doozy does dressage @ BCHC

I semi randomly browsed Strider last week looking for interesting opportunities, and stumbled upon basically exactly what we crave: A low key schooling dressage show that was: 

- Close to home

- At a nice venue

- With a respected judge

- And affordably priced

Bingo! Ding ding ding, sign us up!!! Interestingly, it was hosted by (and held in benefit of) an organization that’s not familiar to me, the Baltimore County Horse Council. So I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect — but guys omg, it really did tick every box! 

do we look ready??

We really got into our dressage groove over the past week too. First with trying out all the new kit I wrote about last week. Then had an excellent lesson with Trainer C on Friday, where we really got to work on some of my and Doozy’s lateral imbalances. 

Then I spent Saturday morning scribing at a different schooling show in order to polish off my volunteer requirements for another organization. That was also a lovely show, tho sadly is not quite “close to home” enough for my preferences for this sort of activity. Ymmv.

chillin in the parking lot, spying on golfers lol

But anyway. Both Doozy and I were basically fully “in the zone” for dressage. My goals for this show were fairly straight forward and ultimately extremely fundamental: We need more mileage between the boards. Full stop. 

That’s been true for a long time, and in fact my ‘winter boot camp’ plan last year was to get to as many schooling dressage shows as possible… But ya know. Horses are what they are, and those plans never came to fruition.

idk guys, but the uterus pad is kinda growing on me!

I honestly really believe that Doozy is the type of horse who could benefit from ‘learning the test.’ She’s such an anticipatory creature, to the point where it feels like “dread” — like she’s waiting for the worst. So I’d really like to shift her paradigm, and make the experience more recognizable and predictable and easy to hopefully help her breathe and relax more in the test itself. 

technically it’s stitched crowns… but we allllll see it lol

To that end, I signed up for two tests — Training 1, and Starter. Which, it turns out, are virtually identical tests. Some transitions happen slightly after a letter vs before in T1 vs Starter, and T1 free walks the short diagonal instead of the full. And obvi Starter has those weird broken center lines (and no entry halt). But otherwise, the pattern is exactly the same. Perfect!

Tho for scheduling reasons, the show was running Training level in the large court, so rather than having a weird giant gap between tests (they weren’t changing the ring size until lunch), they let me ride Starter in the large court too. Maybe it would have been better for us to do both in the small v large, but, eh, I think for our purposes the large actually suited my goals of having more space to take a breath.

remembering to halt for the training test!
also: see what i mean about the ‘understated’ look we’re going for?

Anyway. Let’s get to the good stuff, yes? Doozy actually warmed up quite nicely. The tension was absolutely still there — for example, we were not quite successful at managing walk-trot transitions in warm up, and instead mostly just got walk-canter.* But fine, right? Let’s just go ahead and work the canter! 

But really, we were able to pick right up where our lesson left off, working on correct bend, straightness in my own posture and balance, and more half halts on the right rein than I expect (while simultaneously remembering to find moments of release on the left side).

(*Aside from that one walk-bolt we got right before our turn, that was…. unfortunate…)

anyway. cherry-picked is as cherry-picked does.
see the video below for the full picture.

Doozy was a little nervous when it was our turn to circle the ring — the judge was under a pop up tent, and there were folks moving around in the grandstands etc… But she honestly kept a lid on it. There was a ton of space around the ring, including a wide enough strip for circling between the court and the warm up area, and the schedule was such that riders got a very generous ‘familiarization’ period before the judge range the bell. Nice!

blergh, ain’t even got a cherry to pick here at all

And once that bell rang, we were ready! Honestly I was super proud of our first test. It wasn’t perfect, obviously, but we didn’t have any accidental canters — and it felt like I was able to find opportunities to soften and let the mare carry herself. 

I mostly just focused on riding as steadily and consistently as I’m currently able to do — staying in one spot in the saddle, trying to feel both legs long and feet evenly in the stirrup footbeds, hands in one place, tall and tits chest up, not twisting or collapsing down one side or the other.

free walk continues to be among our highest scoring movements

I’m obvi still not perfect either — in fact the judge dinged me numerous times in both tests for being crooked — but I feel like I can see improvement, and like Doozy is having an easier time meeting me where I am, vs the two of us kinda constantly bouncing around off each other. 

No major blips in the first test, and actually what I would consider more than our normal “nice” moments. To the point where I actually considered just calling it a day with that, and scratching the second test. Except… Ya know. This is what we need. Doozy clearly expected to be done after the first, but… No mare, let’s just do it again, and then be done.

idk tho, guys, i really believe she’s getting it, even if the overall picture is still kinda bad

So we chilled for a bit in the warm up before I picked her up to get ready for the second test. There was a bit of a snafu with the judge finding our scoring sheet (since they’d shifted our time to the large arena) so it felt a bit like I wasted some of our best moments while waiting for the bell… But, eh, Too bad, so sad, go and do the test anyway.

always feeling like we could bolt at any moment lol

Second test was maybe less good, but maybe only by a fraction. I honestly think if I’d gotten that test out of the mare at Loch Moy or Waredaca, I would have been thrilled. 

can’t wait until we can do normal center lines in our eventing tests too, she does them nicely!

It scored a bit worse, tho we had a little interpretive dance blip into the right lead canter, plus I fudged some of the geometry bc realistically in the smaller court I need to be ready to do it sooner — like the final halt, G comes up very fast after the broken center line in the small court. The judge just scored what she saw tho, which ya know. Fine. 

good mare, i was proud of her the whole day <3

In both tests, tho, our scores were decidedly worse for the second little tour after the free walk. I *know* I’m anticipating Doozy getting strong and strung out. And ya know, she is. 

And it tracks, right? Like, if you think back to warm up where we kept reencountering tension after walk breaks, maybe it’s getting a little ‘baked in’ right now. I have a tendency in a ride to get into a gear and just keep working it, which is common, I think. But maybe we need more random short walk intervals interspersed to improve flow and fluidity thru all the gait transitions.

It’s also the case that we often break into canter in that second trot circle in the test, so I intentionally did fairly big “whoas” to bring down the tempo in advance. That paid off in terms of rhythm on the circle, but cost us on topline softness. IMO, it’s a price worth paying at this moment to achieve a better rhythm even if the scores are basically equally bad.

wonder of wonders!

i finally coerced an innocent bystander into grabbing video!

Anyway, tho, I’m immensely grateful for the video, not gonna lie. It’s so so so helpful for me to connect the feeling of a ride to what it looks like. Bc realistically, my perception of our performance is… vastly different from the generic outsider. 

click for full size

And it’s hard at this moment in time to reconcile all the various competing truths in my head. 

One truth being: I’m SO proud of the mare for her performance on this day — it finally felt like we were ‘doing it,’ like we looked like we were meant to be there riding that test. Another competing truth, tho, is that… Well. It’s still a bad test. And the scores reflect that. And to me, that is… frustrating and honestly disappointing. 

But with the benefit of video, it becomes easier to reconcile these two truths — bc I can easily see WHY *I* feel so happy about the test, even as it’s clear why the *scores* are what they are.

fancy biscuit <3 <3

So in the grand scheme of things, it felt like an extremely beneficial, educational, and also satisfying activity with my sweet little mare. Another bite-sized adventure, another notch in the belt of figuring this game out, learning how to play by the rules. 

And it was also great for meeting new folks from the BCHC — they did such an incredible job with this event, I have legit been evangelizing about it to anybody who’ll even pretend to listen LOL. Who knows, maybe there will be more outings like this in the future!