this is why we practice

We had a couple opportunities this weekend to practice the USEA Starter dressage test, with the help of our new recorded ride guides. And I’m really glad for it, and especially for videoing the first session on my helmet camera. 

d’aww flashback to the weediest biscuit circa winter 2023

Realistically, I haven’t done much dedicated ‘test practice’ with Doozy bc the juice never really felt like it was worth the squeeze. Like, we all knew she’d be a wild animal at the show so why even bother, right? Better to just practice the general basics and then take what we get in the actual dressage ring.

slightly more robust version two years later <3

But ya know. The horse *IS* growing up and becoming more schooled, and actually put together quite a nice (IMHO) set of tests at BCHC a couple weeks ago. It feels like we’re finally getting closer to a point where the horse is more or less going to go the way I ride her. Which, naturally, means it’s **my** responsibility to ride as clean of a test as **I’m** capable of doing.

not gonna win any awards for this video (or test, LOL) 

but it gets the job done for recording our practice!

Which… Turn out, I’m nottt quite picking up that slack yet. Above is a video from our first test run through this weekend, after a reasonably successful warm up facilitated by my new favorite ride guides. And it’s pretty easy to see in the video that Doozy is going along quite nicely. 

anyway. today’s pictures are all blurry brown blobs. sorry? at least it sorta masks how i’m losing her shoulder around this circle LOL

Her rhythm is much more consistent, and she’s mostly quite obedient for all the transitions, especially the downward canter-trot transitions that are historically more of a challenge for us. 

recording our practice is so helpful!

But… It’s still not actually that great of a test, but **finally** for reasons that are fairly easy to pin on the rider instead of the horse. My favorite type of problems, yay!

Namely, the whole test looks a little bit behind the leg IMO. I don’t really have Doozy on the aids, and it’s especially apparent in three key places: 

1. Our entry tour past the judge on the way to the first trot circle is fairly wobbly

2. Similarly, picking up after the free walk is too tentative, reins too long

3. Canter transitions were a little sticky, especially the right lead

pictured: a pretty decent canter trot downward transition, rider still collapses tho

Now I want to be completely clear here: if I got a test that looked like the above video at an actual three phase horse trial? I’d be happy LOL!

But! It was also fairly apparent to me watching that video that I am still overall too tentative riding the test. Like. Emma. C’mon. We’re in the quiet indoor at home alone. Ride every.step of the test, it’s literally not a big deal.

soooooo our free walk has gotten a bit curled recently, womp

So I came back out the next day and repeated the whole exercise, tho I didn’t fuss with the camera on this day. 

New areas of focus included being a bit more assertive about pushing the mare into the aids. I tried to imagine Doozy as a balloon — I just wanted a little more air, puff her up just a little bit more — while still trying to find a fluid forward balance in the contact. 

trying so hard to not fall apart in second half of test

Especially for that right lead canter depart. There’s something to how I’m riding that pattern from free walk to trot circle to canter depart that’s creating the right conditions for the mare to fuss and kick out, bc she’s generally not doing that at any other time in these rides. 

bleh we had the same transition problem in our second test at BCHC

I also need to be a bit more disciplined in overall geometry in general, and riding corners in particular. In fact, I could do myself a favor and fit more foot steps into every long side by riding deeper into the corners. This is especially apparent in the entry of the test, where we ride the short side past the judge, and then again as we pick up after the free walk.

the rest of the circle was actually fine tho!

Finally, my last big takeaway is that I need to push harder on my position. Even with the ride guides, I’m still often sitting off to the right, with my hands too low and reins too long. 

anyway here’s a gif of doozy being fascinated with the steward’s pug from loch moy,
as a reward for looking at all the blurry brown blobs

It’s not ALL bad news, tho! A couple areas from these practice rides went really well — especially the canter-trot transitions. With the help of the recording, I’m thinking about preparing for that transition into the corner instead of coming out onto the long side — and that seems to work a lot better for Doozy.

