A Closer Look: Prix St George

The Prix St George is by far my favorite test. It gives you a taste of the fun movements like stringing pirouettes into a pattern and riding tempis with a real count (assuming you skipped 4-3, which is a reasonable decision and I commend you for it) and riding a zig zag.

Our last PSG

But it's pretty family friendly for an FEI test, as it should be, since it's the first one.

Starting at the FEI levels, there is no longer a purpose of the level. You made it. You're here. Your horse is collected enough, connected enough, straight enough. You've won dressage.

Ahaha I'm just kidding.

But seriously, no purpose, but that's not to say that a PSG horse could prance into a GP test with the same extensions and collection and straightness and get the same scores. What it does mean is that we can jump right into what comes up at this test! Aren't you glad that we only have ONE test to go over this post? Writing about Fourth level was a doozy.

Best part of this jacket = tails flying behind you

Prix St George

We start out with a nice medium as we always do, followed by a very kind trot pattern for an FEI test. Shoulder-in down the long side, a volte, to a half pass that ends on centerline. Honestly, the volte is the hardest thing about this if you've been doing okay on your lateral work (you should be, you've been doing these movements since Second and Third, right...?). A volte is an 8 meter circle so it's quite small for some horses. Depending on your horse, this might be fine or this might be a death sentence for your half pass afterward when your horse strikes off the rail a little dizzy.

You do a very normal walk pattern, a couple of walk pirouettes in the judge's lap, an extended walk, then a canter transition. For added difficulty, there is no collected walk after your extended walk. Obviously you don't just pick up the canter from the extended walk with your nice long reins. But it adds difficulty as you don't have very much time to prepare within the collected walk. Good thing that transition happens in the corner so you have a nice short side to realize that your reins needed to be 2 feet shorter before getting to your first pattern.

Such kind trot work

The first canter pattern is a counter change of hand, exactly like the 4-3 pattern with two changes. One on centerline and one on the rail. This movement is only difficult if you can't control the steepness of the half pass. Too steep and you get to the centerline too fast and have to worry about waiting. Too shallow and you are going to have to switch leads and dart back to the rail quickly. But if you have clean changes (obviously you do by now) and a rideable half pass (you should), this is a really easy movement. Especially since you literally just did it at 4-3. You did ride 4-3, right?

The next pattern is the pirouette pattern. You start across the diagonal, then between H and X, half pirouette to the left and hold your counter canter back to C, flying change, and do the same thing the other way immediately, across the diagonal, between M and X, half pirouette right, hold counter canter to C, change. First, just a note that this is your first "canter pirouette" vs "working canter pirouette" which means that you need to make it smaller.

This pattern is killer for a lot of horses. Rico, who struggles with laziness, pirouettes, and counter canter, found this difficult. In the old 4-2 and the now 4-3, your half working pirouettes had a nice gallop down the long side in between, so this PSG pattern is a test of whether your horse can stay up in front of you with a lot of collecting movements. The Grand Prix test tests this quite a bit in the canter work by going from zig zag to ones to the pirouette pattern, so get used to it.

Counter canter

After that pirouette pattern, it'd be nice if they gave you your extended canter across the diagonal, right? But you immediately do one diagonal of five 4-tempis and another diagonal of five 3-tempis. THEN you get your extended canter to change before heading up centerline to halt.

The tempis are what they are since you're stuck with them forever, no skipping out on those. You have five of them now rather than three, which does add a level of difficulty, though for me at least, once I had three, I had as many as I wanted because Rico's changes were pretty decent. I've noticed that this seems to be the case on other horses too, but I'm no FEI trainer.

Collectives are both trot half passes, the collected walk, the extended walk, and both half pirouettes. Seems reasonable.

Enthusiastic tempis

Overall

This test just feels like an FEI test (because it is) from the tempis right after one another, to the endless canter work, to the return of dumb old movements like counter canter and throwing embarrassing movements in front of the judge like changes. Ah, nostalgia.

I think this is an excellent test, giving you a lot to do to prepare you for Intermediare I and the large tour. You can kind of see how each movement was prepared for at the USDF levels- from the progression for changes ending in the 3 tempis at PSG, to the progression of lateral work down to the leg yield zig zag at 1-3 to prepare you for the counter change of hand in canter at PSG, even to the slow progression of the length of all the tests.

