US Dressage Finals 2014 Recap

US Dressage Finals were a success! We came home with 4^th place in the second level freestyle and 8^th place in the first level freestyle! After watching the video of my second level freestyle (the $0 freestyle), I wanted to kick myself for not having a round/on the bit horse, but I decided that I’ll just have to wait until next year to redeem myself in that! The BHB was a riot in the awards ceremony—his fieldhunter nature kicked in and he was all “I’ll catch up to them so we don’t get left behind” when we were supposed to be doing a trot lap for awards—so I was pretty much being run away with at a giant trot in both awards ceremonies. I’m hoping to get back to the hunt field this winter where catching up might actually have a benefit.

Posing with our very expensive ribbons!

Just like at Regionals, we managed to keep costs down to a near $1K budget for this trip, although I still don’t know what my trainer’s travel costs will add up to. I actually came in a day early for the show to allow the BHB to settle in, and it was definitely much needed here since he doesn’t tend to travel as well by himself and took a day to get back to normal. Now that horse show season is over, I can replenish my saving account! We may not be showing for awhile since we went a bit over budget with the 2 out-of-town Championship shows this year.

Entry fees: $286

Stabling: $350! For real!

Meals: approx. $50

Hotel: $118

Fuel: $230

T-shirt: $16

Bale of alfalfa hay (the BHB refused to eat regular hay for 2 days so I felt like he needed something): $20

Trainer fees and travel: currently unknown

I had my first post-Championships lesson last night and I think the BHB is excited to get back to the tough stuff! He was quite the firecracker during the entire lesson and was probably quite miffed we didn’t do any medium or extended gaits. We’re working on doing some basic passage to help him figure out how to lift his front end a bit more at the trot, as he is not a natural uphill mover. We’re getting back to the half-passes too, which are really one of his strengths—especially at the trot! I’m sure we’ll get back to establishing a decent pirouette soon, and then maybe I’ll even get to see if I can get him to do lead changes for me! We’re hoping to move up to third level next year and earn a bronze medal and freestyle bar, but we need to get some half-decent lead changes first!

Our Entry is in for Dressage Finals! And a Recap of Regionals!

The BHB will be competing in the US Dressage Finals in both the first and second level AA freestyles! We are excited to head back to Kentucky in less than 3 weeks! Entries seem to be much better this year than last, but I'm sure word got around that the show was awesome last year. I'm lucky that this year my classes will both be in the indoor Alltech arena, so no cold/ wind/ frozen/ precipitation to deal with! I'm trying to stable in the heated stable this year since the shedrows had constant noisy wind last year and the BHB needs all the quality sleep he can get at this show. A tack stall was not in the budget for this, so unless I find someone near me who got one and wants to share, I'll be trying to figure out how to best contain my mess in the aisle.

As far as Regionals, we started off with riding possibly our best first level freestyle yet in a VERY soupy arena. Hilda Gurney was one of our judges and gave us a 69% and told the BHB on the way out how adorable he is. Yay for another awesome judge in the BHB fan club! Unfortunately, the other judge for that class tends to score the BHB a bit lower and give some odd comments, so we ended up with a 67% average. Good enough to qualify for a wildcard score to Nationals in a huge (25 people!!!) class.

We got to ride our second level freestyle in the big Rolex ring under the lights (at 7:46pm) while drizzling. We were off to a great start, but we picked up the wrong lead in the first simple change and I was so surprised that we went WAY off course counter-cantering for like 15 seconds (with choreography that provides no room for error) and then I just tried to get all of the required movements in my test. The test ended with me going to centerline for my final halt and realizing I was facing A! So a quick loop around and we halted about 10 seconds after our music ended. But we got all of the required movements in! And the judges were feeling super generous to give us a 68% without too many comments about my frantic all-over-the-place mess of choreography. This put us in 8th place, and although it was high enough to give us a wildcard score, we were the second highest placed adult amateur, so ended up with a Finals invite based on placing. 

We made the exact same major error in our second level championship class. We picked up the left lead instead of the right in the simple change! And those simple changes are double coefficients, so of course it eliminated any chance of doing well. Although several of the people who placed had flying changes in their counter canter and still did well, so who knows. A few other minor bobbles took place (as usual) and we ended up with a 62% score and placed somewhere right in the middle of the class of 45. 

