WEC Dressage Show 2015

There's SO many good things to say about our second show with Watagan Equestrian Club, I almost don't know where to start.

(Possibly my favourite photo ever)

We woke up at the ridiculous hour of 5am to drive allllll the way up the hill (thank you camping) in the pitch black to find Mate had escaped his over-night yard. Note: finding a dark coloured horse in the dark is very hard.

After finally spotting him in the far corner in extremely long grass, we loaded him up into the float in under five minutes - he may as well of walked straight on! I was very worried the floating thing. He lived the first 11 years of his life never even laying eyes on a float. Almost ten months on and two outings and he walks straight on?!? I had to second guess I had the right horse.

Previous efforts included:

Seeing as it didn't take as long as expected to head off, we were the first ones there and had a heap of time before our first test. I took Mate out onto the showground to show him around, hopefully desensitizing him from the "scary" stuff and tell him some things to do/what not to do. Example: do not jump these...these will not eat you...put your head down here...

These... do not jump these.

I managed to show him around to everything that looked scary, and even gave him a bit of a lunge around. He seemed pretty G with everything at that point but was missing his equine buddy that we came with, so we went back to eat breakfast.

After our first show, by the time my test came around, it felt like I had left everything to the last minute. And I probably did.
This time, Mate was tacked up and ready to ride by about nine. If he was good the day before, I probably wouldn't of gotten on him until 9:45... but I decided to give him an extra long warm up to let everything settle.

I put him through his complete paces - every exercise I could think of to try and get him to loosen up. He's been strangely stiff at the start of every ride recently and it takes up a good part of our lesson for him to come out it. And sometimes he doesn't come out of it at all. Whether it's a physical issue or he's just going through a phase... I have no idea. Thankfully, the excitement of being in a new environment, gets his butt moving without too much hassle from me.

Mother, who had the camera, didn't really manage to get any pictures that do our warm-up justice, but Mate was super nice!! Putting his head down and in a consistent frame, actually using his hind and was really relaxed and rhythmic.

They were running a bit behind, so Mate had a good nap for twenty minutes while he thought about his life and our pep talk earlier.

"I beg of you... please do not jump these."

Skip ahead a while and we were up!!
The judge let me do a lap around the arena before I talked to her. He flipped his lid about the floating letters, which I couldn't help but giggle at. Not matter how many times I show this horse something that is potentially scary, he'll spook at it five minutes later... At this point, his head was nearing outer space (which was annoying - he warmed up so well) but I convinced myself that I didn't care. My only goal was to actually get a score this time.

We entered at A in working trot, head in the air and suuuuper rushed. He collapsed his inside shoulder tracking left and did I mention his head was up ridiculously high?!

Enter A

It was a prep test, so cantering wasn't really meant to be a part of the test. I think Mate had other ideas...

"Let me canter, woman"

The rest of the test went much the same. But I didn't care - there were no tears and he didn't jump out. All was good with the world!!!

Unfortunately the rest of the day was called off on accounts of bad weather. I was bumbed I didn't get to do my second test that I had planned because I reckon it would of been better, but I was happy either way.

I was quite surprised when I got my score sheet back - from what I can actually read (her hand writing is extremely messy, filled with shapes I can't make out and lines I swear aren't meant to be there), we need to work a lot more on relaxation and rhythm. I think if Mate was any more relaxed at home, he wouldn't move.. but I wasn't surprised she made that comment; I was the one that was nervous. She gave us a 7 for the halt at the end:

 

The rest of the scores where between 5.5-6. The grand score was 50.789%!!!!

Getting him back on the float to come home, which I was expecting to be another world war, only took 10 minutes or something ridiculously good for Mate.I can't wait for our third show and to see how much he'll improve if he keeps this up.