Practicing the final center line pattern to halt has also been helpful. Doozy often is thinking ‘canter’ at that particular moment, but I think she’s figuring out the pattern and learning to anticipate a halt instead.

yer a good mare, dooz!

Honestly it’s kinda amazing how enlightening intentional dedicated practice can be, LOL…. Who woulda thunk. I’ll probably ride the test a couple more times this week too. 

Idk if next weekend will be our last time riding the test or not, but regardless I’d like to see improvement from past efforts. Or at least, I don’t want to unnecessarily leave points on the table for not riding my best if Doozy happens to be particularly well behaved haha. We can all hope!!

it can only good happen

Happy Friday, y’all! It’s been a quiet week around here. Not… uh, entirely intentionally, tho. I managed to mysteriously tweak an abductor, or at least, that’s what I think it is?

have continued to ride occasionally in the little paddock, sometimes with friends!

Some years ago, pre-Charles but post-Isabel, I was trying to keep my riding momentum going thru sheer willpower alone, and fell off a *bunch* of horses along the way. One of which was former coach Dan’s 2* horse Lion, easily the most schooled horse I’ve ever jumped. 

have sometimes been relegated to the big indoor, tho — also sometimes with friends!

The result was a significant strain on the adductor (I think), and it was omg so awful. Lifting the leg was a challenge, sleeping was a nightmare — as a somewhat restless sleeper, I learned through this injury that there is apparently a muscle that works to hold your limbs horizontal when you roll from side to side. And this injury made that legit excruciating. 

and who can resist a bounce just sitting there like that?

What I’ve got going on right now feels like the same general area of muscling, but maybe the opposite job. Stairs are fine, standing around is fine, but every now and again — esp in a moment of rotation on the leg, or swinging the leg away from the body — oof. Nobody likes that. 

had another lesson at fmf. doozy thought this pole arrangement was 100% natural and normal, good girl

Thankfully tho this go round seems to just be some sort of random tweak. Like, I don’t even really know what caused it, just that I woke up fine one day, then throughout the day became progressively more sore, and by evening all my attempts to power through it failed me and I was legit not even able to post the trot. 

continuing to jump actual jumps in these lessons, hurray!
for the curious — that’s trot poles to a one stride grid of X’s, i forgot to ask the distance

Which… Was a bummer. As I previously mentioned, I made a hyper-personalized version of my new exciting ‘recorded ride guide’ fixation specifically for practicing the Starter test. I call it hyper-personalized bc it’s literally based off the timing of our videos of riding this test, and the coaching I need ‘in the moment.’ 

I’m very excited to give this recording a trial run too, and even measured out a practice court in our small indoor, which it turns out is exactly 30x40m, perfect!!

at home, trying to match the drama of the skies

Riding to the recordings continues to go well. I remember once hearing advice on how to make a decision on whether to move on from a horse or not — they said after every ride for a month, you should mark you calendar with either a Green checkmark, or a Red X. Then, at the end of the month, review.

was another great session using our new ride guides!

And I never forgot that advice, not because I’m wondering about moving on from Doozy or whatever, but bc it was such a simplistic and honest framing. Yes or no? Good or bad? Were you happy with that, or no? And ever since, I’ve sought to find ways to ensure that we’re always having more ‘Green Checks’ than ‘Red X’s,’ if you know what I mean.

“ma’am, pls to see that sky of impending doom, tho?? let’s gtfo pls!” — doozy, 100%

These recorded ride guides are 3 for 3 on Green Checks, tho. And not bc Doozy remembered to take her princess pills, either. In fact, on our last ride (before *my* mysterious lameness), Doozy was actually a bit of a hot mess. 

