A colleague/friend here in The Netherlands had his first PSG in Europe (having show previously and extensively in Australia) yesterday afternoon near the border of Belgium and The Netherlands. I was very excited to come and support and just spend time with some fun people and had to explain myself when I mentioned I would “come and be a good cockroach” for him.
When I competed about 4 years ago in Washington state with my first Grand Prix a super nice lady at the barn said she would come and watch. I told her it will likely not be that great as I was just hoping I could pull off the 15 one tempis and not completely screw up my passage to piaffe transitions. She quickly told me a great story about a research piece she’d read and I’ll share it with you guys here. She stated the article said that two test sets of cockroaches were given tasks to complete. One set was left to do their tasks solo and the other set had an audience of other cockroaches. It seemed the cockroaches with the audience watching performed their tasks better than the ones without the audience and there in is the cockroach theory that I’ve been using since! Thanks Karen!!
It seems that Geoff had quite a few cockroaches there supporting him in his ride and it was a very smooth first ride out showing this great gelding (PS – I think the sweetie might be for sale?!). Here’s a nice photo of Geoff and Olympic after their ride! A very nice pair that can only go up from here!
