vallin
Well-Known Member
In the spirit of warts-and-all I really should have posted about our BE debut last weekend, but having updated my blog (my grandfather reads it and knew I was going out so would have worried had I not done that, bless him!) I couldn't quite face posting our failure on here too 
Let's just say DP was a Horror. A glue-factory worthy Horror. Having been in a very nice position after a 31.0 dressage she then did this...repeatedly.
Needless to say we were eliminated in our first BE by fence 3 of the show jumping *sigh* (Disclaimer: she has had every sort of pysio/saddler/vet/dentist etc and both my instructor, the BE(80)T instructor and numerous onlookers said exactly the same thing. She just didn't want to play on the day) I left Little Downham in somewhat of a funk and have to say a massive thank you to S for sorting out the horse and putting up with my sulking all the way back to the yard
Luckily I am a 'get-back-on-the-horse' kinda gal and decided a jumping lesson the next day was the way forward. Before we started I had a very frank conversation with my instructor as to whether or not I was wasting my time trying to persuade my dressage-bred dumblood that eventing was fun. Thankfully he agreed with me that we still had options and that I didn't need to start buying matchy-matchy and bling just yet An hour and a few destroyed jumps later DP had earned herself a reprieve from Pedigree and a Plan had been established. A few weeks of fun on The Dark Side plus some more SJ lessons and XC schooling and then another punt at BE at the end of the month. (It's probably horrific plan but you don't know until you try! 
)
Fast forward to this weekend and DP and I lost out virginity to The Dark Side in an attempt to complete P19 and N23. I say attempt as, for those of you without an encyclopedic knowledge of BD test, both of those are long arena test. That means four letters in addition to the eight I already struggle to remember. Good plan, Stan!
D warmed up nicely for P19 but the monsters lurking behind the white boards at F and the navigators joy ride a C led to a fairly underwhelming test. Luckily, because it's BD not BE, we got a second chance! A quick snack break of chocolate biscuits (Pringles and samosas are for ODEs only ) and it was time to try again, this time with N23. I would say that I learn from my mistakes but changes of rein across the diagonal all look the same on paper Luckily the judge penalised me in my movement score rather than as an error of course and D performed admirably despite her incompetent navigator. I came out of the arena finally feeling like D was back on side and that we had completed the test as a team, pats and polos all round
Scores came out and we had gained a very respectable 65% for P19 and 63% for N23. More pats and polos! Video of N23 can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGcHVsJsgT0
Hopefully we'll be attempting some more stressage before we return to eventing, but if not we have lots of other fun things planned to keep us amused.
Hope you all had a good weekend, over and out!
V and DP x
Let's just say DP was a Horror. A glue-factory worthy Horror. Having been in a very nice position after a 31.0 dressage she then did this...repeatedly.
Needless to say we were eliminated in our first BE by fence 3 of the show jumping *sigh* (Disclaimer: she has had every sort of pysio/saddler/vet/dentist etc and both my instructor, the BE(80)T instructor and numerous onlookers said exactly the same thing. She just didn't want to play on the day) I left Little Downham in somewhat of a funk and have to say a massive thank you to S for sorting out the horse and putting up with my sulking all the way back to the yard
Luckily I am a 'get-back-on-the-horse' kinda gal and decided a jumping lesson the next day was the way forward. Before we started I had a very frank conversation with my instructor as to whether or not I was wasting my time trying to persuade my dressage-bred dumblood that eventing was fun. Thankfully he agreed with me that we still had options and that I didn't need to start buying matchy-matchy and bling just yet
An hour and a few destroyed jumps later DP had earned herself a reprieve from Pedigree and a Plan had been established. A few weeks of fun on The Dark Side plus some more SJ lessons and XC schooling and then another punt at BE at the end of the month. (It's probably horrific plan but you don't know until you try! )Fast forward to this weekend and DP and I lost out virginity to The Dark Side in an attempt to complete P19 and N23. I say attempt as, for those of you without an encyclopedic knowledge of BD test, both of those are long arena test. That means four letters in addition to the eight I already struggle to remember. Good plan, Stan!
D warmed up nicely for P19 but the monsters lurking behind the white boards at F and the navigators joy ride a C led to a fairly underwhelming test. Luckily, because it's BD not BE, we got a second chance! A quick snack break of chocolate biscuits (Pringles and samosas are for ODEs only
) and it was time to try again, this time with N23. I would say that I learn from my mistakes but changes of rein across the diagonal all look the same on paper Luckily the judge penalised me in my movement score rather than as an error of course and D performed admirably despite her incompetent navigator. I came out of the arena finally feeling like D was back on side and that we had completed the test as a team, pats and polos all round
Scores came out and we had gained a very respectable 65% for P19 and 63% for N23. More pats and polos! Video of N23 can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGcHVsJsgT0
Hopefully we'll be attempting some more stressage before we return to eventing, but if not we have lots of other fun things planned to keep us amused.
Hope you all had a good weekend, over and out!
V and DP x
been doing more show jumping lessons, but not on grass and limited course work - plus I'd been on holiday the week before so she'd not been jumped for a couple of weeks which I'm sure didn't help. I also suspect the atmosphere got to us both...not that I'm making excuses or anything