A new horse had arrived and the new barn mate was (extremely reasonably) rolling trunks into the barn while we walked up to the ring and Doozy legit flagged her fucking tail omfg, mare. She’s such a funny horse, she HUMS when she’s losing it, and I was like, c’mon pls just cope? Pls??

turns out the little indoor is exactly 40m in length! i had a whole plan to video our test practice, but alas, was too crippled to ride.* will try again next week!
(*probably should have taken the hint when putting on boots proved too painful lol)

AND SHE TOTALLY DID!! Like, not right away, tho she clearly was trying — bless her. There were definitely a few moments in the ride when I could have gotten baited into following her down into the doom loop of chaos. But… The recording was there, with its steady unfeeling AI Brit accent with literally no intonation whatsoever, to just keep us going. 

And holy shit balls — it was GREAT!! Including that new little inserted canter / trot snowman transitions exercise I wrote about last time, it was legit exactly what I wanted it to be, yay!

It was undoubtedly victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. Rather than being an ‘expensive’ or ‘costly’ sort of ride, we both walked away feeling a big deposit in the trust bank.

lol i forgot to feed the meter after getting on, sweet mare **reminded** me

Doozy is so uniquely challenging for me. I love the shit out of her — she is an extremely good girl. I’ve said from Day 1, and I’ll say it again today: She colors inside the lines. 

And it’s exciting to see her schooling improve over time. I’m proud of our progress together. But, ya know. The same challenges are still there, right? 

hilariously, this ring is WAY less spooky when it’s filled with literal wagons of hay. silly me, i thought the wagons would be a problem!

She’s probably the ‘slowest boil’ of all the horses I’ve ever got going before…. Tho, real talk. My last season with Charlie —where we were comfortably ensconced at a ‘cruising altitude’ with no upward pressure — was without a doubt a highlight of our time together <3

And I’m trying to keep that lesson from him — perhaps one of the most important that he ever taught me — front and center. It’s so exciting to develop new tools to help keep me and Doozy moving in the right direction. And it’s exciting to feel so excited about a ride, that I’m actually disappointed to have to wait a couple days LOL… 

But ya know. C’est la vie! Tho brace yo’selves bc in a couple days time (hopefully) you should expect a post (w/video!) on actually practicing that test along to the new guide. Much excitement haha. In the meantime, TGIF, ya’ll!

down the rabbit hole

So! Anybody who was foolish enough to check in on my incessantly prolific musings over the weekend will already know: I made a thing, and am kiiiinda excited about the concept.

Like, literally can’t shut up about it. I’m going off about these little recordings to anybody polite enough to pay me any attention, even my farrier had to hear about it LOL. Sorry dude. 

pics today are from volunteering at Plantation Field’s big international event!!

But! Early feedback is positive, and a couple barn mates have either already done trial rides (and provided feedback) or have indicated they plan to soon. 

A couple aspects of that first recording kinda obviously needed tweaking. I already wrote about my early impressions (ex: the warm up is too long), but the other big take away was that, overall, I hadn’t accounted accurately enough for the time spent talking. 

That first recording was designed to walk you through gaits and exercises, with frequent coaching prompts (like “chest up!”) tossed in at least every 5 to 10 seconds, with pauses in between. My measurement on the timing of the various exercises and time-in-gait etc was based off the length of those pauses plus a guesstimate on time spent talking.

i signed up too late for my normal favorite roles like stewarding warm up rings, where i get to interact with riders. instead, i ended up as timer in the show jumping judge’s booth, where i got to interact with legends like Peter Gray, Marilyn Payne, and Hellen Brettell instead. it was actually pretty cool!

Except, in the end product, the pauses felt a little awkward, and meanwhile the time spent talking actually exceeded the time of silent pauses.

So I ditched the pauses entirely (aside from walk breaks), reconfiguring the script to be constant talk. It turns out, especially with a text-to-voice AI app, the average words/minute is extremely consistent. So you can reliably time a script cadence on word count alone. 

If you want to spend 2.5 minutes in a trot segment? Put 312 words into that script block. Boom!

