Monday, April 18, 2011

Combined Test Results (videos are finally uploaded!)

Yes, this post is really late because I said that I would write how the show went the day of or day after and, well, it's Monday night and that was Saturday morning. Sorry!

Well, as far as placings go we didn't place well (12th out of 15th I think we ended up) but as far as our performance went, we did pretty well! Unfortunately, we did not reach our goal of a dressage score that began with a 3 but we came close: we got a 41. And while that is not the best dressage score in the world, we got some decent scores on things that I have been working hard on improving such as our halts and our canter to trot transitions. It was 39 degrees out, cold, windy, breezy, the dressage warm-up was small and there were a lot of horses. All that did not equal a calm, sane, soft, relaxed Ben. Rather that equaled a tight, tense, ticking bomb, bucking, spooking, resistant Ben that couldn't pay attention to me for more than 3 seconds at a time...

So I was pretty happy with the test considering. We also had to ride in the standard size dressage arena because there were some upper level straight dressage tests being ridden in our arena later in the day. I didn't think that I would like riding in the ring, but it gave me a lot of time to prepare transitions and rebalance him so I think it worked in our favor. I'm going to post the video of my test. We did Novice Test B which I'm not exactly a fan of: last time we did that test we got a 51... A ten point improvement isn't so bad!

We had a little temper tantrum in a corner early on, a little buck in our right canter which understandably earned us a 5 on that movement, especially because it caused me to make our circle rather egg shaped, his roundness was certainly inconsistent and I was a little hunched over instead of sitting up straight, but there were definitely some good moments. However, this is certainly not as good as we can be. When Ben is on his best behavior, we could probably march into a dressage ring and score a 20-something but Ben is hardly ever on his best behavior at shows...

So with due warning here is our test:



Now for stadium...
I walked the stadium course when it was set for Training height. Normal Training height, all the fences were between 3 feet and 3'3". Well, then they go to lower the jumps for Novice and they put them down at least 5 holes... I don't think one of those jumps was bigger than 2'3", 2'6" tops. That was frustrating because this is my only outing before our first event that is going to be real Novice height. A lot of people were frustrated with it.

The course was really simple as well, lots of lines, of course every single line walked a half-stride distance which was not great for me and Ben. I decided I was just going to ride each jump of the line like a single fence and not worry about the distance in between, just the distance to each fence. The course was a single vertical on the diagonal, to a line vertical to oxer on the other diagonal, to a line on the long side, to another line on the diagonal, to a two-stride combination on the other long side, to a vertical on the diagonal. Nothing special...

We had quite the interesting ride and there was a lot of funky distances, extra strides, and a little bit of bucking involved but we came out alive and double clear. I'll post the video of that too. The bucking came after fence three but my friend was taping and only caught the beginning and the end of it...

So here you go:




For the first outing of the season I would say it was a success although I am trying to find another combined test to do that is actually Novice height so that I'll feel more comfortable going cross country at the first event of the season next month. Once again, sorry I was a little late on the update!

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