Expect the Unexpected

looking glorious in the bad boy martingale

Wednesday night, Alyssa and I hauled Courage over to the last edition (for the year) of our local schooling dressage ride-a-test series. I've been a couple times before, but Courage always had equine company coming from the barn with him. It's the same facility we've taken some solo lessons at, which were fine.

I didn't account for the fact that not only would he be alone, but also ALL the other horses were crazy green and screaming their heads off. I mean--Courage isn't one to just scream for screaming's sake, but when it's what literally everyone else is doing, well, you might as well give it a go, amiright?

love the light

In other words, I got to practice riding through a lot of tension and distraction. I thought it went well. I remembered to do things like put my leg on and pick my hands up and related dressage-like things and once Courage was settled, we headed down centerline.

And he screamed his head off, got super tense, and even threw in a buck for good measure on our right lead circle. I did my best to keep us combobulated and more or less headed the right direction, but let's be honest: it wasn't a strikingly good piece of test riding.

RIGHT LEAD

But hey, that's the whole entire point of going to schooling shows.

Our next test was training 3, which I had never ridden or memorized before. It occurred to me about 5 minutes before our test that there were no trot circles in it. Interesting.

Anyways. I kept Courage's mind in the game and made him trot and shoulder-in around the outside of the arena instead of walk, and that seemed to help. He spooked pretty hard at the dressage arena when we trotted in (wtf horse), but overall kept it together better than the first test.

bang on square

I never felt like I had him solidly forward or put enough leg on and while our geometry was better than it has been, we still didn't quite make it to some letters. Overall, it felt better than the first test, but not up to par for what I ought to be able to do (on a green horse at a show by myself in a new test, but whatever).

Just after our final salute, the shit got really crazy. I rode out of the arena on a loose rein, then hopped off and lead Courage back to the trailer.

tracking and stretching

Alyssa thought our tests were good. I thought they were kinda average to bad, but at least obedient.

Then I looked at our scores. Training 2 (bucking and all) snagged us a 64 and Training 3 was a 67.

The comments were pretty spot on--Courage needs MORE which means I need to ride better and ask for it. He's certainly capable at this point. And really--looking at the pictures tells me that while Courage felt TENSE, he actually looked fine.

PS this is a super mega schooling show, hence the boots and martingale.