rowy
Well-Known Member
On Saturday, Dancer and I went to our very first area festival at arena UK! Just entered into the prelim class, we were originally going to do the warm up and the main class but there was 5 hours in between and if it were a hot summer day I would still have done both classes but freezing in winter isnt my idea of fun! With Dancer, a warm up class would of either been successful in reducing spooks or made her worse by hyping her up depending on her mood.
This past week she had been awful! So tense and hyper and really not going well in the snaffle at all! So I had little hope for the area festival. Rugged her up really warm, put her saddlecloth on before we left so it would get nice and warm on her. Warmed her up in her exercise sheet the whole time so she couldnt get chilly and tense as she did at last outing. She warmed up pretty well, not her best but still ok. Went into the arena and tried to trot as close to the plant pots as possible to get her used to them. She seemed pretty calm and relaxed. Started test and it wasnt too bad. The problem is, she has done a few low level elems the last few times out so she was taking advantage of the fact everything comes up sooo slooowly in the prelim which gave her plenty of time to gawp at the flower pots and white boards *rolls eyes*. So trot work was good in parts and bad in others. Canter work was so so good! Transitions were some of the best that she had ever done in the test. We made no stupid mistakes and were pretty accurate but obviously her being slightly tense and spooky in the trot work would have bought the mark down. I had to actually ask for more speed at some parts of the test :O
I was super pleased with the score of 64.37% overall (only 1 mark different between judges!). Ended up 20th out of 37 entries.
I apologize for the state of my position in some of the pics, as she had been so tense and rushy at home, I had kind of adopted the defence position on her. Just had a brill lesson with her on Monday and the instructer gave us looooads to work on and my position so going to take her back a step and work on me and the basics. Going to spend the majourity of the winter training so we can come out next year at elem level properly
My Dad took all these pics.
This past week she had been awful! So tense and hyper and really not going well in the snaffle at all! So I had little hope for the area festival. Rugged her up really warm, put her saddlecloth on before we left so it would get nice and warm on her. Warmed her up in her exercise sheet the whole time so she couldnt get chilly and tense as she did at last outing. She warmed up pretty well, not her best but still ok. Went into the arena and tried to trot as close to the plant pots as possible to get her used to them. She seemed pretty calm and relaxed. Started test and it wasnt too bad. The problem is, she has done a few low level elems the last few times out so she was taking advantage of the fact everything comes up sooo slooowly in the prelim which gave her plenty of time to gawp at the flower pots and white boards *rolls eyes*. So trot work was good in parts and bad in others. Canter work was so so good! Transitions were some of the best that she had ever done in the test. We made no stupid mistakes and were pretty accurate but obviously her being slightly tense and spooky in the trot work would have bought the mark down. I had to actually ask for more speed at some parts of the test :O
I was super pleased with the score of 64.37% overall (only 1 mark different between judges!). Ended up 20th out of 37 entries.
I apologize for the state of my position in some of the pics, as she had been so tense and rushy at home, I had kind of adopted the defence position on her. Just had a brill lesson with her on Monday and the instructer gave us looooads to work on and my position so going to take her back a step and work on me and the basics. Going to spend the majourity of the winter training so we can come out next year at elem level properly
My Dad took all these pics.
