Step #1 to Preparing for Dressage Finals= Back to Basics

With two weeks remaining until we compete in the US Dressage Finals, you'd think we'd be working on perfecting all of our movements, but drilling movements over and over just pisses off the BHB. So what are we doing? We're going back to basics, and for a very good reason.

Mark is not a fancy warmblood. Theoretically he's actually bred to be a farmer's horse, so he couuld be considered a "blue collar" horse. Now, contrast that to the fact that thoroughbreds were bred for the "sport of kings" and warmbloods were bred to compete in sports that a farmer could never afford the entry fee for. Yet, Mark does a pretty darn good job fitting in on the "dance floor" with high-bred society. He's a very consistent "7" horse, so we have to really work on not giving away a single point of that 70% performance we're quite capable of producing. Points tend to be "given away" in very basic elements of dressage like connection, bend, and balance. So in order to get that 7 (or even 8) we know we can get, we're focusing on those very basic things. This past weekend we worked on polishing our outside rein to inside leg connection and not much else. We also have plans to work quite a bit on other basics like square halts, improving the balance in downward transitions, and getting the proper angle in lateral work.

We may not get any scores above an 8, but you can be sure we're not going to be throwing away points for missing our basics!