CastleMouse
Well-Known Member
Headed off fairly early this morning and arrived at Clonshire with plenty of time to spare before I began warming up... My first test (Prelim 7) was at 11.12, and my second test (Novice 21) was at 11.30. Ali warmed up beautifully, and from what I heard from the "sideliners" he had a few fans
The warm-up was a mud-bath, and so were the two dressage arenas which were very close together and right next to the warm up area. There were puddles everywhere in the dressage arena, and the arenas just became muddier and muddier after each test. Ali went quite well in Prelim 7, no mishaps really, although my nerves did make him a bit tense
As there were a few withdrawals I had to do my second test straight after my first one... Novice 21 went pretty well considering that I was VERY nervous (as usual
), and fortunately Ali's "puddle phobia" wasn't present during either of our tests! I got 58.5% in Prelim 7 (just 1.5% away from a qualifying score for the National Dressage Championships), which is a slight improvement compared to previous tests... There were a lot of entries in Prelim 7, and the class was only split into Registered and Unregistered, so I was competing in the Registered section along with senior riders. I only have two comments on my score sheet for Prelim 7, which isn't very helpful at the end of the day as I'm so used to having loads of helpful comments on my score sheets... In Novice 21 I got 51.5%, which is pretty damn awful really, but the judge said some lovely things about Ali
Didn't bring home any rosettes today, but hey-ho... Ali is still a star at the end of the day for putting up with my riding
We watched a couple of the Prelim tests afterwards and the amount of people retiring was quite shocking... Currently uploading photos from today which I'll post ASAP
