ALL THE HORSE SHOWS

only decent media from the show. sorry.

Show #2 of 2015 is officially in the books! We hit a little local schooling dressage show where you literally pick you own test and sort of just go whenever you're ready. There are no ribbons (since anyone can do any test) and there's no pressure.

I know I said I can't expect to be absolutely perfect for every show this year, but not gonna lie, I was hoping he'd do it again.

Eh, no.

He had a little over an hour to just hang out after we arrived and while he started kind of wild-eyed, he settled in pretty quickly. Then I tack up and hopped on.

He was perfectly fine for a green horse at his second show this year, which is to say he was tense and a bit unfocused. I tried to just keep calm and ride smoothly without getting him riled up with too many hard things too close together.

It seemed to mostly work.

looking so perfect at the derby last weekend

Then the judge was ready for us, so we went to make our circuit around the outside of the dressage court. We were about 3/4 of the way around (and the farthest away from his friends) when he spun out from under me so fast that I nearly slipped off. Then I was like "I WILL NOT HAVE MY FIRST FALL OFF THIS HORSE AT THIS PARTICULAR SHOW" and shimmied back into the saddle as we gallop-leaped (it's his favorite gait) back around the arena, past the judge, and almost into the laps of some friendly eventers.

Fun fact: at home, he wears a martingale so that when he tries this stunt, I can be all "HEAD DOWN BITCH" and I still have some leverage. We left it at home because it's dressage... whoops.

Anyways. I was actually not that shaken up, which is a bit surprising. The judge was like "um are you ok?" and I'm like "yeah sure why not". She let one of our friends (on a non-green horse) go stand in the spooky spot on the side of the arena. They tell me birds flew up. I saw nothing and don't believe in spooking at birds anyways.

need to channel this ride

Regardless.

We muddled our way through intro B first. I rode better than I would have last year or even earlier this spring, but it wasn't great. I let Courage be kind of artificially soft and never rode him forward. We got all 5s and 6s with one 7 for our last centerline. I thought the judge was kind in the collectives though--she dinged us hard for not moving forward, but gave me another 7 for riding. Advantage of almost jumping her? I guess.

We re-grouped while another rider went. I literally just did walk transitions (free walk to working walk) for a few minutes and never trotted him. That maybe wasn't the best plan for improving scores, but I'm trying to teach him that shows aren't hard or stressful so maybe? I dunno.

Anyways. I felt a bit better about intro C (and our friend was safely parked in the scary spot again). We NAILED our first centerline (EIGHT!!), and then sort of putzed around without riding forward into much of a contact. That said, it was our first ever cantering test and the canter was a total non-issue. I hadn't even asked for a canter in the warm up, but he nailed it in the ring. I'm also massively failing at geometry, which is embarrassing.

Again, mostly 5s and 6s for not ever going forward with one seven for (get this) our right lead canter transitions. I only got a 6.5 for riding because I had a better horse to ride the second test, but I didn't ride him better.

Oops.

Still, our first ever dressage show. Courage's first ever busy warm up. My riding near-miss, and we walked about with a 57 (B) and a 58 (C). The scores are definitely fair, but now I'm just itching to improve them. I'm going to geometry boot camp.

PS My apologies for the total lack of relevant media. I also have a picture of C hanging out because his best girl was in full on raging heat and he thinks he's a stallion, but it didn't seem blog-appropriate. so here it is you pervs.