All that to say, I made another set of recordings that I’m sharing with you:

- Schooling Plan - Short Session (about 17min)

- Schooling Plan - Long Session (about 24min)

These two plans are identical, except the ‘Long Session’ has an added block of work inserted into the middle. After riding the short session, it felt… a little too short, like a few pieces of work needed a little more time and attention. YMMV.

not gonna lie, this bell + timer device was a bit more intimidating than i expected — i’ve only ever timed at national events with just like, a stop watch… but the course designer gave me a very clear orientation and fortunately none of the riders tested me with any unplanned stoppages etc.

So let’s talk through those ride guides and their components!

Both start with free walk into working walk, including gathering contact and organizing walk onto a 20m circle in both directions. In the second circle, the rider is prompted to find moments of true bend and counter bend in the walk circle. 

Trot work starts on a circle after about 2.5min. Again the rider is prompted to find feelings of true bend and counter bend before progressing into a trot spiral exercise. 

I’ll be first to admit — these feelings are a bit *aspirational* for us, we’re mostly just trying to survive on a steady rhythm and circular circle. But the proactive coaching reminds me to activate all of my rider aids, even if we aren’t technically executing a “spiral” etc. 

Anyway, the spiral then transitions into trot leg yields down the long side, which feels like a progressive use of aids. After this, the rider changes direction in trot, with a trot-walk-trot transition across the diagonal. Then the whole trot pattern repeats in the new direction. It’s about 2.5min of trot each way.

The guide picks up the canter from the leg yield exercise in the second direction, then instructs the rider to spiral the canter in and out. Again, this is a little aspirational for us, but helped to get my aids on. From the canter circle, we go into canter leg yields from rail to quarterline — so again, activating the outside aids. Then another canter circle that includes canter-trot-canter transitions before a walk break. All in all about ~2min of canter.

didn’t get much video bc my fingers were on the buttons all day,
but here’s Boyd in the 3* with Mo Chroi!

The ‘Long Session’ deviates from the ‘Short’ at this point, as I inserted another block of work after feeling like we needed more. I really liked the ‘Short’ tho — even tho it felt like we probably could have / should have done more work… Well, the mare was finishing the ride very well and on the aids, and…. isn’t that the whole fucking point?? As it is, I have not personally ridden to this next block myself, take that for what you will. 

Anyway. It picks the rider up from free walk into working walk before preparing to trot. This block is all about downward transitions and building the half halt. It starts on a trot circle, then a change of direction with a trot-walk-trot transition, then back to trot circle. 

From there, you pick up the canter, ride a circle, then execute the canter-trot transition down the long side just like in the Starter test. Ride another trot circle, then, **pay attention,** bc on the open side of the circle, you change bend and canter off on the other lead. My intent with this is to 1) square the horse up in that change of bend, and 2) not put all the canter transitions in true bend on a circle bc we already have enough of a problem with accidental transitions. 

Anyway. In this new canter circle, you repeat the pattern: ride a circle, then trot transition down the long side, ride a trot circle, then change bend/direction on open side of circle and strike off on new lead. Rinse repeat a couple times. 

Like I said, I haven’t personally ridden this pattern yet, but you can hopefully pretty easily see why I set it up this way for me and Doozy at this point in our life. It’s essentially a variation of the ‘snowman’ exercise, for those familiar.

it was super cool to be a fly on the wall for all the banter in the judge’s booth, esp bc these same folks had judged the riders in dressage too and had (obviously) higher level perspectives on all the rounds, horses and riders.

After all that is another 90sec walk break, before switching back to the ‘Short Session’ plan to finish the ride. 

The rider is guided from free walk into working walk (ymmv but Doozy and I need this help!) into trotting a circle. It again instructs the rider to find feelings of true and counter bend on a circle, then change directions using a trot-walk-trot transition, then another circle with alternating bend. Next into a spiral feeling to activate outside aids, then push off the inside into a canter transition. 

