MDHT 4/19 Dressage: the details

Yesterday's summary of our season debut at Loch Moy Farm's MDHT April Starter should have dispelled any suspense you may have felt about the outcome haha. We put in a relatively un-competitive dressage test but jumped clear to move up to a 5th place finish. And we felt good about it. Whoop whoop, right?

the starry face tho <3
every single photo in this post is courtesy of and credited to Austen Gage, to whom i'm eternally grateful

Per my usual habit of obsessive documentation, however, I still want to spend a moment writing out the nitty gritties of the day.

trying to channel our inner balance lol

As David O'Connor explained again and again during the various clinic sessions I audited, we should be looking for reproduceable efforts. Specifically, he wanted riders to get away from the good / bad mentality and instead be thinking presently and making decisions, for better or for worse.

The point being, if you don't understand why something worked, how can you repeat it? We need to know the parameters so we can reproduce them (or avoid them, as the case may be haha).

warming up, lookin like a hunk

Obviously that all speaks directly to my overly analytical soul lol and "consistency" is one of my favorite words. So I happily pore over all the details of our rides. Ymmv tho, haha.

Anyways. Going into this show, literally every circumstance seemed positive, or grew increasingly positive on lead up. Which obviously made me suuuuuper suspicious bc that was kinda how I felt going into Plantation too, and we all know how that went.

contemplating our existence in this universe

But again. I was working overtime on my mental game and refused to get drawn into any nasty "what if" cycles.

So the good things were: fantastic ride times and a forecast that improved every time I pulled it up. Originally it was supposed to thunderstorm all day. The storms never materialized tho, and even tho it was humid the temps were cool enough to keep everything quite pleasant.

my face v charlie's face, omg y tho

As for the ride times, it was early enough that I'd be getting Charlie up and out of the barn before sunrise, but only just barely. And even with that, we'd be arriving at Loch Moy ~1.5-2hrs ahead of our ride time. Perfect! That's more time than I need, which is just the way I like it.

charlie is watching them dogs intently tho. just in case, ya know?

Charlie got to hand graze a little bit and then we were super casual and relaxed through tacking and warming up. My warm up plan was pretty simple: walk for basically ever. Then do a bit of trotting and changing directions, a little canter probably sooner rather than later, and see what I was working with.

enter at A, preferably not falling on face

Per my last dressage lesson, I expected Charlie to not be at his most forward. Tho I *did* expect, and was correct, that the atmosphere would be a proverbial shot of oomph in Charlie's arm haha. It was in a good way, tho. And all the walking allowed him to channel that adrenaline into his muscles in a loose manner vs translating it into tension. I also resisted chasing him with my leg, so we never devolved into running either.

trot left!

In my mind, I was focusing mostly in my own position and mechanics. Lately I've been trying to fix my seat and pelvis position, but am starting to believe I've gone too far in putting too much weight into my seat instead of distributing it down my legs and into my stirrups. So that was top of mind, plus keeping my god forsaken reins short-ish lol.

and trot a circle left!

I was on the horse roughly 35min ahead of go time, and when the rider before me didn't show, we were ready and willing to enter at A a little early.

Tho I did request that the judge give me an extra lap or two around the outside of the court, since Charlie wanted to be just a touch spooky and looky. Like, omg Austen's dogs (who had been right there at the rail moments previously when we paused to make sure I knew my test) were somehow now very distracting. Go figure haha #charlielogic

do you think perhaps this dance move is what my trainer means when she tells me to post evenly with both hips?

The judge was nice tho and allowed the extra lap. And, ahem, turned a blind eye when we spooked at the letter A then nearly fell on our faces when I went to enter -- obviously necessitating an emergency extra circle to regroup and try entering again haha.

trot right!! plus bonus weird emma faces!!!!

Once in the ring? Everything flowed more or less better than I expected. On more than one occasion during the test I kinda had this feeling of, "Yea this is good! Way to go, Charlie!"

Tho... Well. It honestly wasn't that good haha. Overall the test scored a solid 3 percentage points worse than our 2018 average for Novice A.

trot a circle right!!

But actually, the difference in score was isolated to three main movements: we biffed our right lead canter transition* and were already into the first quarter of the canter circle before fully correcting the issue. So the transition got a 4.0, then the circle got dinged with a 5.0 too for not being "complete." Considering our first canter circle scored a 7.0, that definitely stung a bit.

*One of these days I'm going to go back and review every single dressage test this horse has ever done to count up how many times we've biffed our leads.... because methinks the percentage is quite a bit higher than it ought to be haha... Womp.

free walk is best walk, according to charlie. also just look at that tail tho...

The final score killing move was our halt and salute, which got a 5.5 for being "not square or balanced," oops. Personally I didn't think it was that bad. But I'm also a bit too familiar with just how truly bad our halts can be haha, so perhaps I'm biased.

moar trottting!!! and hey, we're almost uphill here!

Otherwise, all the other movements were more or less in line with our typical scores for this test. We earned six 7.0s, eight 6.5s, and four 6.0s, plus the aforementioned three blown movements. Minus those three mistakes, those scores were right on target for our typical average 34%.

Ah well! We'll take our 36.9% and be satisfied lol.

canter left!

Commentary revolved around Charlie's need for better more consistent connection and lateral suppleness. Ha. Raise your hand if that sounds familiar ;)

In particular, the judge wanted to see better balance especially in our corners, less bracing over Charlie's topline, more "jump" in his transitions, and a little more energy.

back the other way again

I agree with all of it. ALL. It's just challenging tho. I can get that "Jump" but it comes with tension. Especially in upward transitions, I've kinda been trying to walk a fine line that prioritizes relaxation. Tho, uh, if we miss the transition entirely, perhaps we're a little TOO relaxed lol, so more work as always there.

eventually we did also canter right too!

The rest of the commentary IMO boils down to fitness and strength. Charlie isn't engaged enough behind or coming through over his back, and everything suffers for it. Our pace is lackluster (tho gaits earned yet another 7.0, consistent with last year too, go figure), and Charlie is working too hard (bracing) in his shoulder and neck to support himself, esp through the turns.

Personally I actually felt like our turns were better than average in this test. But our "average" ain't exactly good enough anyway, so it is what it is.

up the center line in our biggest trot of the day, go figure haha

And actually, that's pretty much the long and the short of it haha. From where I sit, with what I know about Charlie, his training, his physical condition, etc, this was a good test for him. Not his best, no no. He can and will be more competitive when he's stronger. But it was good, and he was very obedient (minus the missed lead, oops).

champion unrecognized novice dressage horse, if you just don't look at any of the other scores <3

Tho again, it's an important reminder to me that while *I* see massive improvement in Charlie's "basics," he's still just not a classical dressage horse. He's not built for it, isn't a 'natural.' And as the degree of difficulty ratchets up in future tests (looking at YOU, 10m half circles!), we'll have to work even harder just to pass muster as "average."

That's ok, tho. That's all ahead of us, all for the future. Bc for this day, we went out and we did the thing. And as far as Charlie knows, he's the best dressage brontosaurus that there ever was, and ever will be haha. And I'm sure as shit not gonna tell him any differently!

**Again, all photos courtesy of and credited to Austen Gage. Check out her page if you're local and interested in a session!***