Show Re-Cap

     Well, it was hot Saturday.  Luckily I rode in the morning, but poor Mort definitely had a soaking saddle pad by the end of our second test, and I was none-too-fresh either.  Let's get started on the recap.  

      The people who were volunteering and running this show were helpful, friendly, and wonderful.  I didn't see unhappy people the whole time I was there--a real accomplishment at a hot horse show.  I want to issue a huge thank you to the people who put on small schooling shows.  They're valued by many in the industry as they enable more people to show who can't afford (or don't want) to always be going to recognized shows.  

 

     It was not a fancy show facility.  The show was on grass (something that is fine with me and they kept it somewhat long to help with any slippery-ness that can happen with grass).  Mort handled the grass well.  The small dressage court had a small slope.  The large dressage court had a rather significant slope on one end.  That's definitely not something that Mort and I are used to dealing with.  He's ok on hills on the trails but keeping him balanced while dressage-ing was interesting.  

     Let's start with the warm-up.  I did get on about ten minutes after planned, but still felt mostly ok about how much time we had.  I started with about ten minutes of walking.  We were able to walk around the outside of the dressage court so he was able to check out any potentially scary things.  I tried to warm-up as closely as I could to what we've been doing at home.  Obviously Mort was a lot more energized out in the public eye, but he was still listening fairly well and I was pretty happy with him.  We fit in a little of everything and had time to walk for a bit before our first ride.  

     The first test was a disaster (we're talking a 56% disaster).  I went in asking Mort to be a powerful dressage horse--I wanted to "go for it".  It was a bad choice.  Mort didn't have a good half-halt.  That first trot lengthening was on the downhill and he said no.  I got after him a bit and I think that just made him angry.  Poor guy was just really off balance.  I'd say we need to practice on more hills to get over this, but it's not a common problem in the dressage world.  Instead I just had to come up with a plan for the second test.

     Between the two tests I switched to sitting trot and did several trot/walk/trot and trot/canter/trot transitions in a row to REALLY get that half-halt.  I also brought the power and intensity levels down in his gaits.  He was clearly not ready to maintain that balance over all those changes in terrain, so I backed down the difficulty factor.  

     The second test was a lot better.  Mort stayed with me and fairly relaxed throughout the test.  I asked for smaller gaits and he was happy to oblige.  I started coming back from the (very conservative) lengthens before the downhill and he came back well enough.  It wasn't a fancy test but he wasn't tense and resisting.  It felt really consistent throughout and I was happy that I could adjust our game plan and execute it well.  We got a 61% in this test which was a fair overall score for how conservatively I rode it.

     Mort cooled out well and was a perfect gentleman for the rest of the day.  Since another gal from the barn came with us he had to stand tied to the trailer for a few hours.  He happily munched his hay while I spent time volunteering as ring steward.  He loaded up well and got an hour or so of turnout when we got home.  He had yesterday off and I'm sure he enjoyed every minute of it because we finally got some much-needed rain.