The canter exercise mirrors the first block exactly, with both spiral and bend/counter bend feelings on a circle, followed by a canter leg yield from rail to quarterline (off outside aids), then back to a circle with canter-trot-canter transitions. 

Finally, you transition to trot to ride serpentines / figures of 8 / changes of bend with trot-walk-trot transitions, again reinforcing the “full halt— to—half halt” development. After a few moments of this, you trot long and low to finish.

i didn’t stick around for xc, sadly, but here’s a quick shot of Ema Klugman in the 3*

Obviously this is a very new (and shiny) toy in my riding toolkit, so my utilization experiences are… limited. But the two rides I’ve logged to date have been overwhelmingly positive, to the point where I’m clearly bought in enough to keep refining and making more recordings. 

It’s not that we’re accurately (or even effectively) executing all these exercises. Instead, I think it’s a lot simpler than that: A constant voice in my ear guiding me to ride Doozy *proactively* means I’m NOT getting baited into riding *reactively.* 

In other words, instead of getting mired down in an argument telling Doozy not to go so fast, or whatever, instead I’m focusing on a specific pattern that, surprise surprise, just so happens to be easier to execute from a slower more self contained balance. 

And so far, Doozy is responding very well to this change in style. Again, it may be too early to tell, and I PROMISE to let y’all know if we start going the opposite direction or frazzling the mare… But for now, I’m all aboard, and even created a hyper-personalized guide for us to use when practicing the Starter dressage test.

anyway. thanks for humoring me while i go a little micro down this ‘guided ride’ recording rabbit hole. as a reward, here’s a little goblin who looks ready to catch any bunnies that come out of it!

Ultimately, if this concept continues to consistently produce good rides, my idea is to develop a ‘library’ of sorts. 

One barn mate suggested that instead of full start-to-finish ride guides, I could create ‘modules’ that can be interspersed for a more mix-and-match experience. For example, there might be a ‘warm up’ module, and then individual recordings for various gaits and degrees of difficulty. 

I’m also imagining modules that are just pure coaching prompts (like, “chest up!” or “long legs, level shoulders!”) with no specific movements, gaits or patterns included — something like that could be useful during a jump school, for instance. 

So perhaps there’s more to come. In the meantime, I’m definitely interested in hearing from you all if you have a chance to try riding along to one of these recordings!

riding with technology: CoachGPT

Happy Saturday, friends! Hopefully you’ll forgive me for the off-day post, or perhaps just the diehards will read this, in which case — excellent, you are **exactly** my target audience today. Bc I have a favor to ask of you!

ooooh who’s the new roan in the herd?? 

Obvi it’s somewhat inescapable these days to make it longer than 5 seconds without somebody extolling the virtues (or perhaps impending doom) wrought upon society by the burgeoning field of AI in general, ChatGPT in particular. 

I won’t bore you with the details, but I’m actually a fairly heavy ChatGPT user in my professional world — mostly for writing code and all that, and also a bit of copy editing for reports etc. 

oh wait haha, nvm it’s just a Dooz of a Different Color!

For some time now, tho, I’ve had this idea of utilizing the generative and multiplying effect of GPTs to support the creation of some sort of real-time pocket coach app. Not like, an actual app that you could download from the app store, and certainly not something I’m trying to monetize or whatever. 

But basically, just another tool to add to my existing kit of helpful technologies to improve my rides. Recall, I’ve been evangelizing for literal years now on the benefits of riding with a metronome app (mine is set to trot tempo) and an interval timer (mine dings every 2min). 

chatgpt helpfully suggested three distinct ride plans to be interspersed in our weekly routine

So finally I got serious about the idea. 

I started by feeding ChatGPT background info about me and Doozy, specifically relating to our current goals of relaxation and transitions. It spat out some ride plans and helpfully offered to craft a weekly scheduling guide that could be printed and left in my tack locker. Thanks, Chad!