Pirouettes were never our strong point... 

I love this test. I think it's the perfect amount of cool (look at that cool canter pirouette pattern, those cool tempis, that cool fucking jacket you FINALLY get to pay for wear) but without the same level of stress that the large tour tests offer you (will my horse get his ones, will my horse piaffe, will my horse passage- the answer to all of those being: not reliably) and without the pain in the ass full pirouettes at Intermediare I.

Speaking of... tune in next week maybe.

Starr Vaughn, or an Examination of My Poor Life Choices

Poor life choices were made yesterday when I insisted on hauling up to Starr Vaughn for our last show of the season when I was still getting over being sick. All week I've had what I thought was a bit of a cold but has ended up being a lot worse.

Friday morning I woke up incredibly sick after having a severe migraine the night before. I had planned on hauling up that day and obviously was not going to make it. Luckily my Saturday ride time was in the afternoon, so I laid around all day on Friday and then got up Saturday morning to bathe, braid, and make the 3 hour trek to Starr Vaughn.

I woke up very sick again on Saturday but was adamant about just getting up there and then deciding what to do. Looking back on it, I should have just scratched and spent the weekend in bed (which is where I am right now and where I will be for the next 48 hours). But I didn't like the idea of not showing again until at least January or February (stupid) and I didn't like the idea of "wasting" all that money (stupid).

So off we went with me trying to nap in the truck but unable to because of the coughing fits. When we got to the barn, I set up Rico's stall and shoved him in there before sitting in line for 30 minutes (!!) to get my number. By the time I had it, I was so exhausted that I had to go lay down for a couple hours. I kept thinking man, if I had any other horse, I'd scratch, but Rico is so damn reliable.

I went to tack up and did it in record time. I gave myself exactly 20 minutes for warm up (about half of what I normally give myself) thinking that I wanted to save my energy for the test. We walked over to the warm up which was in the big beautiful covered arena.

And that's when Rico lost his fucking mind.

He spooked at EVERYTHING on the way in, which I thought was fine because he's a silly horse and thinks that's fun. But then I got in there and he (yes he, I made few decisions in the first 8 minutes of the ride) picked up a trot. I say trot, but that's a loose term. He CHARGED around the arena in a big powerful medium trot squealing and shaking his head. I half halted and got a passage. Uhhhh. I kicked him out of it and got a threat to rear, then bronc bucks, then passage again. SHIT.

We proceeded like this for a while, I was just hoping he'd tire himself out but that wasn't happening. He felt like the kind of horse I'd consider taking into war. I tried a canter and holy shit that was a bad idea. He galloped sideways and when I stopped him, he threatened to rear, spooked at a dog, bronc bucked some more, passaged a bit, then cantered on the spot until I let him go forward into a working gallop again.

As this was happening, I was getting SO tired and SO sick. I finally put him into the Grand Prix pirouette pattern. On centerline one full pirouette left, flying change, one full pirouette right. Then I did the I1 pirouette pattern. Then we rode our St George pirouette pattern. That little shit probably did 12 canter pirouettes in warm up. He was soaked with sweat by the time I had him "warmed up."

We still had a few minutes left so I let him rest and then decided to do some suppleness work at the trot. At Greenville we had a few comments on lateral suppleness so I thought we'd work on that.

Hah.

The horse had found his second wind and shook his head, passaged, struck out, spooked at the place where the dog had been, and tried to take off with me again. I put him back into canter and continued to do pirouettes until we were called over.


Into the show ring we went and at that point I was just hoping not to get bucked off. The first half of the test went surprisingly well and our scores reflected it. We got a handful of 7s and 7.5s on our trot work and even an 8 on our right walk pirouette! I was feeling really good by the time I shortened the reins after the extended walk and prepared for canter.

But then Rico showed me that he wasn't quite done ruining my day. We picked up the canter and he shook his head twice. He whipped around both corners but did a surprisingly nice canter half pass zig zag and left pirouette... and then all hell broke loose.

