She was fine, thankfully, though once we were home, I told the owner that I wasn’t going to ride her again until she’d had a thorough vetting of her back, as I suspected there was something more behind the rearing.
I had a lovely hoofprint-shaped bruise on my shoulder, but thankfully my safety vest prevented more serious injury. I was very grateful that I could trust my experienced jumper to help me out the next day in our mini prix when I was stiff and sore!
Yup. I would have no problem making the same call you did. You accomplished your mission, he got to see, and schooled in the rings and got to learn about the world. Good call.
My first show or two with green horses? (Mine are OTTBs) I don’t even compete. I go, hand walk and let them hang out until bored. Then I tack up, amble them around the grounds until bored and then mostly park near waiting horses to watch the ring action using them as a sofa. Walk, trot, maybe a couple quiet canters in the warm up during quiet periods. Just general, no big deal, no excitement but chill/hang out/snacks. Got to another show, enter the babiest of baby classes and do the same. If they are chill when the class rolls around, go in the ring to toddle around over the sticks. If not, give it a miss and I don’t do the flat classes. U/S is too much herd stimulus.
I can always wind them up if I need to, but that default of ‘no big deal, same old same old’ is priceless.
You absolutely did the right thing! You’re building positive associations and memories for your horse.
I had a slightly different experience last year. I took my young horse to a show and we did wait around all day. My horse seemed perfectly happy and not at all tired. Our division was the last of the day. I figured, it was the last division and we wouldn’t have to rush. YAY! No. We did the Pleasure division, which runs as: flat class, combo class (flat with 2 fences) and then a course. Well, the staff was in QUITE a rush. We were all standing around waiting to go into our flat and waiting for the last class to clear out, we got YELLED AT by the ring crew to hurry up because “We don’t want to be here all day” (as though that was OUR FAULT. Then we where rushed through the class at a breakneck speed (as in, walk in, get a third of the way around the ring, trot halfway around, etc), I think we got through the first 2 classes in under 5 minutes, including everyone jumping their 2 jumps. My horse had held it together for most of this. Then we went in to do our over fences class. We got over about 2 jumps before he decided he wasn’t going to do an entire line of jumps headed away from the ingate. I could not get him over that fence. We had to retire. We went to the schooling ring and he jumped everything just fine. So, yeah, part of it was super green horse not wanting to leave his buddies at the ingate, but I do feel that a big part of it was he never had a chance to get settled once we started going, and he was feeling rushed. We had to overcome that flub the next time we showed at that venue as he remembered that he was able to say no and “get away with it”. I had my trainer get on him to iron it out, but it was a problem that needed solved. I’ve since learned to not enter into situations that i know i cannot “win” with that horse, because his stubborn side comes out, and no one wins there. Work smarter, not harder, right 
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