Street_Skill
Well-Known Member
I love reading everyone's competition reports, but I haven't been able to join in for ages as my horse was diagnosed with RAO around this time last year and he took a long time to come right. We didn't compete at all last year and just focussed on sorting out his breathing and management. Anyway, after a winter of arena hire and lots of training (I love lessons! I have two trainers that I use regularly, but as a special treat over the winter I bought myself a lesson with Nicki Crisp which was fun) to build confidence in our own ability and to take the pressure out of outings I decided that we were ready to get back out there!
Now in the run up to Ted's diagnosis we were struggling to score above 60% and looking back it's easy to see why. I knew there was something wrong, but I didn't get a a lot of support from my yard (another long story but that problem is now sorted!) so this left me with a bit of a confidence crisis that we weren't good enough to be competing at affiliated dressage. I don't really know where I get this mental block from because the horse is more than capable, so although we are only competing at novice and never likely to set the world alight, he is schooling at elementary at home and had success at prelim with Area Festival and Regionals qualifications. In a way it doesn't really matter where the mental block came from, it's there and needs to be dealt with! To this end I set myself the target of qualifying for a Petplan Area Festival at novice. I have my sights set on Sheepgate at the beginning of August so thought that I would give myself plently of time......
First outing.....Easton and Otley College on 21/04. Two novice classes entered, novice 27 and novice 38. This venue can get pretty busy and it definitely was this day! They had music classes running indoors so the short arena test was outside which meant that the outdoor arena had been cut in half which meant that the warm up was small and packed! Despite this he warmed up really well although was quite excited! He then turned into an idiot in the arena, set his neck and shoulders against me and sped round the test like the racehorse he used to be. I suppose it put a smile on my face even if it did feel like steering a barge at times. The long arena test was indoors and he felt amazing! The arena hire we had done at this venue really paid off as there was no spooking at the banners or the spectator area. He felt really rideable in the test, and despite a mistake in the first medium trot (cantered!!) the final centre line felt amazing. Checking our results having put him back on the trailer I was thrilled to see that we had been given 67.08% and 4th for our short arena test and 64.68% and 3rd for our long arena test! Thrilled to have two qualifying scores in the bag at our first attempt this year.
After a couple of lovely lessons in between where we worked on building and containing power (there is a lot of it!) I entered novice 27 and another bash at novice 38 at one of our closest BD venues which is an Arab stud farm. The venue is beautiful with a wonderful indoor school with vaulted roof and an international sized outdoor compete with neatly trimmed box hedge all the way around. I took my mum with me for moral support and to be chief dog holder! The warm up for the short arena test was outside and although he backed off a little going into the indoor (spooky shadows caused by sunlight coming through the sky lights!) he did what I felt was a nice test. Another mistake in the first medium trot (cantered!), but other than that lots to be pleased with. The long arena test was held outside and he felt really good in our second short warm up. I trotted down the centre line and turned left only for the bell to go. I was a bit puzzled to have done so little and made a mistake as although I do make a lot of mistakes I can usually manage to get down the centre line and turn in the right direction! I turned to the judge who said "you should have halted at X". After a short conversation where she realised that she was looking at an elementary test rather than novice 38 we were allowed to continue without any penalty points, but it kind of upset our flow and some of my old habits started creeping in. It all got a bit tense and the horse got a bit strong, plus there was another canter in the first medium trot! Despite this I felt that we hadn't completely disgraced ourselves and on checking the results I found that we had scored 67.14% in the short arena test for 2nd and 64.68% in the long arena test for 5th!
We appear to have qualified for our Area Festival! And with a couple of Regional qualifying scores to boot! Only by fractions of percentages, but I'll take that! I'll now book a couple of days off around the first weekend in August, but I'm not telling the horse as he likes to go lame when he finds out I've got important things planned.......!
As no report is complete without photos, just for fun I've put in a couple. The first one is from our prelim Area Festival in 2015...
....and this one is from our competition on 21/04.....
I do have permission to use these images online, thanks for reading!
Now in the run up to Ted's diagnosis we were struggling to score above 60% and looking back it's easy to see why. I knew there was something wrong, but I didn't get a a lot of support from my yard (another long story but that problem is now sorted!) so this left me with a bit of a confidence crisis that we weren't good enough to be competing at affiliated dressage. I don't really know where I get this mental block from because the horse is more than capable, so although we are only competing at novice and never likely to set the world alight, he is schooling at elementary at home and had success at prelim with Area Festival and Regionals qualifications. In a way it doesn't really matter where the mental block came from, it's there and needs to be dealt with! To this end I set myself the target of qualifying for a Petplan Area Festival at novice. I have my sights set on Sheepgate at the beginning of August so thought that I would give myself plently of time......
First outing.....Easton and Otley College on 21/04. Two novice classes entered, novice 27 and novice 38. This venue can get pretty busy and it definitely was this day! They had music classes running indoors so the short arena test was outside which meant that the outdoor arena had been cut in half which meant that the warm up was small and packed! Despite this he warmed up really well although was quite excited! He then turned into an idiot in the arena, set his neck and shoulders against me and sped round the test like the racehorse he used to be. I suppose it put a smile on my face even if it did feel like steering a barge at times. The long arena test was indoors and he felt amazing! The arena hire we had done at this venue really paid off as there was no spooking at the banners or the spectator area. He felt really rideable in the test, and despite a mistake in the first medium trot (cantered!!) the final centre line felt amazing. Checking our results having put him back on the trailer I was thrilled to see that we had been given 67.08% and 4th for our short arena test and 64.68% and 3rd for our long arena test! Thrilled to have two qualifying scores in the bag at our first attempt this year.
After a couple of lovely lessons in between where we worked on building and containing power (there is a lot of it!) I entered novice 27 and another bash at novice 38 at one of our closest BD venues which is an Arab stud farm. The venue is beautiful with a wonderful indoor school with vaulted roof and an international sized outdoor compete with neatly trimmed box hedge all the way around. I took my mum with me for moral support and to be chief dog holder! The warm up for the short arena test was outside and although he backed off a little going into the indoor (spooky shadows caused by sunlight coming through the sky lights!) he did what I felt was a nice test. Another mistake in the first medium trot (cantered!), but other than that lots to be pleased with. The long arena test was held outside and he felt really good in our second short warm up. I trotted down the centre line and turned left only for the bell to go. I was a bit puzzled to have done so little and made a mistake as although I do make a lot of mistakes I can usually manage to get down the centre line and turn in the right direction! I turned to the judge who said "you should have halted at X". After a short conversation where she realised that she was looking at an elementary test rather than novice 38 we were allowed to continue without any penalty points, but it kind of upset our flow and some of my old habits started creeping in. It all got a bit tense and the horse got a bit strong, plus there was another canter in the first medium trot! Despite this I felt that we hadn't completely disgraced ourselves and on checking the results I found that we had scored 67.14% in the short arena test for 2nd and 64.68% in the long arena test for 5th!
We appear to have qualified for our Area Festival! And with a couple of Regional qualifying scores to boot! Only by fractions of percentages, but I'll take that! I'll now book a couple of days off around the first weekend in August, but I'm not telling the horse as he likes to go lame when he finds out I've got important things planned.......!
As no report is complete without photos, just for fun I've put in a couple. The first one is from our prelim Area Festival in 2015...
....and this one is from our competition on 21/04.....
I do have permission to use these images online, thanks for reading!
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