First Level - Test 1

I am all smiles today. Sort of. I am hot and sweaty from schooling Izzy through a sassy lesson, but once I cool off and get out of these stinky breeches, I'll return to the land of Basking in Success.

If we're friends on Facebook, you already know that Speedy kicked some First Level butt. That dude is a total rock star. He showed up and was nothing but business. I tied him to the trailer with his hay bag and a bucket of water and left to check in and visit with friends. Knowing that he will stand there for hours and hours without causing any trouble takes away so much stress and worry. I "heart" you, Speedy G. 

The love is mutual.

Shows are a lot more fun when you know people, which is why the Tehachapi summer series is so much fun. I watched my friend, Wendy, ride her charming mare, Bloo. I also visited with friends who have seen Speedy and I morph from baby endurance horse to hey, that's an Arab doing dressage. Those friends are fun to visit with because they've seen how far we've come and can remind me of what we used to look like (and sometimes still do). 

Safire Bloo and her rider, Wendy M.

Speedy is one of those horses who either needs thirty minutes to warm up, or just ten. The problem is that I never know until I am on him. For this show, he needed about 6 minutes. I've been his partner for so long now that I know when he's giving me all he has. When he offered a nice, rhythmic trot, a few steps of leg yield, and a canter transition that was relatively smooth. I dropped the reins and rode him up to the ring. Riding him more won't make anything better.  

Once again, I asked for a reader; being out of the country for two weeks didn't give me much time to work on memorizing the tests. I hate relying on a reader, but I have to say, I rode much better for having one. Instead of having that dual conversation running through my head ... half circle right 10-meters, returning to the track at M combined with inside leg, half halt, weight on the inside seat bone ... I was able to focus completely on riding my horse in every moment without worrying about where to go.

Not fabulous, but clearly a very steady ride.

The ride started very steady although Speedy kept eyeballing the turned out horses off to our left. The judge caught it and noted that he was inattentive for the halt. After our entry and halt, he refocused and lost interest in what those horses were doing. From there, the ride got better and better. We even earned an 8 for our working canter left lead. 

If you've been following our journey for a while, you'll know that we s.t.r.u.g.g.l.e.d. with the canter departures for a long time. A 4.5 wasn't unusual, and eventually, a 5.5 was the normal. Then we started getting the occasional 6 and maybe even a 7, so to earn an 8 (and we did it on test 2 as well) shows pretty remarkable improvement.

Movement 14 - scribe writes, "loses lead behind. Loses canter." Judge adds, " to correct lead"

The only mistake we made was in the right lead canter, and I call it a mistake because I could have ridden it better. I let Speedy get too heavy in the right lead, so when we made the 15-meter canter circle, he lost his balance and dropped the lead behind. I wanted our downward to trot to have a chance at a better score, so I had him trot and then picked up the canter again. 

I knew our 10-meter circle was going to get a low score anyway, but by fixing the canter and rebalancing, I was able to set Speedy up for a better downward transition at A. My strategy worked as the judge gave us a 7 for the transition.

I know judges like to say something nice, which in our case is usually 'has potential,' so to see "elegant horse" instead made me smile.

When we saluted at G, I felt really good. We performed the test almost as well as we could have at this moment in our training. Of course it can be ridden better, but I was pleased. We finished with a 65.741%, which was good enough for a win ... out of two riders in the class.

Very small classes

I was fortunate to have a friend (thanks, S!) shoot a couple of snippets of video. She didn't think the footage was "blog worthy," but as my mom likes to say, beggars can't be choosers. The video just shows bits and pieces of our ride, but happily, S managed to catch Speedy's "inattentiveness" at the beginning and the goofy 15-meter canter circle to the right. 

Tomorrow, look for First Level, test 2.