Do What You Gotta Do - Part 3

Part 1
​Part 2

By Sunday morning of a two-day show, I am always tired. When I was showing Speedy, the exhaustion was always physical. Spending three days at a show flitting from stall to stall, visiting with friends and then camping in the trailer never gave me much rest time. Doing it all with Izzy is even harder because he challenges me emotionally. Managing both his anxiety and my stress takes a fair amount of energy.

Medium Trot - 6.0 " Needs power & ground cover"

Tired or not, my attitude had been readjusted the night before, and I was ready. The pep talk, also known as a butt kicking, that I had received the night before from Sean Cunningham, owner and trainer at STC Dressage, and Laura Goodenkauf had freshened my resolve. I felt both gritty and empowered - weird to feel that combo at the same time, but it's probably a lot how Wonder Woman feels after taking an ass-kicking. Suffering Sappho. I decided that I didn't care what it felt like - both Sean and Laura had told me that what it feels like at a show is not always how it looks at a show. The most important thing was to be IN CONTROL by the Sphere of Athena!

I must have done something right because we were able to improve on the previous day's Test 1 score by 10.5 points which gave us a 58.784% - almost 3% better. Sean has told me more than once that one percent better each time will really start to add up. For test 1, we earned 16 scores of 6.0 or better! I've never been happy with scores below 60%, but for this test, I knew we had done better than the day before, so I gave myself a pat on the back for a job (mostly) well done.

With only one ride between my two tests, I didn't bother with another warm up. Izzy was as good as he was going to get. My friend Valerie stood at Izzy's shoulder with the reins in her hand. Every time he tried to snap his head up, she reminded him that the airspace above his ears belonged to me, and he wasn't welcome up there. Having her be the bad guy for those few minutes gave me a moment to regroup and kept Izzy from getting irritated with me.

The second test of the day wasn't brilliant, but it was probably the best test we've done so far. We earned 14 points more than the day before for a score of 59.268% (more than 3% better!). As much as I hate knowing by how much we missed a 60%, I always check. We missed it by a mere 3 points. I refuse to be disappointed though. For the first seven movements we had a string of 7.0s, 6.5s, and 6.0s. For every movement that gave us trouble, we bounced back with another 7.0 or 6.5. In total, we had 18 scores of 6.0 or greater (out of 32). This test showed me that even when Izzy's tense, he can get 7.0s. What will we earn when he's slightly less tense?

We have two more shows to do before the end of the show season. Normally I would be thinking about the Regional Adult Amateur Competition (RAAC), but since we didn't qualify (yet), we won't be going to RAAC or Championships. With that pressure off though, my goal for the rest of the show season is to try to finish with no more 4.0s on our score sheets. I would like to eliminate the 5.0s as well, but one thing at a time.

Yesterday, Sean left me with this final thought ... "The tools are everything! Once you learn to have more confidence in them, it won't matter how he is, you'll know you have the tools to deal with it!"