The right pirouette wasn't a pirouette, it was a series of bronc bucks in a circle. He lost balanced and kicked hard at my leg in the flying change and then proceeded to get impressive air through his 4-tempis, kicking my right leg every time (I have a bruise on my ankle). The 3-tempis were the same and he kicked my right foot clear out of the stirrup, then (kindly?) offered to stop when I tried to get my foot back in the stirrup.

As I asked for the extended canter, he took that to mean that he could bronc again and just boinged down the diagonal, then in the flying change, kicked so hard that my foot came out of my stirrup again and we both almost fell sideways. I was pissed so I used my whip for the first time and he reacted by sitting down on his haunches and spinning around onto centerline. The halt was nice and square though.

Overall, it was the worst show experience we've had together in a long time. Sometimes he likes to goof off in the show ring but I've never felt like I lost control and that's definitely what happened yesterday. I came out happy with how we had handled it (it could have been a thousand times worse) but a bit upset that my horse had been such a nutcase.

However, the score didn't necessary reflect how horrible it was. We still managed a 61% and 3rd place out of 7 riders. We got four 4.5s, one 4, and two 3.5s. I don't even want to think about what the score would have been if he had scored like he normally does on those seven movements...

I made the decision to take him home last night so I could rest today and we could work out what happened at home. I don't know what got into him. I think it was a combination of him being very fit, having a day off on Friday, and being shoved in a stall the moment he got there.

The drama didn't stop when we got home. I was passed out with a whopping dose of NyQuil but when I came out to attempt to force breakfast into me, my mom told me that my horse had freaked out early in the morning. She heard whinnies at 5:30 and discovered that my horse was going nuts because there was a lot of fog and he couldn't see his neighbor who was out in his pasture. She locked him in his stall and then called the other horse in and my horse decided that rearing straight up over and over again was a good way of expressing his frustration.

So I'm taking Rico off of his LMF Gold and am going to get his fitness level down for the winter. I think he also may need a chiro appointment (certainly after all of his bucking and rearing this weekend) so I'll arrange for that too. I'm really hoping this was an isolated incident and that I have my exceedingly quiet, wonderful horse back very soon.


*I did get pictures which will be edited today or tomorrow (depends on my health, I feel yet another headache coming on now so I need to get off the computer and rest).

A Long Awaited Update

Greenville Prix St George!

This poor blog has been put on the back burner while I've been in school. The rest of my life, however, has not which is why I lack the time to write regularly. I have a bit of a light week this week and that coupled with being stuck at home until my laundry is done means that I can update!

Rico and I at Greenville

FIRST I must say that my horse is doing amazingly well. Yesterday we headed up to Greenville for our second Prix St George together and it went swimmingly despite some pilot errors and some horse attitude.

Sass in the tempis

Look at those hocks!

Such a good guy

We earned a 66.7% which is both my and his highest score to date at this level. The trot work was straight 7s (even a 7.5 on the medium trot!) and the canter work was pretty good too. The pirouettes were solid but still 6/6.5 for this level which I'm okay with.

Getting sparkly

Can I just say that I LOVE my shadbelly, not only is it very
cool, it flings out behind me in the extended canter :)

I miscounted in both tempis, the first one was Rico's fault, he was high and slipped a 3 into the 4s. The second one was my fault, I got to the count of three and my legs weren't moving... Woops so there was a 4 in the 3s.

Volte left

Super cute pony

There was also a hilarious spook RIGHT before the right pirouette which I thankfully have on film and will try to get a screen shot of. I was able to get him back to me and my score was not lowered.

Halting

Can I sit like this always?

Charging up centerline as usual :)

Other things in life have been going well too! School is busy and difficult but my cohort is really great, we socialize a lot and I get along with everyone well. We're only about six weeks away from winter break which is a relief, I can't wait for a nice long vacation.

My job is going well too, I cut back to teaching only one day per week for this semester and it's been sad not to see my clients as much, but I'm glad that I still get to teach at all! They're all doing very well and we're looking forward to next year.


Alright, back to the horse.

My dad's photography skills at their finest <3

Someone's rider needs to learn to sit better...

