Saturday Steven and I headed out to do morning chores and haul Mort to a schooling show at a local show venue that holds a lot of recognized shows. I wanted Mort to experience the venue before I dropped $500 on a recognized show. He travels fairly well, but I'd always rather be safe than sorry. BM was out of town but she generously let us borrow her trailer and we borrowed the in-laws' truck. It worked out really well and I am excited for the future when I have my own trailer and Steven and I can go on horse show adventures together.
We got to the show super early considering my first ride wasn't until 5:08pm, but we wanted to get there for the lunch break so that I could walk Mort around and show him the sights and sounds. He was only moderately "looky" and after a couple laps I considered it good enough. It was miserably hot so we stuck him in front of his fan and left him alone while we tried to stay cool ourselves. There was another horse show going on so we wandered back and forth watching a stock horse style show and a casual dressage schooling show. I think it was moderately educational and very boring for poor Steven.
When it was finally time to start my warm-up it was boiling hot and very humid in the arena. Both the warm-up and the show arena were indoors and neither had much in the way of a breeze. Add in all the sweaty horses and people for some high humidity and it was hot. You could literally feel the temperature rise as you walked in from the stabling area. Rough.
As I have said before Mort isn't a huge fan of hot weather (neither am I), so I did my best to keep his warm-up minimal. He seemed to be fairly obedient overall other than his canter departs. When he's feeling lazy he tries to throw himself into the canter instead of using his hind end to lift himself into it. So far the only way I've really been able to fix this is to do several canter transitions in a row and really amp him up. But with it being so hot I only did about three until he gave me one mediocre one and called it good enough. I pretty much put him through his paces and did a lot of walking. (Did you read all of the red flags for a bad warm-up?)
When we trotted in before our test Mort immediately grew at least three inches. While this made his trot work feel a lot better I knew that it meant I did not warm him up nearly enough. I did several walk/trot/walk transitions to try to get his mind back on me and it went alright, but it was really just too late. The test definitely wasn't a disaster by any means (we even got an 8 on one of our leg yields), but it was not the work we had in the warm-up. Each end of the arena had an open door that Mort enjoyed trying to gawk at. Our canter transitions were crap (should have known better in the warm-up). Overall he was just too tight over his topline and didn't move in a nice fluid and relaxed way.
We pulled a 62.2% and I thought that was pretty spot-on. We had some good scores in the 7-8 range and we had some really poor scores in the 4.5-5 range (canter transitions and not becoming immobile in the halt). I will say that I got one of my favorite comments on a dressage test to date "horse has confidence in rider". We may not have been perfect, but at least it looked like Mort trusted me in spite of wanting to be nervous.
Needless to say our warm-up for the next test involved a bit more pressure for Mr. Mort. His canter transitions were still hit and miss (we just need to ride about a million more over time before it really clicks with him that doing it correctly every time is the right answer). We only had about twenty minutes between the two tests so after about fifteen minutes of working I let him walk for five. I know that I should have gotten him more on his toes if I wanted a really good score, but I also know how hot and miserable that I was and I didn't want an overheated, miserable horse at the end of the day.
Mort was better for First 3 in spite of it being the first time we've ran through the entire test. He was still sticky in the canter departs and struggled with tension, but I felt like I had a better horse. He was more uphill in the canter and more adjustable. We did really well on the counter canter one-loops and the scores on those showed. This judge really wanted a stretchy free walk and trot circle and Mort and I weren't able to deliver very well on those Saturday. We pulled a 62.8% on this test. Definitely nothing to write home about but nothing too spectacularly horrible.
I really think the moral of this weekend is confidence. Mort does have confidence in me at this point. He trusts me to take him through (acidic and terrifying) water on the trails and to new places with scary fans and open doors. I need to have the confidence to ask him to give me his best at shows. I need to have confidence that the training I've given him is correct enough that it'll stick. I need to be more demanding on myself and on him. Lord knows I've been told that enough times by myself and others. We need more millage under our belts to know what I need to ask for in a warm-up and how I can correct him during a test without causing drama. Mort isn't an unbalanced and uneducated OTTB anymore and I need to stop reverting to thinking that he is.
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