advice needed - tense dressage

[katherine_015]

Hi all I'm looking for some advice. Having started BE this season I am having a few problems with the dressage being on grass and the arenas being close together. Normally my horse warms in really well and then as she approaches the area goes tense and when's she like it there's not alot of resoning with her. From going from the 70s for our indoors tests our scores usually fall to low 60s. I have an event coming up in 2 weeks and need it sorted. Has anyone had a similar problem and what did you do about it?

 

[jonny]

have you tried using a calmer in her feed ???

 

[kerilli]

i was told of a very good homeopathic remedy which i used last time on my mare. from a ridiculously tense dressage at Burgie N (54, 3 for walk) we went to a 38 (8 for walk) for the same test. pm me for details if you like, i've only used it once but it really did seem to make a huge difference, it calmed and focussed her. (i've tried calmer additives with no success with this mare btw)

 

[ironhorse]

Unfortunately it's quite difficult to find venues that actually run tests on grass these days, but if your local riding club or village show does dressage, could you go and do two or three tests (even if you had to do a kids one HC) and then make a huge fuss of your horse and then take him home without doing any exciting XC!
The few times I did RC events on a little cob I used to ride, the proximity of more exciting things such as SJ and XC to the arena caused far more tension thatn anything else