I forgot what a thick skin you need for dressage!

IMO He is not showing enough impulsion for this level the steps with the hind legs are to small and he is as every one has said consistently dragging the NS toe behind
I would hesitate to say on the basis of a grainy video that the horse has a say a spavin ( many many things can cause toe dragging ) but if he where my horse I would not be happy .
I probally would start with a flexion test ( I might do it my self ) and a lunge on a 12m circle on the hard.
 
Can i just say your horse is lovely, so obedient and you rode him beautifully, what a nice test.
For me he is showing inconsistent movement behind and i agree with the others re more noticable on near hind, he does look like my girl when her hocks started to bother her, it can almost sometimes just look like a lazy gait, and he may well have shown better movement had he been warmed up more, bit id get the vet out to discuss and it would be benificial to both of you to get a work up and sort the issue out, many of these types of joint problems can improve greatly with treatment if thats the cause of the problem. Again i feel the need to say what a well schooled lovely horse OP.
 
Please don't think people, or the judge were "slating you" he is a lovely horse and you rode a lovely test which would have scored very well if he had been using his hind legs better. I would also be getting him checked out as he isnt right but I don't think he is lame enough for the judge to pull you up and stop the test so they did the best they could.
 
Given your lovely riding, lovely horse and previous good scores, I'd say he's had a bad day.

He looks a little on the stiff side and like he's not really working off his back legs. You mentioned that's he's an older horse. I'd give him a few days off and a big pat for giving it his best.

Then I'd lunge on the hard, check his flexion and see how it goes. I'd also look at getting his back checked.
 
JadeyB said:
i was rushed a little into the second test where this was mentioned because we'd been given an earlier slot at short notice so i didn't have much time to re-warm up which wouldn't have helped.


As I understand it if you are offered on the day an earlier time slot you don't have to take it. You can stick to your original time. Especially useful to know if it effects your warm up/let down time. I could be wrong mind but I think I'm right.
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Thanks for all of your comments/opinions. I do keep a close eye on his legs due to him being an ex showjumper and nearly 15. I totally agreed with the judge regarding lack of impulsion... i need to get my head around riding more forward so he can actually engage the back end but it was our first Elementary so i was a bit nervous about remembering all of the movements, and when i do ride forward he covers a lot of ground so i mistakenly kept him too quiet. He's always been a little tight/stiff behind due to his size and the way he was ridden in the past but i always give him joint supplements and get him checked if i'm ever concerned he might not be right, which i will do again now when the vet is out next week.

Fear not though, we don't compete at Elementary level, we'd been doing prelim mostly when we do go out, which isn't often, but we got told off by a judge who said we should be doing novice, so we did and he won his last test so this show was running a combined Novice and elementary and i thought we'd give it a go... I have no plans to make it a regular thing.
 
But his size shouldn't affect stiffness - a lot of us ride big horses :)

He is lovely but I wouldn't say his stiffness is down to his size, it might be that you need to have a longer warm up with more walking if he is stiffer due to his age and past life :)
 
charlie76 said:
You are both more than able to compete at elem level, you just need to get the soundness issue sorted.
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I absolutely agree.

But please get him checked. I don't think it was anything to do with not riding him forward. He looked very stiff, and a joint supplement may just not be cutting it.
 
amymay said:
I absolutely agree.

But please get him checked. I don't think it was anything to do with not riding him forward. He looked very stiff, and a joint supplement may just not be cutting it.
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I will do, his teeth are due next week so i'll get him checked at the same time, i try to limit vet visits because he's terrified of them!
 
I used to ride a 17.3 former hunter who was 15 when we were doing dressage - he was going really well, we'd moved up from Prelim to Novice and everything was great (consistently getting around the 65% mark) then one day we had a test (Trailblazers 2nd round) where the judge slated us, we got one of our lowest scores and we were 3rd from last. All the comments were 'tight' or 'tight in the back'. Got the physio out, worked on him for about a month, no improvements so got the vet out when he went badly lame (almost overnight) - arthritis in all 4 legs.

Not saying this is what is wrong with your boy at all, but sometimes it does take a bad dressage test to really get to the bottom of little niggles with the horse (my boy never showed any pain at all, would do anything for me and was such a sweetheart). I think sometimes with larger horses they have a lot of strain/pressure on their legs and 15/16 seems to be a common age when things start to go wrong with bigger horses in the leg area.

Perhaps if Prelim/Novice were good it might be better to stick to them rather than pushing for elem, when a horse gets a bit older it is quite a lot of strain to start asking for collection and some of the harder movements.

Dont be put off though - we all have tests where the judge simply doesnt like us & our horses and we have to chalk it up as experience and move on. Plus without the lows the highs wouldnt feel so good, so you need a bad experience every now and then to put things into perspective and to make the really 'good' tests feel amazing.

