Fall Rocking Horse: Day 1

My times for the weekend were the most civilized: Dressage at 2:29 on Saturday, Stadium at 2:23 on Sunday, and XC at 3:21 on Sunday. I won't rehash the factors that go into the decision to stable or haul back and forth, but my plan was to just haul back and forth. I also decided not to braid... which meant that I had a very leisurely morning and left my house at 9 AM and still had time to equiband lunge Goggles before getting Butterball ready. 

I bathed him to within an inch of his life, including scrubbing his stockings, and then let him eat some grass and dry a bit. 

Hi Ben! 

Didn't love his bath. Loved eating grass in the sunshine

I stuffed a flake of alfalfa into his tiny hole hay net and then loaded him up. The camera was hilarious, he was SO driven to get the alfalfa out and ate the whole drive there. 

Enjoying the fancy box stall life 

I picked up my packet and then watched a bit of the modified stadium. It was a pretty twisty turny course with a full 10 fences. We'll get into it in the next post! 

Then I headed back to the trailer and fully brushed out his tail, embarrassingly a first for me. I had washed it for the POP shows, but not taken the time to comb through it in all the glorious thickness. It was pretty satisfying. 

Then I got tacked up WAY TOO EARLY. I wasn't sure how Butterball would be in this new environment, so I figured more time for walking would be good. I was wrong. I got on 45 minutes before my ride time; I think he needs about 20 minutes. One walk loop and then to work and then into the ring. So between my timing, the decision not to carry a dressage whip, and the slightly deep footing in the arena, our test lacked a bit of enthusiasm. At least that was my feeling, the comments are actually really interesting with regards to what I was feeling vs. what the judge wanted to see. 

I'll be honest, there are a few (such as the stretchy circle) comments that I cannot interpret. It also took me longer than I'd like to admit to sort out the ">" meaning greater. 

So overall the judge wanted more softness over the topline and more bend. I've been hearing the more bend from JT. The softness is interesting because in my last dressage lesson with JT, she emphasized not pushing him above his natural tempo. I got so focused on not letting him dink along like a little pony that I think I pushed some of that stiffness into him. Interesting and something to focus on for sure. I guess like Ben and Goggles, I can ride with the metronome app. Then focus on bend, which will bring about that softer topline. 

I was pretty pleased by the consistency of the scores though - our canter work did not score worse than the trot work this time. But since we got roughly the same final score as our last novice dressage test, that actually means we scored worse on our trot work. However, I'm taking it to mean our canter work is improving! His free walk loop was really lovely, but it still felt like there was more stretch and overtrack we could show. This leaves us room for upping that already nice 8.

Overall our 33.1 set us 11th out of 14. A bit of an ouch, but we're new together and at this level! And between the way I felt about the test and the judge's comments, we have lots to work on to improve that score. 

I sponged him off, let him graze for a minute, then popped him back into the trailer to go walk cross country. After I walked it twice(ish), we headed home.