By Sunday, the BHB was completely exhausted. He spent 3 nights partying with 140 other horses in the tent stabling, so was trying to catch a nap any chance he had. I used a whip warming up for our first level championship to help rev him up, but by the time we walked from the warm-up to the arena and had to wait for our bell, he had fallen back into slug mode. So I tried kicking my adorable slug around the arena, and we were given a 66% for our efforts to place in the top half of the 65 horse class. After this class, I was glad we weren't going to be competing in too many classes at the Dressage Finals, since he wore out by the fourth day there, and I probably couldn't afford to enter that many championship classes anyway.

My mother is currently hoarding all of the pictures and videos from Regionals, so nothing to post now. But I did see that one of the photographers at the show got pictures of the BHB medium cantering through the slop with all of his feet well up in the air and his ears pinned back. I thought it was adorable!

USDF Year End Awards!

USDF year end awards are in the process of being finalized. Here's how the BHB did. Not too bad considering the big issues we faced while showing this year (sore feet, extremely hot weather, back to back ride times in extremely hot weather). We probably could have done really well if we rode the extra 4 first level tests to qualify for a First Level Musical Freestyle Challenge, but I didn't really want to spend money going through the same tests Mark memorized last year.

Uncovering soreness... at a show!

For the past two months, the BHB has been a bit more sluggish and downhill than usual. For the most part we blamed it on the heat coming out, but after watching Heather ride Mark before our show 2 weeks ago, it became evident that he might be foot sore. He was super downhill and his front leg movement resembled a western pleasure shuffle while his hind legs were as snappy as usual. Lately, he's also seemed to digress in his training too and Heather has been struggling with the lead changes he's never had issues with before.

We had the hoof soreness confirmed by our vet who noticed that he seemed slightly off in both fronts while trotting on the lunge. The farrier also examined his hooves when he came out. The BHB didn't react to hoof testers, but his feet are so large that it's hard for anyone to get enough pressure on them! Evidently the footing in the arena we school in (crushed rock, all-weather type material) is making his feet sore. He has absolutely fantastic feet that have foxhunted in mountains and have worked in sand-based footing barefoot without an issue.

So... The BHB got his first pair of dance shoes this morning! I would love to have been able to keep him barefoot forever, but I obviously have to worry about his comfort first and foremost. He's going to have a massage next week to help work out any sore muscles used to compensate for his hoof pain. Then we'll hopefully be able to quickly work back to peak performance condition!

Getting his first pair of shoes!

Getting back to our show results-- I made the BHB do an energetic crawl through 3 tests this weekend before scratching the last. The first day we managed to get our last qualifying scores at first and second level for Regionals. So now we are qualified in 3 classes! If we manage to get a second level freestyle together in time to get qualifying scores, we'll go for a fourth class! I have a rough idea for the freestyle and 2 sets of music picked out that I have to choose from... so it looks like it could happen!

May Chatt Hills Show Recap

Our May show was decent, but I'm not sure we improved any from our April show. I did get 3 more qualifying scores for Regionals-- now we're fully qualified for the first level freestyle and need one more score for both first and second levels. Hopefully we will pick these last necessary scores up at the June Chatt Hills show we plan to attend! I still haven't uploaded videos from my rides, but I definitely will post once I do. 

We weren't set up for the best success since both of our rides each day happened to be less than an hour apart during the heat of the afternoon. The BHB does much better in the morning and/or when it's not 90* out in the blazing sun. I'm sure he would have enjoyed more than a 15 minute break to chill out after the first ride before he had to warm up for our second one. I'm sure the same thing will happen to us at the June Chatt Hills show, so I'm in the process of figuring out how to better prepare so that he can have the energy for the second ride of the day. I think we actually crawled through our second day tests and I could barely manage to get a trot lengthening/mediums out of my beastie. 

After this show, I've decided to edit our freestyle some more, at least the last part of it. We received good scores for movements at this show but then the collective marks were 6's straight down, lowering our score to a 65%. I'm not sure if the judge just hated the music or what... So now I'm going to try increasing the difficulty and improving the music even more!

Right now, I'm trying to finish an application for my GMO's Adult Amateur grant award. Having $750 more to spend on training would be awesome! I'm also planning to go to Aiken to train a week with Amber this summer (late July or early August). The BHB will be overjoyed to see her again and I'm sure will show off all his new tricks to her. 

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!