Get your vet and physio checks done then go back to a Novice providing he gets the all clear to boost your confidence again. And remember - it is supposed to be fun! You are paying to do this, this is your hobby, so relax and enjoy it, and if you get a judge who doesnt like you well so be it, you cant win everyone over! Dressage is a subjective sport, each judge will have slightly different opinions so you are always going to get tests where one judge is harsher than others that have judged you before.
 
I agree with all the other comments about him not tracking up and dragging the hind etc. However, from what you say and looking at the video I don't think the judge was really slating you at all - I suspect they were a bit frustrated seeing your horse is well-schooled and obedient, wanted to give higher marks but couldn't due to the issue with the hind end. Hope you can get it sorted - it is possible he has an issue for a while but the fact that you had a short warm-up might have meant the problem was more obvious that usual.
 
Thanks so much, great advice and i'll defo get him checked out for piece of mind because like yours he's an absolute sweetheart and i wouldn't want him to be struggling. i'll defo stick with Novice from now on when we do go out, we did a novice before the elementary and the comments were any better but nothing about irregularity, they just said he should be getting 8's and 9's but no advice on how we could achieve that.

I just need to remember it's supposed to be fun, like you said, that the judge doesn't know anything about the combination in front of them and that we've come so far already, a year ago he'd have turned into a tense giraffe upon entering the arena and would have panicked his way through the test. :)

kc100 said:
I used to ride a 17.3 former hunter who was 15 when we were doing dressage - he was going really well, we'd moved up from Prelim to Novice and everything was great (consistently getting around the 65% mark) then one day we had a test (Trailblazers 2nd round) where the judge slated us, we got one of our lowest scores and we were 3rd from last. All the comments were 'tight' or 'tight in the back'. Got the physio out, worked on him for about a month, no improvements so got the vet out when he went badly lame (almost overnight) - arthritis in all 4 legs.

Not saying this is what is wrong with your boy at all, but sometimes it does take a bad dressage test to really get to the bottom of little niggles with the horse (my boy never showed any pain at all, would do anything for me and was such a sweetheart). I think sometimes with larger horses they have a lot of strain/pressure on their legs and 15/16 seems to be a common age when things start to go wrong with bigger horses in the leg area.

Perhaps if Prelim/Novice were good it might be better to stick to them rather than pushing for elem, when a horse gets a bit older it is quite a lot of strain to start asking for collection and some of the harder movements.

Dont be put off though - we all have tests where the judge simply doesnt like us & our horses and we have to chalk it up as experience and move on. Plus without the lows the highs wouldnt feel so good, so you need a bad experience every now and then to put things into perspective and to make the really 'good' tests feel amazing.

Get your vet and physio checks done then go back to a Novice providing he gets the all clear to boost your confidence again. And remember - it is supposed to be fun! You are paying to do this, this is your hobby, so relax and enjoy it, and if you get a judge who doesnt like you well so be it, you cant win everyone over! Dressage is a subjective sport, each judge will have slightly different opinions so you are always going to get tests where one judge is harsher than others that have judged you before.
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kc100 said:
I used to ride a 17.3 former hunter who was 15 when we were doing dressage - he was going really well, we'd moved up from Prelim to Novice and everything was great (consistently getting around the 65% mark) then one day we had a test (Trailblazers 2nd round) where the judge slated us, we got one of our lowest scores and we were 3rd from last. All the comments were 'tight' or 'tight in the back'. Got the physio out, worked on him for about a month, no improvements so got the vet out when he went badly lame (almost overnight) - arthritis in all 4 legs.

Not saying this is what is wrong with your boy at all, but sometimes it does take a bad dressage test to really get to the bottom of little niggles with the horse (my boy never showed any pain at all, would do anything for me and was such a sweetheart). I think sometimes with larger horses they have a lot of strain/pressure on their legs and 15/16 seems to be a common age when things start to go wrong with bigger horses in the leg area.

Perhaps if Prelim/Novice were good it might be better to stick to them rather than pushing for elem, when a horse gets a bit older it is quite a lot of strain to start asking for collection and some of the harder movements.

Dont be put off though - we all have tests where the judge simply doesnt like us & our horses and we have to chalk it up as experience and move on. Plus without the lows the highs wouldnt feel so good, so you need a bad experience every now and then to put things into perspective and to make the really 'good' tests feel amazing.

Get your vet and physio checks done then go back to a Novice providing he gets the all clear to boost your confidence again. And remember - it is supposed to be fun! You are paying to do this, this is your hobby, so relax and enjoy it, and if you get a judge who doesnt like you well so be it, you cant win everyone over! Dressage is a subjective sport, each judge will have slightly different opinions so you are always going to get tests where one judge is harsher than others that have judged you before.
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It's interesting you say this.