Extended trot (or, Rico's version)

We DO still have one more show this year at Prix St George and it's our first far away/overnight show in four and a half years. In just under two weeks, Rico and I head up to Starr Vaughn to do two days of Prix St George. Fingers crossed it doesn't rain!!

Loving this horse!

PRIX ST GEORGE

We did it!!!!

We did it and we earned my highest score yet at this level and our highest score this year: a 65.7% and a red ribbon to take home.

I can't express how happy I am with this ridiculously amazing horse. Today he was a bit high going into warm up but I drilled a bit of the canter work and he was a perfect gentleman in the test (aside from kicking at my right leg during the LR change! Ugh! But that's a story for another day).

Both canter pirouettes were GREAT for where he's at in his training. The lateral work was nearly all 7s. Our walk work was all 7s except the EIGHT I earned on the right walk pirouette. Yes an EIGHT at Prix St George for the best horse! The canter half pass zig zag rode absolutely beautifully and earned us a couple of 7s. As always, the mediums/extensions were conservative, earning 5s and 6s.

The judge (who incidentally, sold me my horse almost nine years ago) was very encouraging, giving Rico a 7 on submission (which has never happened I don't think!!) and a 7 on gaits. The comments were "this is a very competitive horse, if you get more power and energy from him throughout the whole test, especially the medium and extended trots."

First, I know we have shitty mediums/extensions, it's because I don't ever do them. To me, it's not worth risking his legs at home to earn a couple extra points at a show.

Second, wait... what? My horse could be competitive?? At the FEI levels?? What is this madness? I mean my horse isn't a competitive FEI horse, my horse rolls in the dirt and thinks that pigs are the bane of his existence. He isn't one of those super fancy horses you see in the FEI levels... But hey, either way, clearly we're on the right track for next year.

I'm just beyond happy and excited about this. I freaked out at the end of the test, tears welled up in my eyes and after I saluted, I collapsed onto his neck. I'm still in complete shock. I have an FEI horse.

Will post pictures soon :)

Champagne Makes for Good Pirouettes

Last night I had a fantastic lesson! Rico gave me the best pirouettes of his life and I felt so coordinated within them, able to move him out one stride if he got sticky and then continue around. We also had some great walk pirouettes and pretty good canter-halt transitions. 

Or... it could have been the alcohol. It was Tracey's birthday on Monday so all the ladies came out right before my lesson and gave her a card, presents, little cakes, and we all had some champagne.

After a half a glass of champagne, I got on Rico and warmed up. He felt pretty good, especially considering that for the last two days, we've been taking it very easy. Those two easy days seemed to have done wonders for how coordinated I felt in the left lead canter, something I've been struggling with recently. Phew, maybe Prix St George isn't the dumbest idea I've ever had.

We started with the walk canter transitions and some canter walk transitions as well. Rico stayed, for the most part, nicely uphill into the canter, but I struggled with the quality of the downward transition. It goes back to my previous training where simply doing the movement was enough. See, no matter what I do, Rico will walk from the canter. He's just that lazy. I could drop the reins and leap off of him and he'd do a walk transition. It isn't a quality transition in the least. However when you're racing through the levels like I was, simply doing it was enough, we'd get a solid 7 on our simple changes at second level so I didn't care.

Once as I figured out how to properly prepare for a canter walk transitions, we worked on the pirouettes. Tracey had me start with haunches-in on the circle without letting him fall over his shoulder or back off in the forward energy. Almost immediately afterward, she sent us down the longside to the other end of the arena to ride the pirouette pattern. Yikes! My first pirouette to the right was horrendous. I came in completely crooked, leaned to the right, and he almost trotted. Tracey had me ride out of that one. The next one was PERFECT! Except that he was so balanced upon leaving that he did his change in the corner rather than at C. The one that followed was perfect AND he waited in the change so we went to the left.

I can now understand what Tracey means by saying that my left pirouette is biomechanically not as good as the right. Sure I can make it smaller than the right, but I sacrifice quality of the canter. So I rode it a tiny bit bigger so that I could have more activity which worked quite well. Whether or not I'll get that on Sunday, I'm not sure.