But I pushed it for more — I took what I liked from these different ride plans, and asked it to create a moment-by-moment coaching script that could be turned into a recorded ride guide. 

my prompt for generating coaching cues throughout the ride

It took a fair amount of iteration and refinement, especially relating to timing. In fact, idk about you all but imho gpts can’t be trusted to math for shit, so once we had the bones of a script put together with time stamps for each exercise, I moved things over into excel to fine tune and create symmetry. 

From there, we plopped the script into an AI text-to-voice app (also recommended by ChatGPT), created an audio file (in a British accent, you’re welcome), and uploaded the resulting Recorded Ride Guide session to Google Drive. 

If I set things up correctly, that recording is now available to anybody (like you!) with the link.*

(*There are no trackers / pixels / counters / cookies / **whatever** associated with that link either, it’s legit just a link to a file saved into my google drive that you can either access directly online, or download / save locally as you see fit.) 

for those of you absolutely bored to tears by all things AI, however, there’s also new tack!! this time with exactly the type of aggressively anatomic v-shaped crown piece that i know works on Doozy

So. Back to me asking you all for a favor — I want you to try it out, let this recording play along in one of your next flat schools, and then provide critical / constructive feedback on what worked, what didn’t. What you’d change or adjust in any future iterations.

it’s a used Montar Normandie, from ebay — isn’t it elegant?

First, some details on what, exactly the ride entails + my preliminary thoughts after riding to it once (last night). It’s a 25min session, starting off with about 2ish minutes of walk before embarking on a trot warm up exercise of riding sweeping 3 loop serpentines, transitioning to walk for crossing over center line / changing bend, then trotting off again. 

This warm up stage lasts about 7 minutes, and includes changing directions about halfway through so you can serpentine off both reins. My impression was that it’s a fair bit too long for this specific exercise, tho an appropriate time frame for general trot warm up. 

well. ok. the rolled leather snap-on browband is clearly not a fit, womp, it’s so pretty and understated tho!
($50neg. including shipping if you think it’ll fit your creature! fraidycat {dot} eventing at gmail!)

For Doozy, getting straight into serpentines and transitions was a bit premature, so the next time I ride it, I’ll probably ease into that exercise a little slower, since there’s plenty of time. More advanced horses might also intersperse other common warm up exercises into this time, and you could add a brief walk break to reduce overall ride intensity too. 

Next up comes a block of trot spirals. Again it’s fairly generously timed, so the intrepid rider probably has enough time to spiral in and out, then back in and out again before the change of direction to rinse / repeat.

everything else works nicely, tho, the straps all lay nicely against each other vs layering weirdly like the last bridle i tried. we have a new (used) browband arriving next week to try too.

From the spiral, you step into your first canter. Starting with canter on a 20m circle, then beginning to intermix shallow one-loop serpentines of counter canter in between 20m circles of canter-trot-canter circles. This whole block of work from warm up serpentines, to spirals to canter lasts about 16min.

After the first bit of canter, the recorded guide brings you back down to trot and then walk, for about a one minute break, then finishes with another roughly 8min working session — taking you first back up to trot for another (shorter) spiral cycle to lead into the second canter. 

That canter follows the same pattern as before — circles with trot transitions and shallow counter canter loops — before transitioning you back to the very first exercise: three loop trot serpentines with steps of walk over center line, before finishing with stretchy trot.

the full picture is coming together! finished the kit with Wintec webber leathers, and some black Royal Rider irons that i already had on hand

Some real talk: Our experience did not start out…. great. Doozy was super tense and distracted and rushing. And I actually paused the recording for a bit during the first warm up trot segment to kinda regroup and get my bearings (and shorten my stirrups). 

But then… Actually, as we progressed through the exercises after restarting the recording, it felt extremely helpful. My experience may be different from yours in that it’s hard for me not to get kinda baited into the tension, to kinda devolve into an almost survival-mode “just get through the paces” kinda attitude. 