I'm the team manager for our RC dressage team. We have a regular team member who has a chunkier teenage horse, who is generally very reliable and always produces a consistent pleasing test. Usually in the 65-68 bracket, judge depending.

He did a team test for us, and got scored very badly (from memory about 56/7%), and was near the bottom of the class. Rider and I were gobsmacked, thought that maybe a mistake had been made in sheets/numbers. Horse hadn't done any obvious mistakes in the test. Rider didn't feel anything out of the ordinary. I hadn't watched the test intently, but hadn't noticed anything obviously wrong from way of going.

In the heat of the moment I think our initial gut response was 'cr@p judge didn't like the horse'. Rider went home, I collected the sheet and had calmed down by then. Reading through it, it was clear it was the right horse and it was also clear theat the judge had penalisied at least 1 mark per movement for the horse on the FH and not using his hind end.

Having reflected on it, I emailed the rider and said not to completely dismiss it out of turn, and if the vet was around to maybe give him the once over. Turns out the horse was undergoing arthritic changes.
 
ihatework said:
It's interesting you say this.

I'm the team manager for our RC dressage team. We have a regular team member who has a chunkier teenage horse, who is generally very reliable and always produces a consistent pleasing test. Usually in the 65-68 bracket, judge depending.

He did a team test for us, and got scored very badly (from memory about 56/7%), and was near the bottom of the class. Rider and I were gobsmacked, thought that maybe a mistake had been made in sheets/numbers. Horse hadn't done any obvious mistakes in the test. Rider didn't feel anything out of the ordinary. I hadn't watched the test intently, but hadn't noticed anything obviously wrong from way of going.

In the heat of the moment I think our initial gut response was 'cr@p judge didn't like the horse'. Rider went home, I collected the sheet and had calmed down by then. Reading through it, it was clear it was the right horse and it was also clear theat the judge had penalisied at least 1 mark per movement for the horse on the FH and not using his hind end.

Having reflected on it, I emailed the rider and said not to completely dismiss it out of turn, and if the vet was around to maybe give him the once over. Turns out the horse was undergoing arthritic changes.
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I do think once horses get to their mid-late teens things start changing, and are so subtle we as riders/owners might not even notice. My boy showed no sign of pain, at home was working really well even with the on-site vetinary physio saying how good he looked. But it took a judge (who had never judged us before) to spot this tightness in his back, which within a couple of months turned out to be a whole lot worse than just a tight back.

We are so quick to react with 'I'm never competing under that judge again', 'that judge was a harsh marker', 'were they watching the same test' etc that we dont stop to think in fact the judge may actually have spotted something we cant see. Our initial reaction is always anger, that we are giving up dressage etc but 9 times out of 10 the judge is right, they are trained to spot things that we as simple amateur riders are not. Some horses hide pain and discomfort very well, as I said with my boy it amazed me that he carried on doing (what felt to me) like nice work, it was only this one judge (who was a higher level judge than had judged me before) noticed this bit of tightness that it prompted us to investigate further.

OP - in no way am I saying that there is anything serious wrong with your boy like there was with mine, fingers crossed the vet comes back with the all clear for you. But just saying we are often so quick to be angry and upset with a bad test that we forget these are (normally) highly trained judges who have a good eye for spotting little niggles with your horses. In your case, you moved up a level where the judges are expecting quite a bit more from your horse so perhaps you are not quite ready for elem just yet.
 
kc100 said:
I do think once horses get to their mid-late teens things start changing, and are so subtle we as riders/owners might not even notice. My boy showed no sign of pain, at home was working really well even with the on-site vetinary physio saying how good he looked. But it took a judge (who had never judged us before) to spot this tightness in his back, which within a couple of months turned out to be a whole lot worse than just a tight back.

We are so quick to react with 'I'm never competing under that judge again', 'that judge was a harsh marker', 'were they watching the same test' etc that we dont stop to think in fact the judge may actually have spotted something we cant see. Our initial reaction is always anger, that we are giving up dressage etc but 9 times out of 10 the judge is right, they are trained to spot things that we as simple amateur riders are not. Some horses hide pain and discomfort very well, as I said with my boy it amazed me that he carried on doing (what felt to me) like nice work, it was only this one judge (who was a higher level judge than had judged me before) noticed this bit of tightness that it prompted us to investigate further.

OP - in no way am I saying that there is anything serious wrong with your boy like there was with mine, fingers crossed the vet comes back with the all clear for you. But just saying we are often so quick to be angry and upset with a bad test that we forget these are (normally) highly trained judges who have a good eye for spotting little niggles with your horses. In your case, you moved up a level where the judges are expecting quite a bit more from your horse so perhaps you are not quite ready for elem just yet.
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I had a knowledgeable friend look at and have on a sit on him last night and she felt he was fine, but I will get the vet to have a look also, as for a chiro... generally they can't get anywhere near him without sedation.

