5/7/2017: CDCTA Dressage Mania, Part 2

But wait! There's more horse showing to come!

Sunday dawned much nicer than Saturday. Penn and Guinness got some grass, then we headed up to the indoor to watch two of GP Trainer's students ride Grand Prix. We got to see one have a very excellent test that completed her gold medal, and the other made huge improvements from the previous day- very exciting stuff!

I had a lovely ride time of... 5:04 PM. Austen and I stopped by the show office to find out if there was any possible way a First Level TOC class could be created for me in one of the scratch spots because we had such a long drive home. Unfortunately not, but I was able to move up to an earlier slot in my 1-3 class- 4:40 PM. Whatever, I'll take it. It's 20 more minutes on the other side that I can spend packing so we can leave as soon as the class is pinned.

It turned out there were so many scratches that I was able to ride even earlier- 4:20. GP Trainer couldn't stay as late as my test (pre-planned evening festivities from before ride times came out) and her assistant couldn't come to my warm up either because she had a ride time of 5:10 in a different area of the property. However, Austen filled the coaching spot admirably. She pointed out I needed to ride his canter a bit more forward that day because it was a bit irregular.

Penn warmed up quickly, and luckily the riders in front of me were in a hurry to leave too, so they rode their tests early. I'm glad I swapped out- one of the riders between me and my old ride time insisted on keeping her original ride time... which while she's entitled to do that, I would have been super pissed to see the ring empty and me not able to ride my test. Either way, I got to ride 40 min before my original time, allowing for even more packing time!

First centerline. So much more uphill, I love it.

First lengthening trot. I need to keep his poll up.

More of the first lengthening.

I was very pleased with this stretchy circle... but for some reason I've forgotten how to steer and make them round.

Apparently this was a flat canter (according to the judge's comments). Coming up to the simple change through trot.

Penn decided he was going to quit on me in the left lead canter and just get stuck. I had to really kick him on in this lengthening, which the judge called "labored". Which I get it, he was tired.

Half a moment later, I just like his neck in this one.

I swear I'm not about to show the same picture 3 times. He had some really nice moments on the final trot lengthening. (the first pic in this post is from this line too)

Super consistent strides at the start of this diagonal.

We need to make this more uphill though.

Link to YouTube

I was happy with the test, except Penn simply got tired during the canter and our slew of 7's and 7.5's for the trot and walk became a slew of 6's and even some sub-6 scores for the rest of the test. Mostly his irregular canter rhythm popped up (but not nearly as bad as it has in the recent past) and the judge rightly nailed me for it. Who knew standing in a stall all day (with some grazing time in the morning) was exhausting? We ended up with a 64.853% for 5th out of 7 people. It's still a qualifying score, but I can't use it because it was earned at the same show as my other score, so I still need one more.

I have to say, I'm quite disappointed with a sub-65 score at first level. We're better than that, we need to bring it, especially if I want to meet my goal of a 70+ at a recognized show and going to First Level AA Finals. This is just me being a picky bitch because of very lofty goals. I'm happy to continue upping my average first level score and average 1-3 score.

The faces of boredom while we wait for scores.

Austen and I were super efficient in packing up- we had everything ready to go before the last rider rode 1-3... which also meant we had to kill a bunch of time at the show office... we got there as they were announcing her going down centerline. Ugh.

Penn wasn't very happy, so I clipped his hay net out front of his stall so he could channel his inner racehorse and stick his head out AND eat. Poor Guinness had to try to eat it through the chain link, lol.

All was not lost though, I think we got to leave the show grounds around 6:30 PM about ten min after they pinned 1-3. We stopped in "Creamery Row" to get ice cream (which was delicious and well worth the stop) on our way back to Austen's barn to drop off Guinness. We were off to home around 8PM.

Husband earned his keep as "Best Horse Show Husband Ever" by making the 5 hour drive home by himself while his wife slept it off in the passenger seat. We tucked Penn in at 1 AM, unpacked everything I needed in the barn, cleaned the trailer, then took the trailer home with us... More on that later, but long story short, it needed some basic welding work to fix some steel supports, and now needs a crap ton more work because we found so many more things wrong with it. That's for another post though.

Still a good weekend, we accomplished what we needed to! The first of two qualifying scores for Championships.