We then worked on a few centerlines. I think I'm going to ride the centerline on the right lead, although my project this week is to experiment with both leads. The first centerline made me think that Rico had also had some champagne. We had just come off the pirouettes so he was a bit distracted. After a few drunken wobbles, we had some decent halts from the canter. Tracey noted that I really just need to prepare the right amount of strides. Too many strides and he goes crooked, too little strides and he falls on his face.

We ended with some walk pirouettes, which I had made a spectacle of earlier in the day. I just really need to remember to not come in horrible. If I come in even straight, the inside hind leg steps away from his body and it becomes very large.  The left one was okay, but the right one was terrible! Once as I got the right feeling, it became much better and we ended.


I'm nervous for Sunday, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that the last three lessons with Tracey have made me feel a thousand times more confident for riding this test.

Tracey told me I just had to do it, get the first one over with and then my anxiety will be better for the shows in October and November. Next year is the time for chasing scores and qualifying for championships. This year was about making an FEI horse, and he's SO CLOSE!

His first day out of what I thought was a permanent retirement

I received ride times last night- I ride at 11:40am, which is perfect. My client who is coming with me rides at 9:30 and at 10:00, so it gives Rico plenty of time in his stall there to hang out and eat some food. I'll start braiding just after her second test and get on at 11:15. I'm still figuring out what to do for our warm up, but I have a feeling that half a mimosa may be in order!! They don't drug test riders, right?

In a Court!

DAMN my horse is brilliant.

Today I threw him in the trailer and my wonderful mother who can back a trailer anywhere drove us over to Tracey's barn in Watsonville for a lesson in the dressage court.

Rico was STOKED. He got out of the trailer and the spooking began. Tracey and I found it amusing at first but man was he irritating once I realized that he wasn't going to calm down. Once as we started the trot work though, everything fell into place beautifully.

Now, I don't have a dressage court at home and we don't use the one at Woodmyst when we ride there, so it's been since my last show at the end of June since I rode in a court at all. Yikes.

First, Tracey noticed how poorly I rode my corners. I didn't actually enter the corner, just kind of skipped it all together and wondered why all hell broke loose on the other side. Next, Tracey noted how horrible I was about actually riding to letters. The test has a bit like this: KE shoulder-in right, E volte 8m right, EG half pass right. I was evidently not quite getting to E with those voltes so it looked like I just drunkenly pulled on the inside rein and circled whenever I felt like it. I guess that won't win you any points from the judge and it certainly doesn't win you any praise from Tracey.

Once that was resolved, the trot work in general was quite good! I need to get used to riding his big fancy trot a bit better so that's my project this week before the show. My mom got some videos and it was obvious that I was riding more like a 3rd level trot within the confines of an FEI test, big problem.

After the trot, we moved into the canter and he was completely spot on over his topline and, once as it was made clear to me how quiet the canter was, very active. We rode the half passes first and once again my lack of riding corners caused serious problems on the other side. Once as those were fixed though, we had the most brilliant zig zag EVER I mean really, who is this animal??

We focused a lot on the tempis since I can't ride 5 changes anywhere. I was pleasantly surprised that Rico was very focused and good about the count. The quality of the changes weren't that great, he'd kick every now and then and he got progressively more downhill as we went along, but I was pleased. Tracey (as usual when it comes to things that I find good and she finds unacceptable) wasn't pleased but it was mostly me who she wasn't pleased with. Evidently I throw my upper body around like a rag doll during the changes and the video proves that she's totally right (not that I ever doubt her anymore)!! I was so confused by keeping my upper body still that I couldn't actually ride any changes without moving. So that's a project this winter.

Finally, we ended with some large working pirouettes in the pattern we'll be riding. You head across the diagonal, pirouette around X-ish, then come back and counter canter the short side until C when you change. The pirouettes are tough for us, so Tracey wanted to make sure that I could do that counter canter and change movement well enough so that the whole pirouette pattern wasn't a complete disaster. It went surprisingly well when I didn't let him stay off the bit after the pirouettes. He gets a bit hollow in them, which is fine, but when he stays hollow through the counter canter, he goes together behind in the change and that's BAD. So my big goal in that pattern is to not let the pirouettes ruin the counter canter and change.

