My poor dressage instructor, Dot, has been working with me & Linus for 2
years now, and has been just waiting for the day for us to go to a "real"
dressage show. Well, today was the day: Linus' first venture to a
dressage
show of any kind. We showed today at a USDF-recognized show at UNH.
We had a great time! It was strange to be someplace and doing just
dressage. I kept starting to feel nervous about xc coming up, just out of
habit, especially after our first test.
For our first class, we showed in first level test one, got a 66% and came
in 2nd out of 17 riders.
For our 2nd class, we showed in first level test three. That is kind of a
funky test, requiring leg yielding from the rail to the center line. I
had
never even tried that until this week when I realized that movement was on
the test. (I was supposed to be in first level test 2, but the organizer
had Dot as the judge for that class. Whoops. Show management quickly
moved
me to first level test three under a different judge. Which was nice of
them, but I've never even looked at first level test three until they did
that.) Anyway, we got a sucky score of 58.8% on that one. But all 13
riders in the class apparently sucked, as I ended up winning! With a
58.8%!
So we were either all really bad, or the judge was a little conservative
with the scoring.
But it does go to show just how competitive eventing dressage has become.
Linus was no better/no worse today than he is for dressage at events. And
our standings after dressage at events this year in 3 events has been 4th,
3rd and 6th! So, we did better against "straight dressage" people today
than we have against fellow-eventers all spring. Go figure.
Just a few years ago, if you had a quiet horse who stayed in the ring at
events, you would place decently in dressage at beginner novice and maybe
even novice. No more....I've been thinking that the standards of dressage
at recognized events in these parts has really been raised in the past
couple of years, and today just kind of confirmed that for me.
Lisa Cook
Brookline, NH
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