Having this recording tho, especially with the consistent gentle coaching prompts, really really helped keep me centered, AND — most importantly — kept me proactively giving instructions to Doozy. Instead of just being like, “omg dear lord slow down!” I could actually stay focused on an exercise and just help Doozy find her balance within those steps. 

we’re clearly going for that muted palette bc obvi doozy has no trouble drawing attention to herself already!

And gooooo figure, the ride ended much more successfully than it had started. Like finishing with another stint of trot serpentines with trot-walk-trot exercises might be a bit remedial for some horses, but it was just the ticket for Doozy and she was able to execute them much more smoothly at the end vs the beginning. Which, ya know, is the whole point of schooling. 

So yea. I made a thing. I’m excited about it. I’d like to create more things like it — with variations in exercises, timing, intensity, etc., presumably with progressive complexity to continue skill development.

You know how it is, tho. Grand ideas crashing into mundane reality, this stuff takes time to do and is so far of untested / unclear utility. Will it be one of those tools that, over time, I stop using bc it’s not helpful? Or will it be like the interval timer or metronome (which, personally, I played simultaneously with the recording and may possibly integrate into future recordings pending interest) and turn into something that I use for virtually every ride? 

It’s to be determined, I suppose. In the meantime tho, I’m interested in hearing from other folks. Do you plan to try this recorded ride guide out? And if so, would you please consider leaving feedback?

ww: show pics!!

I still miss the GRC Photography days — where they’d sell you a thumb drive on show day with every single photo taken of you for $99 ($79 if you brought an old thumb drive with you….). But I try to support this next generation of photographers. 

They’re out there all day long, capturing the moments, ya know? The current business model doesn’t make a ton of sense to me, as prices vary wildly across different vendors and prints are somehow cheaper than digitals… C’est la vie tho! I actually kinda like getting the prints anyway!

So here’s a collection of my favorite shots from our Loch Moy outing earlier this month, used with purchase from the excellent team at Erin Gilmore Photography <3 <3 <3

proof that we chilled: that is an actual honest-to-god-almost-loop in the reins after we’ve already entered the ring for show jumping!!

lolz and perhaps we were too chill (note the knocked rail) but the feeling was good!

getting into a nice balance in the middle section on xc

what a pretty shot <3 <3 
the colors kind of remind me of that one good shot i got of me and charlie at waredaca a million years ago 

and loookie at me not immediately snatching back on landing!
yes yes i know the e-brake is still on, but one step at a time, right???

hover dooz says “floor is lava water!!!”

i’m honestly convinced that this is her favorite game

sweet mare, can you believe we actually qualified for area championships??

mean ol’ dressage: post mortem edition

So! If you read yesterday’s post, you’ll know that Doozy and I rode two dressage tests at a schooling show over the weekend. Technically two different tests — Starter and Training 1 — but practically identical in pattern. 

It’s my impression that our efforts in each were reasonably equivalent, give or take. And while there’s no video of the Starter test, we do have past evidence of general consistency across multiple tests. 

All that to say, you’ll have to take my word for it that our execution between the two tests was relatively similar, but the final scores differed by more than 3%, a remarkably high margin all things considered. 

tests with more scoring opportunities (ie larger count of total movements) are less susceptible to having one blown movement wreck the whole score

As is my occasional habit, I decided to dig into the numbers from both of these tests. I want to understand exactly why the scores varied so much, especially if there are takeaways that can be integrated into my schooling sessions. 

Tho I’ll also admit right off the bat: part of my hypothesis is that the actual design and scoring structure between the two tests is responsible in part for the score variance, beyond just how we performed and executed each movement. 

Training Level Test 1
score before collectives: 59.47% ||| collectives alone: 59.29%

Because even tho the pattern for these two tests is nearly identical (slight variation in location of canter-trot transitions, trot-walk transition, and free walk — short instead of long diagonal), the scoring structure is a bit different. 