I've been told this is one of the harder elementaries (Oops! need to do my research better!) so i'll stick to Novice and work on more impulsion... it's all there with him, bless him, i'm probably the issue in that department.

I do understand that judges can 'see' more than us mere mortals sometimes, and i would hope she was just trying to help, but since this happened a lady i know who does BD says that particular judged marked her down heavily for her horse swishing his tail in a test and commented that he must be tense, but it was due to the fact that it was summer and he only has half a tail from it being chewed off by youngsters sooo... i'll check my boy is ok and take the rest of her comments as constructive - ish ;)
 
JadeyB said:
I do understand that judges can 'see' more than us mere mortals sometimes, and i would hope she was just trying to help, but since this happened a lady i know who does BD says that particular judged marked her down heavily for her horse swishing his tail in a test and commented that he must be tense, but it was due to the fact that it was summer and he only has half a tail from it being chewed off by youngsters sooo... i'll check my boy is ok and take the rest of her comments as constructive - ish ;)
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I think to be fair to the judge (and us mere mortals) your horse is not right, and no amount of other people 'looking' at him will change that.

Good luck with the vet, and let us know how you get on.
 
It might be an idea to show the vet your video of the test so he can see what has caused the concern, as sod's law says your horse will be having a good day when he visits!
 
amymay said:
I think to be fair to the judge (and us mere mortals) your horse is not right, and no amount of other people 'looking' at him will change that.

Good luck with the vet, and let us know how you get on.
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So agree with this. It sounds like you are in a bit of denial which is understandable as no-one wants their horse to be lame. Judges are not out to get you and no-one on here has any vested interest in telling you your horse looks lame if he isn't. Definitely get the vet out and then you know where you stand. Good luck :)
 
Most dressage judges don't set out to be negative, or nasty but they can only judge what they see! And it isn't fair to the other people who did really good tests if they 'make allowances' and don't judge all tests the by the same yardstick. Maybe they were just being honest? Take the blinkers off and have another look at the video....... its the only way to get better marks next time.......
Also, if the judge was saying you should be scoring 8s and 9s but he's irregular behind, that, to me, sounds like they think your riding is making him appear irregular (else he wouldn't be capable of scoring a 9!)
 
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stormox said:
Most dressage judges don't set out to be negative, or nasty but they can only judge what they see! And it isn't fair to the other people who did really good tests if they 'make allowances' and don't judge all tests the by the same yardstick. Maybe they were just being honest? Take the blinkers off and have another look at the video....... its the only way to get better marks next time.......
Also, if the judge was saying you should be scoring 8s and 9s but he's irregular behind, that, to me, sounds like they think your riding is making him appear irregular (else he wouldn't be capable of scoring a 9!)
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It was another judge for an earlier novice test that made the remarks about the 8s and 9s. Also, the horse is clearly lame, and drags his toes. I don't think that bad riding could make him do that. From what I could see in the video, the OP's riding was very good, and the horse was very obedient. But he did swish his tail a lot which indicates either annoyance or pain. There was nothing the OP was doing that would cause annoyance, and he seems a very biddable horse, and so I think he is in pain.

OP it's amazing how many horses are actually lame to a greater or lesser degree. It may just be the aging process but it maybe something more. When I was recently looking at horses to buy, all but the one I bought had some slight lameness issue. One was pretty bad and I spotted it inside a second of her moving off. Yet the owner said she had had several people look at her subsequently and she was sound! She most certainly was not, but as she wasn't head bobbing lame, many people just do not see it. Hind limb lameness does not normally cause the classic head bobbing.
 
OP he does look like a lovely horse :) but an MOT when he has his teeth done looks in order :), he'll have to suffer the vet for a bit longer!

One thing that I don't think anyone mentioned but as a novice/occasional elementary competitor with an older pony I do find we get away with things at novice that we don't at elem even if he works to the best of his ability. At elem (which we haven't done for a good while now tbf) he will pretty much always get comments along the lines of 'needs to take more weight behind for this level'. But at 20 and getting a little stiffer in his work he can only physically do that so much. At novice he scores well because he presents a nice enough picture with enough forwardsness and self carriage for that level (and is accurate).

keep us posted, it will be interesting to hear how you get on.
 
OP, Hope you get on ok with the vet.
He's a beautiful horse with such a lovely attitude and you both make a good team.

Sometimes people who know the horse and how it moves, are less sensitive to subtle changes and a fresh pair of eyes can see something that has been unnoticed.
Good luck.
 
What a lovely honest boy he really tried hard for you but to my eye is lame in near hind. His action is very stilted as he is compensating in his movement for whatever his problem is. Your riding is lovely and you must have a very good bond as even though he is in some sort of discomfort he still tried his heart out for you. Definitely need full vet check/physio etc to find out what the problem is and loosen up his hind legs. Good luck I hope it's nothing to severe.
 
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