Charlie's 1st Novice: Dressage

So let's set the stage a little bit for Charlie's novice debut at the Maryland Horse Trial's Spring Starter #3: For the entire week leading up to the event, forecasts called ominously for violent thunderstorms. Starting Saturday night and rolling all through Sunday.

all photographs today are credited to the ever-talented Austen Gage. thank you so so so so much from the bottom of my heart for capturing so many moments of my beloved brontosaurus looking graceful <3

Those t-storms did in fact eventually materialize, and they were in fact quite violent with flash flooding and lightning. But.... the storms were slower moving than anybody anticipated and didn't show up until Sunday evening.

Meaning the conditions ahead of the storm were of the brutally humid and obscenely oppressive variety. Honestly, basically heat stroke conditions. Plus strong sun.

dis my "future elegant horse." the future tho, guys. it's coming!

This was obviously.... not ideal lol. And it struck me as kinda funny that when Charlie was at Loch Moy back in March, the dressage rings were frozen solid and snow was still littering the xc course. And this time it was the polar opposite - hot hot hot. Luckily tho the ground was actually quite good thanks to recent rain.

i'm also moderately obsessed with his abundant mane and tail haha

And actually - lots of things were quite good. It was a great day. I'm just dwelling a little bit on the weather bc I tend to be pretty susceptible to heat stroke and therefore made a lot of decisions throughout our rides that had more to do with keeping me from getting sick than they had to do with getting the best possible tune out of Charlie.

ok this is a screen shot - the only one in the post. but i couldn't help myself, looooookie at what a good boy he is!!

Which is fine, right? Priorities and all that. An advantage to those circumstances were that I was so focused on not getting sick that I didn't have time to be stressed or worried about our rides. Basically I just shrugged like, "Well I know we've done our homework. I know we're prepared. So now we're just gonna go on ahead and do the thing!"

And so we did! So let's get on with it, shall we??

finally entered the ring, and just getting right down to work

Ahem, anyway. Dressage!! Brita had gone earlier in the day (putting in a really nice test for them that showed off all of Brita's hard work at smoothing out their transitions) then we three riders plus Austen hustled out to walk our xc courses before Rachael's and my dressage rides (which were at basically the exact same time in side by side rings lol).

it's becoming very clear that he's really figuring out this new balance

Suffice it to say, by the time I swung a leg over into the saddle, I was already pouring sweat. Basically all the riders were wearing as few garments as possible - all techy type white shirts and white pants, with few stock ties or jackets to be seen. I had planned on wearing my jacket bc I had expected rain. But... ya know. Adapt, evolve, overcome, right? My Smartpak sunshield shirt was good enough tho with the sleeves rolled up.

a nice walk with bonus luscious tail

Charlie, for his part, felt quite good. My new warm up strategy is to just walk for a while, per our usual habit, but then go pretty much immediately to canter instead of trot. He's always better after a canter, as it helps open his back and get him in front of my leg, instead of fussing and nagging at the trot.

more trotting bc he's still just the best boy

This worked out super well, but I think I maybe still used up our best work in the warm up. After a brief walk break, when we picked back up again he was kinda just ready to canter always and forever, and started kinda dragging me around. Whoops.

i could ride this canter forever, even if i still don't show it off well to the judge

That trend carried on as we made our way into the ring for our test too. We had a little too much "pull" forward and not quite enough "push" or balance. This showed up especially in our turn off the center line, all of our corners, and any straight lines.

still so much more work to do, forever and ever. but the pieces are there

The circles themselves were ok in that they helped me bring Charlie back to me a bit - tho you can totally tell by our appalling geometry that I was having some trouble steering lol. Nbd tho. He's just a big giant rangy horse, and it's going to take time for him to develop the strength needed to carry himself in this new balance. He's trying tho!

more pics of charlie looking like a grown up

The canters I thought were also pretty good. That's the one thing I really tried to ride effectively, and while it didn't feel like our best work, I was satisfied. The transitions were a little hollow but they happened promptly. Even the downwards, which are usually our weakness!

getting a better balance and better reach!

Unfortunately the scores were a bit disappointing, basically 6s straight across the board. I was lucky to run into Meredith again after the test, as she had been able to watch and was then running the test sheets back to the office. Meaning: she actually had my scored sheet right there in hand as I was leaving the arena. Thanks! That was super convenient lol. The score wasn't added up yet (they do that in the office) but I could see from all the 6s that we'd be getting a very high 30s mark. Sigh.

you're a good dog, charlie

The judge saw a picture of a strung out horse that needed more half halts from the rider to pull him together. Which like.... ya know.... that's accurate haha.

From my perspective I see a horse whose balance is light years ahead of where we started, and who is really learning and trying. But yea I can also see how we're just plain old not there yet. It's possible that a different judge may have used a broader spectrum of scores across our movements, as I felt some were clearly better than others. Again tho, I can also see how they were all 6s.

it can be easy to forget tho that he's a very large horse in a small little arena lol

In a way tho, I was kinda happy to be hearing a judge tell me to use more half halts etc since I had purposefully wanted to avoid giving the impression of a tug of war with the horse. Like obviously there has to be a middle ground in there where I'm not yanking the horse's head off with locked-straight rigid arms, but I'm also not just flopping the reins forward and letting the horse drag me around lol.

judge had useful feedback for us (a rarity at events!), but charlie was maybe preoccupied with finding his next #snax

For this ride tho, and for where we are in our training, I felt like we hit a pretty reasonable balance there. I was also happy with my efforts to keep my legs more down and under me, a constant struggle. And while my seat still isn't where it needs to be 100% of the time, I'm getting closer.

video with directives, scores and commentary here!

So ya know. Lots of good feelings about this ride. And actually I quite liked this test too, even if I still need to work on cleaning it up more (like that serpentine that I kinda fumbled a little bit).

so happy to be done. also so so so hot lol

And I'm especially happy that Charlie's at a place now where this particular effort was kinda just "meh" on his scale of ability. Like it's nice to know that we're actually currently capable of better.

he's a 10 in my book ;)

Plus, ya know, this event was never going to be about the dressage for us anyway. This was a day for JOMPING OMG!! And jumping bigger things!!! Stay tuned for all of the pictures and video omg of Charlie's first go at novice, and my first time back at the level since 2015!!