEC Ohio with one of my 4 year old sales ponies a couple of months ago, hoping to get him around and seen and to maybe sell him while I was down there (its a 11 hr drive to WEC from my farm in Ontario, so I entered 2 of the schooling shows that were back to back at the end of August/Sep so we didn’t have to do the drive twice - we just stayed down the whole time).
Well, I did advertise my 4 year old on FB a month before WEC and sold him in 15 mins (had 2 offers), which really surprised me. I still really wanted to go to WEC so decided to see if my 15 year old driving pony would make it as a hunter - he was never a fan of jumping so I never really pushed it over the years. I didn’t have any time to take any lessons on him, but I did have some jumps at home so I was able to do a bit of a practice with him. He has been to shows and I have ridden him quite a bit, just never really jumped him or asked him to work in a longer hunter frame, and I never worked on changes with him as well, so I thought this might be interesting, but I was pretty sure I would have fun anyway.
First day schooling at WEC, I couldn’t even get him over one jump as he was scared of all of the cedar branches on the ground. We took the branches away and built his confidence (and mine) and we were able to work through it (with a coach, who has never seen us but she was amazing and really worked us through everything). We showed the next day and were in the ribbons, and we were even able to get changes if I asked. I did the Future hunter 2’ classes to keep it easy for both of us and I did not expect anything to be honest. There were over 45 in the division and we ended up 1st, 2nd and 4th. The next day we had Beginner horse/pony 2’ Division (again aver 40 people) and we ended up Champion of the division. We also played in the 2’ Derby and out of 47, we were 6th in the first round, but I got lost in the handy round and had to circle to find my jump, but ended up 11th overall. I need lots of practice for the Derbys but I just love them! So much fun.
The second week we did the same classes and ended up Champion of the Beginner horse/pony division again and was Overall Reserve Champion of the 5 schooling shows even though we just did the 2 shows, as we accumulated enough points. I was beyond thrilled and surprised to say the least. I know it was only a schooling show, but the facility was amazing, jumps and rings were spectacular and we are now planning on attending some of the A shows there through the winter.
I’m an adult and ride a large pony, but hopefully no one will care. We will board out for the winter and practice some more huntery things. Going from a driving pony (dressage frame and going around things, not over them) to a hunter in a month was quite a challenge for us, but I had a blast!
Here are a few pictures from WEC in the Derby (it was the only division I had outdoors, the others were in the Roberts indoor ring). It was insanely hot as well with the 1.5 weeks being in the high 90’s to 105F. I’m also not used to that heat. It was intense! I’ve added a picture of us as well at our driving show in July 
