Some Nice Basics

Friday night I got off work and went straight home to get everything ready for TC's first ever overnight show this last weekend. And, looking back, my first overnight dressage show since 2009! The facility was the same as the one we were at last October, so TC has been there, though if you remember, this was the show where TC bolted up centerline, literally entering at A... spooking. Damn this blog name.

You guys

The whole weekend was basically me asking "is this actually
my horse??" for better or for worse lol

The drive wasn't bad other than a bit of traffic right as we got on the highway. TC unloaded great and walked around the property without any issues. We found his stall and I stuck him in there while I brought all my stuff in. It was so nice to have the stall! I totally get why people do this (as I'm writing this on Saturday night from my hotel room 6 minutes away from the facility). The stall was a gigantic permanent one, so it had an auto water trough and I wasn't worried about TC climbing on anything, becoming cast, or poking his nose through the wall to talk to anyone.

By the time I got everything unloaded and changed into my show clothes, it was time to get on. I had wanted about 45 minutes to warm up just in case TC was a dingbat. And let me tell you, TC was a dingbat.

His new thing is to be walking totally calm and normal on a loose rein, squeal loudly, and then leap into basilisk mode. So we did that and then cantered for like 15 minutes. There was some porpoising, but it was much less obnoxious than the video I had posted last week.

There were still some antics, it is TC after all

The beginning of that naughtiness, oops

The nice thing about this facility is the enormous covered arena with mirrors to warm up in. So while I was trying to get TC to chill out, we did a lot of great stuff. I schooled the shoulder-in and half passes. The shoulder-in looks great! The half pass needs a bit more balance before it's ready for the show ring, he gets a bit stacked up in it. We also schooled some counter canter, which I like doing (for now) in the bigger rings to get him used to riding it without having it be so hard. And we did a few walk pirouettes, which were foot perfect!

He did eventually settle into his work, but it was a little tense. I worked really hard to get him to stretch into contact but he mostly wanted to just run past his tempo and get short in the neck. Cool.

Petting him in the stretch circle to try to keep him stretching
rather than running off with me... 

That inside hind leg is making me so happy these days! And
when he was so tense in warm up too

Unfortunately the first test, after TC did another walk-quietly-then-squeal maneuver as we were getting ready to go in, reflected this. But we only had one bobble, a scoot after C. The rest of the test went pretty well, especially given what we had in warm up.

Highlights were 7.5s on the trot loopy thing to the right, the stretch circle, the free walk, the change of rein at the canter, and the second trot lengthening! Everything else was 7s and a few 6s/6.5s. The entire show (four classes, eight centerlines), I got 6s on our centerlines and halts. It was really annoying. But overall for this test, we got a 69.2%, one of our highest scores! Comments were: Talented horse! Continue to improve bend and stretch fwd and down for suppleness in the back. Agreed!

His lengthenings are much better when he's not tense from
being am idiot in warm up, oh well

Turn, TC, turn!

TC was pretty settled in the warm up for our second test, just a few zippy moments. We schooled all the movements and everything felt really good. He was stretching into contact a little better too! I mean the horse probably cantered for like 40 minutes that day...

Back into the ring and we had a really respectable test. There was one major issue, in that he scooted and bucked pretty good in our second 15m canter circle for a pretty glorious four.

Highlights included the 7.5 and 8 we got on the leg yields (!! this horse took me literal years to get him to let me push him sideways) with the comment "quite fluid" which it was. We got another 8 on the canter circle to the right, and 7.5s on both counter canter loops. I kind of messed up my canter lengthenings because they are only supposed to go 3/4 of the way down the long side and I went all the way down. Oops. No error but we got a 6.5 on the transition.

We ended with a 70% right on the nose! And we won (there was another person in the class, she missed us by .5 points). It was super amazing to hit 70%! And on such a hard test! I was SO so so excited about this. We've been so close to 70% in the past and we finally got it! The comments were great too, the judge said: Lovely horse! Will be super when a bit more confident and focused. Some nice basics! and like... man it feels so good to get a comment on the basics. I work so hard on those! We really only school movements 1-2x/week at this point.

Leg yield left, the judge loved our leg yields this show! They
are coming along nicely 

He's such a cool horse

At the end of the day, Kate came up for dinner! I've been having some issues with my anxiety lately and so Kate drove all the way out to come out with me on Saturday night (and then came out to help me on Sunday too!) despite having to teach all day on Saturday and on Sunday morning. So thank you Kate, that meant SO MUCH to me. We went out to sushi and got boba and then went and visited TC before I went to my hotel and watched a movie/wrote this post.

Stay tuned for the next day, which goes even better!!