FMF Spring Thing Dressage

One of my hopes for this year is to get out to new-to-us show venues. Partly for the sake of variety, and partly to test how comfortable and confident I feel when facing unfamiliar obstacles. Since, ya know, so much of my mental game revolves around making things feel routine and mundane, what happens when I push out of the familiar and into lesser known places?

With that in mind, Brita and I packed up the ponies early Sunday morning to head over to the local Full Moon Farm for their Spring Thing Starter Trial. We came here once before in 2015 for their Aloha trials, tho I was fresh back from a business trip and therefore left Isabel at home while Brita took Wick through the Intro level.

there's a lot of effort happening in this picture

Unfortunately, however, upon feeding Charlie his breakfast and wrapping him up for the trailer, I discovered an issue with one of his legs that meant scratching our jumping tests. Sigh. More to come later. Short story tho: he's fine, I promise, but I'm trying to learn my lesson and be more proactively careful even with the small stuff.

But I figured, if we'd be going through all the rigmarole of hauling out to a show (even a local one) for just a single BN dressage test... Well, dammit, I wanted to make that test count haha.

happy with his steady obedience here

So. We set out to do a "good" dressage test. I had in mind the Janet Foy "Through the Levels" clinic I audited a couple years ago. One of her concepts was about about test strategy, and asking "What are your movements that are going to be a 6 no matter what? And where are the places where you can really make a difference?"

Her point was that some movements (the example in the clinic was a medium trot) just won't be standout scores for some horses, and the rider's attempt to keep picking might actually make the score worse (as in, instead of an easy blah 6, the fussy horse/rider issues drop it to a 5.5 or 5). So she encouraged riders to instead focus efforts on movements where they can really move the needle positively vs negatively.

we've been practicing our trot-walk-free walk-walk-trot so so so much lately. it's paying off bit by bit

My takeaway was that sometimes by trying harder, a movement can become worse before it gets better. That a horse might plod around quietly and obediently enough when left to his own devices, but that as soon as you start poking and prodding at him, he might fuss right back.

Charlie's currently a training level dressage horse, and the whole point of this level is to begin influencing the horse in every facet of how he goes. This was Janet's Point #1, and it's basically all about making the horse rideable. Nothing is off limits, no detail falls into the category of "well that's just how the horse goes, so that's that!"

In other words, I should not at this point in Charlie's training be resigned to "Well, that's just going to be a 6 no matter what so I'm not going to try harder." So my attitude going into this test was to try harder to improve on every portion of this test relative to our last performance at Loch Moy two weeks ago. While also acknowledging that my increased efforts might result in more mistakes or tension or whatever.

more trying. not perfect, but trying.

I planned a lengthy warm up of about 40 minutes, anticipating mostly to walk. But to walk with purpose - no slug walk allowed (a new rule for our arena rides) and frequent transitions between walking on a freer, looser rein (still marching tho, sir!) and walking on more contact.

And basically I wanted this ride to emulate a normal schooling ride for us. All too often I get a little complacent in my competition warm ups, esp for dressage where I rationalize this by "not using my horse up" when we still have so much work left to do in the day. Since we weren't jumping on this day tho, I had no excuse.

emmmmmaaaaaa sit uppppppp lol

That said, the warm up felt a little too long. We warmed up fully in the designated grassy area (on a hill, natch) before getting the green light to head into the arena to warm up around the court and between the stadium and dressage ring.

This was useful bc there was a LOT going on and a LOT to see - horses doing stadium in the same ring, warm up and cross country in the distance, plus the entire trailer and office and food truck area surrounding the arena.

But the judge was on a break so we just kept working and warming up, and I ended up feeling like we might have been better off going in for our test 10 minutes sooner. It was fine tho. The judge eventually rang us in and I entered at A determined to stay present and keep trying for literally every single moment in the test.

trying to werk werk werk werk werk on that K-X-G movement

All in all, I'm generally pleased with the test too. Positives include:

- All the transitions happened where they were supposed to,
- The circle geometry wasn't perfect but was better measured than some of our past efforts,
- We got both canter leads in the right places,
- Charlie's trot work was very steady and I was happy with our energy in this gait,
- All our worst moments of bracing were when our back was to the judge (lol)

and getting a nice halt for our efforts, tho still not quiiiiiite straight on centerline. maybe next time!

Areas for improvement:

- Canter should be Charlie's best gait but I don't successfully show it off in a test setting.
- Charlie's free walk is sluggish, but we broke to trot instead of stepping up more.
- Holy hell this horse is just tight tight tight in the base of his neck.
- Needs more suppleness overall.
- Our balance in corners and turns suffers from lack of suppleness.
- Also needs more engagement and step up from behind.
- We've got a lot of bracing against the hand happening, a result of insufficient engagement.
- Despite my efforts, we still halted haunches left after the K-X-G line. Needs mirrors!
 

test video here with movement scores + commentary

Honestly I felt a little frustrated with the test itself because there were a lot of moments where we left points on the table. Particularly: jigging in the free walk, and the walk-trot transition at K that is combined with the second trot circle. And just a lot of bracing against the hand in general.

My impression is that it'll be really difficult to get a good score for that second circle no matter how good it is if the trot transition is hollow and braced. So I've been working on those transitions a ton lately, but again without the suppleness and push from behind we still got a lot of bracing in the test.

 

comment: "Handsome horse obed/steady test. Work to show more suppleness/bend with more weight to HQ less on FH.
final penalty score: 33.6%

It's a good kind of frustration tho. The kind of frustration where I knew I had tried, knew I had pushed to get the result I wanted. As opposed to our last test where we kinda just cruised through without asking for much.

So in that sense, it was a satisfying experience. I don't have to wonder "what could have been" had I just tried a little bit harder. Rather, instead now I have an even better idea of how to keep working and practicing to keep improving.

scritches for an itchy good mare after one of their nicest dressage tests!

All the same tho, I braced myself for getting a similar score, estimating we'd get a 35%-40% for our efforts. So I was happily surprised to get a (generous) 33.6% instead, tied for third place with first place scoring a 31% and change. Not too shabby from a competitive perspective. Especially considering there's so much I still want to fix.

charlie generally being a nuisance while bella just minds her own business getting studs in. i appreciate this picture bc the angle and coolers make them look like two reasonably similar sized beasts

So ya know. It wasn't necessarily a feel-good kinda day, what with Charlie's new leg issue (blargh) and a dressage test that reflected just how unconfirmed we are in so many of the basics.

But it was a good day, still. And a good learning experience. I was pleased with myself for being more disciplined and being able to show real and quantifiable improvements in this dressage phase over our last outing (even tho, uh, yea this scoring was certainly generous. see: scoring a 6 for a free walk where we broke gait...). And pleased with Charlie for rising to the occasion.

the truth comes out in this pic tho haha. also i'm experimenting with ways to keep charlie's tail tidier in the trailer since he likes to poop all over the butt bar then mash his tail into it. this wrapping method worked quite well, but is too fussy to put on and off, on and off, throughout the day as charlie goes on and off the trailer. 

As ever, tho, there's still more work to do. In time tho haha. Because uh.... Yea all things are getting put on ice for now (including that leg, bleh). It'll be ok tho. Soon enough.