Post by fimacg on May 20, 2014 9:50:56 GMT
Took Brave out to two dressage competitions (3 different tests to learn fortunately 2 were the same)
The first was on Wednesday night at the RC and was the 1st of the summer league, baring in mind the last time out was at xmas, and I haven't had a flatwork lesson since and I had been focusing on jumping I managed to practice for 20mins on Tues to run through the tests.
N27 I thought we did a fairly mediocre 1st test, there were some nice bits and some bits I know we can do much better, I would have liked him more forward, but to my shock we won the class with a score of 64.82 and a judges comment of "Nice horse just needs a more active walk and at times a more outside contact. A little stiff to the right" The last comment is probably due to the fact that by the time I had got there and got tacked up I had a grand total of 2.5 minutes to warm up before we were on I managed a walk trot and canter on each rein and that was it.
N 30 The second class was on grass which jazzed Brave right up, so much so I lacked brakes coming down from our medium work, but we got the best scores for medium trot and medium canter that we have had to date.. so warming up on grass is a good idea for us. We didn't place with a score of 61.15% with the judges understatement of "Nice active paces and a forward thinking test"... think motorbiking around corners, barely managing to stay in the ring etc etc
Sunday was a BD open show and there were 20 or so horses in the first class and it was a repeat of N27, whilst we didnt place we couldn't have been far off and we achieved a better score with 65.53... he has obviously realised how to do his medium work now as I again struggled to bring him back particularly after the medium canters, and fell around a couple of the corners again Nice comment of "Just needs to show a little more consistency in outline and maintenance of balance"
we then had a 4 hour wait until our next class, Brave was a saint and stood in the trailer munching his hay without fuss, but by the time it was time to warm up again I think we were both ready to go home. This was also our first ever attempt at riding in a long arena (N39) and I cant practice this at home as I dont have enough flat space. Well I forgot the test and found myself daydreaming at one point randomly doing a 30m circle instead of a 20m one... cant blame Brave as it was my lack of focus that resulted in a fairly poor result of 58.79 and a comment of "at times going in a correct way then looses focus and becomes hurried and unbalanced"... hummm not his fault at all.
Anyway cookies and cream for reading and here are a couple of pictures from Sunday.
Love this canter one, shows how much 'ping' he is now getting, we just need to learn to contain it a little more without hauling his teeth out to come back down to trot.
The first was on Wednesday night at the RC and was the 1st of the summer league, baring in mind the last time out was at xmas, and I haven't had a flatwork lesson since and I had been focusing on jumping I managed to practice for 20mins on Tues to run through the tests.
N27 I thought we did a fairly mediocre 1st test, there were some nice bits and some bits I know we can do much better, I would have liked him more forward, but to my shock we won the class with a score of 64.82 and a judges comment of "Nice horse just needs a more active walk and at times a more outside contact. A little stiff to the right" The last comment is probably due to the fact that by the time I had got there and got tacked up I had a grand total of 2.5 minutes to warm up before we were on I managed a walk trot and canter on each rein and that was it.
N 30 The second class was on grass which jazzed Brave right up, so much so I lacked brakes coming down from our medium work, but we got the best scores for medium trot and medium canter that we have had to date.. so warming up on grass is a good idea for us. We didn't place with a score of 61.15% with the judges understatement of "Nice active paces and a forward thinking test"... think motorbiking around corners, barely managing to stay in the ring etc etc
Sunday was a BD open show and there were 20 or so horses in the first class and it was a repeat of N27, whilst we didnt place we couldn't have been far off and we achieved a better score with 65.53... he has obviously realised how to do his medium work now as I again struggled to bring him back particularly after the medium canters, and fell around a couple of the corners again Nice comment of "Just needs to show a little more consistency in outline and maintenance of balance"
we then had a 4 hour wait until our next class, Brave was a saint and stood in the trailer munching his hay without fuss, but by the time it was time to warm up again I think we were both ready to go home. This was also our first ever attempt at riding in a long arena (N39) and I cant practice this at home as I dont have enough flat space. Well I forgot the test and found myself daydreaming at one point randomly doing a 30m circle instead of a 20m one... cant blame Brave as it was my lack of focus that resulted in a fairly poor result of 58.79 and a comment of "at times going in a correct way then looses focus and becomes hurried and unbalanced"... hummm not his fault at all.
Anyway cookies and cream for reading and here are a couple of pictures from Sunday.
Love this canter one, shows how much 'ping' he is now getting, we just need to learn to contain it a little more without hauling his teeth out to come back down to trot.
