First Dressage Tips

[rlhnlk]

I'm looking for some advice, thanks to any who give their thoughts.

I'm taking my youngster to her first dressage soon, it's just intro a and the aim is to get from start to finish without falling off or leaving the arena and generally building some confidence.

The difficulty is that's she's quite big, still a bit gangly and backwards thinking and the change of rein through 2 half 10m circles is going to be a bit sticky. She can do it if I go to sitting trot and kick to stop her backing off, but she does find it hard, I'm wondering whether to just try it and see how it goes, or plan to overshoot anyway and do a big wiggle to make her life easier for her first test.

Any thoughts?

 

[PaddyMonty]

I'd do a wiggle. In the early stages you need to get the horse thinking forward so avoid anything that makes it difficult for her.

 

[Walrus]

I would also go for the big wiggle and aim for more of a consistent rhythm than anything else. That move always baffles me in an intro, I'm sure it doesn't appear again until novice!

 

[mrsh2010]

I'd try not to worry about it and go with the attitude to have fun.

Think of it this way - It's only one movement - so see how she's feeling and do what you think is best on the day

 

[Charlie007]

I would also go with the wiggle and not worry. I will be taking my youngster out soon and have the same goals as you!! Stay on and stay in the arena!! Just enjoy x

 

[Dizzydancer]

It's such a tricky move to put in an intro never understood it myself!!
I actually have to do this in sitting trot on my warmblood-
Her trot is huge and it's the only way I can get her closed back enough to get the right size circle however she is more established than yours altho not a lot of experience on dressage!

 

[rachk89]

Can you try the intro b instead? It's a nicer intro test really. I tried the intro a test with my half warmblood and he struggled as he is so big and gangly too. Only ever done it correctly once and of course it wasn't during the test lol.

 

[alice.j]

Intro A is horrible - I did it recently on my 14.1 and he definitely struggled with the half circles (he also struggled with straight lines around the edge of the arena and not shying at everything, but that's a different issue!). I think big wiggle, and focus on the rest of the test.
Good luck!

 

[rlhnlk]

Well as it happened I was going to do a big wiggle, I had it all planned out, then when we got there she was being such a baby and staring at everything that we were in slow motion so the half circles actually came pretty easily! If she'd been listening and going forwards it would have been trickier, but I actually had more difficulty getting her back into trot after the trot-walk-trot transitions as she was too busy gawking.

At least I can keep this in mind for next time we do intro A though so thanks muchly for the advice, I'm doing intro B next, hopefully with a bit more oomph!