Sunday 23 October 2011

Almond RC Dressage 23-10-11

So to follow up on a very successful initial post-injury dressage outing, Hopalong and I were entered for two prelim tests at our riding club show- one of which was a long arena test (20m x 60m instead of 20m x 40m) which we've never done before!

It was at our "home from home" again, aka SNEC and P13 (short arena) was first.  We stuck with the warm up tactics that had seemed to work last time out and did what felt like a really nice test.  :D  Still plenty to work on with some of the upwards transitions, but it felt just as nice as our previous outing, so I was hopeful of a good score.  However, I was not expecting to find out our score was 72.82% with plenty of 8s through the sheet and a 9 (for our halt)!!!

This left us 1st out of about 15 competitors, what a clever Hopalong!  :D

We had just over an hour until our next test, so she was untacked and left to munch her haynet while I had a blether with friends, then it was time to tack up again and tackle the long arena test.  I'm pretty sure she thought we were back to eventing as when I got back on board again she took off at speed towards the arena, maybe expecting to see SJs and then XC after?! ;)  Sadly for us both, just more stressage! ;)

Didn't warm up as long as I would have liked/intended to as the stewards were very keen to get us in due to running early.  But did a nice test, not as nice as the first time, just a little more tense as we hadn't muddled about in the warm up long enough I think.  And boy is 60m a long way to try trotting in a straight line! ;)

But still pleased and definitely better than we would have done last year.  Took Hopalong home to roll in the field and get muddy again (since it's only 15mins in the trailer to her yard) and then went back along to check scores.  I was very pleased to see a score of 65.22% and even more pleased/surprised to see another red rosette attached to the sheet- another 1st place! :D  Lots of carrots and pears for Hopalong again. :D

I think these results leave us in a pretty good position to join in the Riding Club Team Dressage competition in a few weeks time... ;)  Fingers crossed we can do as well then with added team pressure!

Prelim 13 photos;

P15 photos;

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