Making Headlines Just for Kicks

This title is part of a song I like: New Bohemia by Transviolet, I'm not so vain, we did not make any headlines, but it was a pretty amazing day.

I was so glad to have stayed in the hotel overnight (and also glad that I opted for the less sketchy option of my hotel choices) because I was able to sleep in a bit, get a free breakfast, and it only took 5 minutes to drive over to the show! I don't think I'm going to be so opposed to doing multi-day shows... except for the expense of it.

TC and I went for a walk when I first got to the show, and then I gave him some food, re-braided him, and got to watch the Prix St George class before going back to meet Kate, who again drove up the night before to eat dinner with me and then came BACK to see us go on Sunday.

Caught me mid-half halt! 

He's so much fun omg

I got on a bit later on Sunday than on Saturday because I didn't think TC would have so many basilisk moments and he didn't! In fact, the horse that came out was as good as I could have asked him to be. We did the absolute minimum warm up before heading in.

The first test, which was 1-2, felt really good. The only parts I was disappointed in was the leg yields and the canter lengthening to the left. The leg yield pattern just sucks in that test, TC's leg yields get better and more cadenced as they get steeper, and the 1-2 leg yield is super shallow. Half way through, I felt like I kind of phoned it in on both of them. Like it was a little too easy and I just dumped him over rather than really focused on making him take big loose steps. The left lead canter lengthening started out amazing but then I let him swap in front for a couple of steps. Gah!

But the judge didn't seem to think it was that bad. Literally other than our two centerlines, no score was under a 7. We got 8s on both leg yields (lol okay), the canter circle right, the stretch circle, and the lengthening to the right. Four eights and two of them on double coefficients!! We grabbed 7.5s on a ton of other things too, like the left canter circle, the free walk, the second lengthening in trot. Comments: Athletic, talented horse. Improve halts! because once again both our centerlines were 6s, so embarrassing!! The collectives nearly made me cry. An 8 on gaits and rider position, 7.5s on impulsion and rider effectiveness, and a "low" 7 on submission since he always scores lowest there due to TC-antics.

Lengthening

He's so pretty D: 

Final score was a 73.4%. What the actual hell. When Kate told me I got goosebumps. One paragraph of sappiness and then on to the next test okay? I've been battling against TC and my past when it comes to my confidence in the pair of us this year. He was a horse I found in a pasture who was going to be sold as a trail horse. I took a chance on him, his lateral canter, his choppy trot, his sensitive mind.

We've gone through so much, this horse has terrified me, he's been for sale, I've hated him. But we continued to push through and now I'm that person that always annoyed me with their fancy horse and their refusal to move up before scoring like this. This was the second highest score of the day, behind a very good rider on a very nice horse. This was only one of a few scores in the 70s the judge handed out all day. I'm so proud of this test and so beyond proud of this horse.

Telling him he's the best pony and he's like "Yis I know this already"

Uuuunfortunately the horse is probably only a three test weekend kinda guy. We kept our next warm up very very short and went in to put in a very respectable 1-3 test. Both leg yields got 8s again in the zig zag, and we also grabbed an 8 on our canter lengthening left. Lots of 7.5s including the right lead canter circle and both counter canter loops. I can't believe how well he's scoring at his canter work, which was always 6s/6.5s last year.

Unfortunately in this test, I lost my outside aids after the canter lengthening we got an 8 on, and he went careening out of the arena. Like the universe saw my ego inflating and needed to remind me that despite grabbing a high score, just an hour later I could totally lose power steering.

Sweet summer child so happy about the lengthening that she
takes her outside aids off riiiiight about here

Just... lol we are not supposed to be on this side of the court

Luckily it's happened enough before where I stopped him before he completely left. He had one leg left in the arena. That's not an elimination. The judge didn't ring the bell. We continued.

At the end of the test I said thank you, apologized, and immediately asked if we'd been eliminated. We had not. The judge had said that not all legs left the arena so we were okay! I was SO RELIEVED. I didn't even care what the score was, I knew it was in the 60s at least and that we were going to qualify for All Breeds. PHEW.

It was a good score, a 69.2%. I was a bit disappointed, seeing as the transition from the lengthening to the working canter got brought down to a 4 from a 7.5. That's my 70%. Boo. But sometimes after you've had a really amazing life changing dressage test, you need your horse to try to jump out of the arena just to make sure you don't get too cocky. So here I am, not too cocky about the show.

I am still happy though

But really, this was such an amazing weekend. These four scores are the highest scores he's gotten at First level, and we got blue ribbons for all of them. The tests were as clean as they're going to get given the horse I have currently. The judge loved him. I actually got a lot of compliments that weren't just "wow you can really sit some shit" like I normally get when he's kind of a nut. It's just so nice to feel like our hard work is paying off.

Once again I feel like I just need to believe in us a little more. The trajectory we're on is great, my trainer is great, I'm finally feeling fit enough to ride him, and he gets better and better the more places we go. I can't wait to see how things go for us in the future.

We have a little break between now and our potential next show. I'm not sure if I just want to end the year on this high note and come out next spring at Second or if I want one more show this year for miles and to possibly try 2-1 before winter. Who knows. I'm sure I'll have a long winding post about it later.

For now I'm just ecstatic. 

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!!