Overall he was absolutely brilliant. I'm SO pleased with how far he's come. My first lesson with Tracey was all about connection and walk-trot transitions, now we're showing Prix St George in eight days.

Pictures/stills from the videos to come! Unfortunately a lot of the videos were blurry (need to figure out my mom's new camera...) so I don't know if I'll be able to post the videos, maybe bits of them!

An Amazing Lesson

My lesson today was exceptionally good! I've always *wanted* to go to lessons, I really look forward to them. But I know that when I'm on edge like I was today, sometimes lessons are really difficult. I warned Tracey as I walked in that I was a little on edge today. My farrier was supposed to shoe him and didn't, so I was paranoid about his feet. My vet has made it clear that if Rico goes too long without having his toes chopped off, he could suffer a second career ending injury which may turn out to be an ACTUAL career ending injury this time.

I also had a bit of a shock to my entire system because I had graduate school orientation yesterday and it really sunk in what I've gotten myself into. Yikes. I'm trying not to think about it.

Anyway the point of the lesson today was to find out if Tracey thought that Rico and I were ready for not going to embarrass ourselves at Prix St George for the September YY show. I've been so back and forth about this (as is apparent in my last several posts) and decided to leave it up to Tracey. She tends to be a little conservative so I was expecting her to laugh at me.

We started out with some walk pirouettes and a bit of pirouette canter before leaping head first into the pirouettes. I need to end the walk pirouettes a step earlier, since I tend to ride 200 degree turns rather than 180 degree ones. The pirouette canter is funny and I need to practice it a LOT, like more than the actual pirouettes. I tend to ride the pirouette canter like I'm trying to stop a large truck. I lean back, pull back, and slow him down to the point where he starts "rocking" which is what I was going for. Evidently, rocking is NOT collection and I was scolded for it.

The level of collection I need is MUCH less than it feels. It's already been established that I'm completely out of touch with what is going on under me with this horse, so I totally believe her. I need to focus more on activity than collection at this point.

The pirouettes were large, but Tracey said he's clearly on his way to figuring them out and knowing that he had a back injury just two weeks ago, she was very pleased. She even said good a few times during the pirouettes and I'm not going to lie, it was such a surprise to hear someone say "good" while I was doing a pirouette that I definitely got distracted. At one point she said "that was good," about a left pirouette that I then heard "that was terrible" once I did the change.

The left pirouette is tricky, he tends to suck back and I tend to delude myself into thinking it's good. The right pirouette is difficult for me since I tend to lean way off to the side and pull him around. I didn't do that tonight (since the headphones were so tight that if I turned my head too much, they'd come out... I think I will use this at home!) and it was surprisingly good. Tracey thinks the right one is a lot more correct and will eventually be better which was a shock to me! The left has always been so good acceptable!

After the pirouettes we touched on the canter half pass zig zag. Apparently I rush it and don't value bend enough. Once as I slowed down, collected him, and bent, it became quite nice! Tracey wants it to eventually be quicker in the change of bend and the lead change, but she wasn't too annoyed about it once as we fixed it.

Once we were through those two main issues, I asked the big question. "Am I completely stupid to sign up for Prix St George in two weeks?"

NO! She said no! I'm not *completely* stupid then. Basically she said that we were clearly green at the level, but that it's FINE to be green. You have to start somewhere. We're not going to have a clean test, we may not score in the 60s (she said it would depend on my trot work being straight 7s and not totally botching the tempis), but we should have a good day.


I'm shocked and full of joy at the same time! I can't believe we're almost there. Prix St George (despite already having my Silver Medal thanks to Leo the most magnificent horse ever) has been a HUGE goal of mine on Rico. There was always such a big block for that level and now we're SO close.

I have a white back brace on order now (since I don't like putting my black one under my white pants, so not fashionable). Then I'm ordering a shadbelly and signing up for the show tomorrow.


Tomorrow I also start school! As I said, orientation scared the crap out of me but I think I'll be okay. I'll be just fine. Fine. We're all going to be fine. Do you know how much I heard that at orientation? That's probably the reason why I'm a bit anxious. Why did they feel the need to tell us to calm down and why did they use the word fine so damn much??