So... today was interesting. It was a good day... just don't look at my scores. ;)
I had another migraine... and it was SOOOOO hot and steamy. But, my pill kicked in and there was a breeze... sometimes. So we persevered. Well, that's not true. It wasn't "perseverence"... we just went. Ha! Dan got a bath and I took a pill and by the time we rode our first test the migraine was gone. It was super hot though. But I drank a ton of water. We did BN Test B to start. I couldn't get my warm up rolling. It was too hot and I kept stopping. I tried to ride like I was riding on my own... vs prepping for a test. But, I was trying to time it. Sigh. So we did a lot of stopping and starting. And he kept pulling the reins out of my hands to stretch. Which, maybe he was a little sore, or maybe he just didn't want to work that hard?? So we warmed up and I didn't do too much upper level stuff thinking that perhaps this would keep him from getting too on the muscle. It worked, but... too well. He was a little bit lazy. Not bad.. but a little bit. And the judge nailed us on his lack of impulsion from the hind end. It was a much nicer test that at Area Champs, I thought. We scored a 32.8. So... not bad, but.... sigh. Not going to be competitive at AEC's. But, as we came out of the arena a client came up to me and asked who I rode with because she was thrilled with how correct my riding was!!!! She said that he looked correct and like true dressage and she thought some famous dressage person would be happy with that! YAY!!!! She made my day :) It was nice to hear that. Yes.. thank you... we've been working so hard!!! Of course this was before I saw my score, but... oh well. ;) (although we did get an 8 on our halt!)
We had about 2 hours before our next test so I untacked and rinsed Dan off and let him chill while I cleaned my tack. He's so silly! He kept saying hi while I was in the trailer. I'm really proud of him though. He stood tied to the trailer quietly and didn't make any fuss or get worried. Granted... he was surrounded by other horse and he was at Ashland, not some random place. But still... maybe the magnesium is helping.
We got back on and warmed up for our second level test and it was the same thing. I tried to power through and get him going but he was not really into it. We did manage to get some canter work and transitions and he started to get more animated. But it was just so steamy, we just... didn't have our usual oomph. Luckily it did start storming in the distance so there was a little bit of a breeze. We got to do our 2nd test and it was okay. It's just a hard test! We didn't do as well as I had hoped... I felt like there were some bumbles and it wasn't as smooth as I wanted. But we scored okay. 63%. Then we had 3 riders before we went back in. I let him rest for the first rider... picked him back up and let him work then rest then work for the next two riders and then back we went. Our 3rd level debut was a bit of a disaster! We were both hot and tired and I think Dan was done. He basically blew me off a good bit. We started out okay... our trot shoulder ins and half passes weren't terrible. Pretty good I thought. Then our lengthen felt decent. And our walk was okay too. Then we cantered and it went downhill. He picked up the wrong lead, he broke in the 10 meter circle, and... our "changes" were terrible. The first one he swapped on his own before I could ask for the downward. I'm not sure if it was clean or not, but then two strides later he propped up front and swapped up front and then back again. The second change was awful. He kept threatening to break in the 10 meter circle and then blew thorugh me and swapped up front then when I tried to walk to swap, he trotted. Sigh... I don't even know what happened. I think we were on 4 different leads in a 10 second span. We eventually landed on the correct lead on all 4 legs so we just carried on. And he blew me off on our centerline too. We scored a 51. :( Whoops. That's embarassing. Sigh. Oh well.
So, our scores weren't great, but... he was a good boy and didn't get fussy, scared, or freak out at the trailer. We had a good BN test without him getting too much on the muscle or running through me. We had a much better test than we did at stableview! Then we managed a decent ride for 2-2 and we managed to get through (barely) 3-1. Our scores were bad, but... we did it. And there were good parts of the test. And my clients comments were nice. And Meg commented how uphill his canter looked and how collected and how much improvement she's seen since she saw us last. So that's exciting!! So I'm just going to ignore the scores. :)
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