Dressage Again........

A return to my true love.........dressage.

A lot of people have no love for dressage or flatwork; 'it's boring'. Going around in circles sure is boring, but then so is doing laps of the arena without changing it up. However doing circles and asking for shoulder in on the circle, seeing if you're going straight on the circle, seeing if the horse is balanced, changing gait, making sure you're position is correct, these are all things that you could be doing on your circle. Having been to a few SJI shows now, it is very obvious who does flatwork with their horses and who doesn't, from the lower levels to the top.......you don't have to be into dressage to do flatwork, it'll improve your jump off no end!

I had entered the two boys in the Dressage Ireland comp being held in Ballinasloe. Two novice tests for CC and two elementary for Fred. For Fred, this is what we've been working towards for a while. I've had it in my mind for a while now to try the Elementary. Last year in our first year in Dressage Ireland, we did Preliminary & Novice, even though we didn't score 100% at any time ( I know, shocking right?!) I still felt that I wanted to go up a level. Challenge myself even more. Probably stupid seeing as I could just have stayed at those levels and perfected the movements........but now having trained for Elementary it has made me perfect the basic elements of those tests more than I think I would have without moving up.
Cu Chulainn had been working on his flatwork while Fred was off, but we'd been a bit lacking of late. The focus was on the jumping, which he loves and made life easy. I wasn't expecting miracles from him seeing as he was doing SJI the weekend before. But it was too good an opportunity to miss being so close to him. If nothing else, maybe we'd get some tips on what we needed to work on more.

Fred is ready to put his best hoof forward

I volunteered to scribe the morning of the show, as my tests would be in the afternoon. I love scribing, you learn so much, both from the good and the bad that you see. I finished up scribing and ran home to collect the boys. I gave them a quick groom but didn't have time to plait them. Thank god for the Haas brushes!!

Cu Chulainn was up first. I had a decent warm up on him. He was tense and wouldn't relax for ages. So I did a lot of outside bend and then work on a circle; shoulder in and haunches in. As well as a million transitions, which Carl Hester always says is important. Eventually he relaxed. We went around the dressage arena a few times, doing transitions and keeping it all relaxed. Then we went up the centre line and BAM. I was on a camel. He was having NONE of it. Broke in to canter, was tense. Did lovely flying changes when I wanted counter canter. It was just short of being a car crash. I was so annoyed at him, because I'd worked so hard on getting him to relax. We went in to the warm up arena again and I just cantered him around a few laps in jump position. I wanted to save my energy for Fred and the harder tests. So we did a few laps on both reins and he was nicely tired out for our next test. He redeemed himself somewhat and we did a much nicer test.

Fred was up next. I got off CC and straight on to Fred. He didn't have time for the warm up I would have liked and we didn't quite get our simple changes (canter to walk, walk to canter). He did a nice test, but I could feel that he wasn't quite warmed up enough. We went out and there was only one person in before our next test. I did a few more exercises on him, but I didn't want to tire him out. He felt much better for our next test, more supple and relaxed. It really felt like a lovely test. It was so nice to have him out at competition again, he just loves to show off.

 Fred scored a whooping 65% and 66%!! And CC scored 60% and 61% so got some  points!!  One qualifying score for Fred as only one judge there, but delighted with that!! Looks like we have Nationals in our sights!!