Most notably, eventing dressage tests did away with the suite of collective scores in 2022 — reducing the overall judge’s impression score down to a single metric: Harmony. Dressage tests, meanwhile, retain the original block of 5 ‘collective’ marks that give judges an opportunity to add nuance to their impression beyond just scoring the movements as presented. 

trotting: needs more of this more quickly after transitions

The Training 1 test also breaks out individual scores for working canter, so the canter receives 4 total scores compared to the Starter test’s 2. On the flip side, the Starter test scores the medium walk both before and after the free walk, for a total of 3 scored walk movements compared to Training’s 2. 

For Doozy, the differences in canter scoring opportunities didn’t have much effect in these tests — our overall canter averages across both tests varied by just 0.3%. The addition of that second scored medium walk, however — the walk right before transitioning back to trot — definitely does not work in our favor.

Starter Level Test
score before collectives: 57.31% ||| collectives alone: 50.00%

Doozy has a generally lovely free walk that so far most judges have been happy to mark as a highlight. But the tension increases as soon as I start picking the reins up, so our average walk scores for Starter are more than half a percentage point — 0.6% — lower than average walk scores for Training. 

The biggest variation in scores by far, however, came in the collectives. While we earned just one movement score of 5.0, the judge (imo) crucified us with a second 5.0 (with x2 coefficient, natch) for our single overall collective in the Starter test — which had an enormous impact on final score. Ouch. 

free walk: proof that the mare can learn to play the game

Charting both tests by looking at the running average as the tests progress kinda makes it more clear how those slight differences can have cumulative effects on final score. 

For example, in the below chart, both tests start out identically — a conservatively ‘satisfactory’ 6.0 first impression upon entry, then ho-hum continuing on thru the first trot and canter circles, then the wheels start coming off a bit as we shift into downward transitions to arrive at the walk work. 

progression of overall average score as test goes on

The free walk is a high point in both tests, but the bifurcation in running average happens at the point of that third walk score in the Starter test. Then we see relatively parallel downward trends as we work back toward the second canter (low points in both), before the final exit. 

Here is another difference in test pattern — Starter does that weird broken line from the corner letter back to X then to G, whereas Training does a traditional 10m half turn onto the center line at A. Considering all of our canters in this test happen in the corner after CL, it’s no wonder that Doozy is maybe thinking about canter instead of halt at this moment — whereas a true CL turn is another one of those ‘trick’ patterns that horses learn to recognize.

click for full size if you want to see comments

Anyway. Again, after the movements themselves, you can see in the chart above that the Training test running average perks back up again with the addition of collective marks, whereas the Starter test lands with a thud.

Naturally it’s any rider’s tendency to dismiss that sort of thing as just a harsh judge biased against tense red mares lol. Which, eh, ymmv. 

Realistically, tho, there are still some useful tidbits for me to chew on from this analysis. Namely: transitions. Dear lord. Up, down, all around. Our transitions are ultimately what’s getting us into trouble, and the design of the Starter test leaves virtually no place to hide from them.

final halt: everybody is happy when it’s over lol

It’s something I’ll admit to not focusing on a ton in our schooling sessions too, since at least in my experience doing a lot of transitions can significantly amplify tension and fizziness. So we probably won’t just start doing 8 million in a row, or something crazy like that. 

Instead, I might try to identify some baselines — like counting strides between a transition and when the gait feels “established.” How many strides does it take from when we pick up canter to when the canter feels balanced and organized? Right now that answer is… Well. According to these tests, more strides than can fit into a 20m circle LOL. 

And how many strides does it take from when I first ask for a canter-trot transition and when we are in fact trotting in a steady rhythm? I think focusing on shortening those distances, while incrementally increasing the number of transitions we do, could be a big help. 

Bc… Well… Obviously my hope is that we’re just about finished riding this test forever. But we’re not quite there yet. And I’d like our last few attempts at it to keep getting better lol.