Twenty minutes before you go in

Nobody grooms in the warm-up arena. People present there. Everything else happened the evening before.

The most honest rule of show day: whatever you have to rescue in the morning, you neglected yesterday. So this routine has three blocks, and the largest one sits the evening before.

The evening before

• A full wash, conditioner in mane and tail included.
• Let it dry completely before any rug goes on.
• Pick out and brush the hooves, then apply the hoof oil so it soaks in overnight.
• Plait the mane while it is slightly damp. That is when a plait holds.
• Pack the show trunk tonight, not in the morning. Mornings forget things.

In the morning

Grooming, hooves, legs. Only now, on a clean and dry horse, do the sprays begin to work. Before that they would be liquid on dust.

The last twenty minutes

Now the order that counts, and it is exactly these three steps in exactly this sequence. Any other order undoes one of them again.

• Knots out: mane and tail spray into dry hair, fingers through, ends first.
• Tail up: volume spray at the root from underneath, shaken up, then untouched for five minutes.
• Coat laid: coat spray with the hair, followed with a cloth, saddle patch and girth line left clear.

A horse does not come to look good in the warm-up arena. It looks good because it has looked good for four weeks.

What must never go into the last minutes

First, anything that ends up under the saddle. Second, anything you are using for the first time. Show day is the wrong day for an experiment, and a horse that is puzzled does not go better.