first level debut: win some, lose some

Ok. I'm gonna be honest here. My impression of the 'lesson' portion of the fix-a-test session suffered poorly in comparison to our groundbreaking ride with Stephen Birchall the day prior. And I felt (feel?)... pretty sour about the whole thing.

BUT. I'm gonna try to make Brita proud here. Not only is she my eventing partner-in-crime, she's practically my de facto life coach lol. See, she teaches Baltimore city school children and knows a thing or two about managing tricky attitudes or personalities... and damn does she know how to manage me.

isabel practices positive thinking mantras every day just to put up with me

So she wants me to look for the positives. Therefore positivity will be today's focus. And, despite my sour grapes, it's actually not that hard to find silver linings. The day proved to be exactly what I had hoped:

• We got experience riding first level movements in front of a judge
• The judge's scoring was quite fair - it'll serve as a more or less accurate baseline for the level (except we got a 5 on a lengthening so obviously i hated her redacted)
• Weaknesses were where I expected them to be - no new holes uncovered
• We walked away with solid strategies for improving future tests
• Isabel was a trooper

she reserves her side eye for Wick tho, lol
(don't let the mare face fool you - she's thrilled to have company on the trailer!)

Let's start with the day's biggest takeaway: CORNERS

Judge D schooled us on what it means to ride a 10m corner, and where Isabel's body should be relative to the long and short sides at each point in the turn. She actually broke it down to literal feet from the letters, then had us practice going through corners at walk first, then trot.

It was effective. This one detail had huge ramifications for how every movement rode, and how the test flowed together as a whole. In retrospect, corners have been a glaring omission from my schooling work and I'm eager to fix it.

As Judge D observed: you can't be balanced through the movements if you're not balanced through the corners. #Noted

here Brita demonstrates her life coaching skills with Wick too, as he just desperately needed a roll lol

Up Next: Weaknesses

• leg yield right
• right lead canter depart
• canter trot canter transition at X
• canter loops

Of particularly interesting note? THREE of these four weaknesses improve with better balance in the corners: the canter depart, canter loops and the canter trot canter transition at X.

The leg yield right is.... just harder for us than going left. Idk. We're working on it. But the canter work is getting better and should theoretically be within our grasp. Just needs more... more. Ya know?

Our stronger leg yield left from the first test run-through is below in gif form. Obvi there are still flaws here. But for us, this stands as one of our best efforts to date.

Anyway. We rode through the test, had a mini lesson, then rode through the test again.

The difference between our two scores for the test (5 percentage point differential) related to completely biffing our canter depart in the first test - thus also dinging our medium canter circle score too. And our free walk (the coefficient) in the second test was 1.5pts higher - which I'm attributing to literal exhaustion in the mare.

Those three movements account for 3 percentage points of the difference, and the other 2 are probably based in riding better corners that set us up better for the movements. Well, and our lengthenings were better in the second test. But I refuse to give credit to the lesson for that. #justsayin redacted

test1

test 2

Ultimately, I couldn't have been happier with Isabel's performance. She was tired and wanted VERY BADLY to quit after our 'lesson' - but she went ahead and ran through the test once more. Good mare is so so so good. 

I feel like both tests are an accurate reflection of our current level of training, and that both seem to indicate that first level is totally doable. I'm posting test 2 first - and would recommend that you watch that if you're only going to watch one - just bc we blew the canter depart in test 1. 

And, as usual, both videos include captions denoting the movements and scores as they happen for optimal viewing pleasure ;)

test 2 video here

Otherwise, tho, it's essentially the same test. Actually I liked our leg yields a little better in the first test, and Isabel was a little less fatigued so maybe she was moving better. 

test 1 video here

So. As it stands, I have a really good idea now of how these movements might ride at future shows, and what we can to do avoid leaving points on the table (namely, ride the damn corners!).

If you'll permit me to dwell a little on my negative reactions to the lesson (written densely and in a non-reader friendly format bc probably these is my own problems and nobody else cares), I'm sharing them here for the sake of documentation. Please feel free to skip!

• It felt like we excessively drilled some movements without ever seeing real improvement. This, to me, felt unfair to the horse. An example included schooling 8 trot lengthenings in a row - one of which we were directed to pull out of on a sharp angle, and another we were directed to pull up to a halt. The judge's motivation was to get Isabel taking more weight on her hind end, and of course the judge couldn't know that Isabel was physically fatigued from the day prior... but it felt like too blunt of an instrument for such a sensitive horse, and punishing the horse for what amounted to rider error. Of course, this example is colored by my firmly-held belief that Isabel has phenomenal lengthenings - so I naturally feel any drilling there is unnecessary and potentially counterproductive. Again, the judge only knew what she saw. And on this day, Isabel lacked engagement.
• The judge was very unimpressed with Isabel's engagement. A theme was Isabel's perceived (and real, if we're being honest) unwillingness to take more weight behind. Again, I knew the root cause here - and probably maybe should have told the judge earlier that we had worked on extreme (for us) collection the day prior. Ultimately, I ended the lesson after moving on to canter trot transitions. The judge asked if Isabel was always "so strong" and I responded simply "She's tired today" and brought her to a walk (she was dripping sweat and blowing hard by this point). We decided to just free walk for a while until we could run through the test once more, at which point I explained to the judge that we had played with half steps the day before, and she said "Ah so she must be tired over her topline." YES. Yes she is. 
• Perhaps this was my error in judgement. I've essentially surrounded myself with Isabel-ites - people who adore this feisty little red mare and are as eager as I am to idolize her (or at least pretend). Plus I'm forever impressed by my trainers' abilities to decipher the horse. Dressage trainer C consistently translates Isabel FOR ME. And of course, Stephen had her figured out in about two seconds the day prior. So maybe I'm spoiled. Maybe I expected this judge to just immediately see everything that I see and know - to immediately recognize that our contact has improved so dramatically over the past few months that a little fuss here and there barely even registers to me anymore. But then perhaps it's a lesson I needed to learn. Judges will only see the horse I present on that day, in whatever her current state may be. And not everyone will love her. And that's ok. So maybe that's the realest takeaway of the day....

also worth noting: Brita was SUPER HAPPY with her takeaways from the ride and felt armed with a whole new set of tools. diff'rent strokes etc

Sooooo ANYWAYS... long self-serving introspective navel-gazing aside, it honestly should probably be considered a good day. And I can't help but be proud of those test videos. Riddled with errors and blips tho they may be, they are the product of soooo much time and effort and energy from both me and HRH Princess Isabel. #goodtimes

Probably won't do another of these clinics tho redacted