Good Horseman Show Recap

Our first show of the season was a big success, minus one thing. We scored a 71% on our first attempt at a freestyle with finished music that we only ran through twice the day before the competition since I was out of town for work most of the week! We brought home the reserve high score freestyle ribbon of the show too! Once I figure out how to edit one of the transitions to make me happier, I think it will be all set for Regionals and hopefully Nationals with the $2 freestyle! I found through this that I'm pretty good at improvising to stay with the music, and decided on a couple more changes in choreography that I'd like to aim for. Video to come later :)

Here I am with the BHB's ribbons from this show

We made an attempt at riding second level tests on Sunday. The BHB was pretty tired and lazy, so it required much more kicking through than it should have, resulting in gaining the usual "needs more uphill balance" comments. It's not easy to have the necessary uphill balance for dressage when your horse has short legs to begin with, so it's even worse when they are feeling lazy! We still scored a 62% for 2-1 and 65% for 2-2, so I'm extremely happy with our first efforts. Now I know that we need to schedule the harder tests the first day of a show when the BHB has the most energy.

Now for the thing I'm not so happy about. The BHB decided during our 1-3 test that he was going to duck out of the arena at A without any advance warning. He's NEVER offered to do this before and better never ever do so again or the judge will need to close his/her eyes for 5 seconds to break a habit from forming. I heard from the show manager later that the judge was very surprised about it too and that no one saw it coming. The judge was nice enough to let us come back in the arena and score the rest of the test. We were eliminated of course, but at least the BHB did not get the break he was looking for when he ducked out. We were putting in an awesome test that would have garnered right at a 70% too!!! I think the BHB is just not getting enough mental stimulation at first level anymore after riding this test around s dozen times last year. He's ready for much more than I am! I think I'm going to let Heather show him at least once this summer. She thinks she could do 4th level with him, he's so much further advanced than I am!

We have 2 new horses in the barn that are going to join us in showing, so hopefully we'll have a summer show schedule in place soon. Right now I'm not sure which of several options we'll head to next. I'm very excited to try out our freestyle again and try to get all our 5-7 more qualifying scores for Regionals!