Exciting day for the boys at Del Mar

Today was the first day of the Del Mar show, although the CDI doesn't start until tomorrow the National show started today.  Mom made it down here last night, after she got lost looking for the hotel.  LOL
This morning I rode Victor and Majek, so they would get out before the jog in the afternoon.  Unfortunately my saddle has been having issues...somehow the head plate cracked (in the pommel under the tree), so I had to get a loaner saddle from Custom Saddlery to ride in today.  The Custom Saddlery rep had only seen two other instances of this kind of failure on one of their saddles.  That saddle gets a ton of use (I ride probably 5 horses a day in it), so maybe that played a role.  The loaner saddle is brand new, but actually very, very nice to ride in!  Thank God, since I have to show two horses in it this weekend!
Bolero's first test today was 2nd level test 1.  His test was at 2:36pm, then the jog was right afterwards at 3pm (with Majek and Victor 4th and 5th to go in the order).  I lunged him briefly first; he was actually pretty settled on the lunge line.  The warm-up arena, however, was a different story.  The warm-up arena is a fairly large space on the racetrack, but it serves as a warm-up for three separate National show arenas.  So it was super busy!  Bolero handled it ok, but got more and more tense as he went and then started leaping through the air when another horse got too close to him.  He carried that tension through his test and spent much of the canter work leaping, thinking about bucking, doing unscheduled flying changes, etc.  In between his tension and antics the test was very nice, and even the judge commented afterwards that when he was good he was *really* good.  I was surprised to score 68.8% on the test.  Hopefully he will be more settled tomorrow.  But that's why he's here...to get more show experience!
Majek and Victor were both pretty wild for the jog.  The jog is generally pretty exciting anyway, for some reason the horses all want to jump around.  Normally riders dress up for the jog, but since I had just gotten off Bolero, I had to be content to jog in my show clothes.  Majek spent most of his time leaping around, so I actually had to re-jog him to show that he can trot.  Victor had the opposite problem, he trotted like a million bucks, but tried to jump on top of me when he went by a bunch of flowers.  What a couple of goofballs!
Tomorrow starts with the CDI Prix St. Georges, with Majek going at 10:09 and Victor at 11:45.  Bolero does another Second level test later in the day at around 5:20.  Looking forward to getting going tomorrow!!