Dressage Show Results!

My nerves about did me in yesterday, I was starting to get dizzy waiting for my last class. The first class was crazy. It was Trail class and I've done it at schooling shows before, it's always drawn out and pinned to the fence to memorize before you go in. So I get there, find the paper...and it's a LONG dressage test with like, 13 movement directions. I had 10 minutes to try to memorize the thing. It wasn't drawn out, so I looked at an arena picture to get bearings for the test. All of us were freaking out about how we were going to remember this thing. Finally someone thought to ask if we could have a reader since in lower levels of Dressage you can. Thankfully, we could have it read. Melissa read for me. We made it through! I forgot where I was supposed to halt at the end and whether I was supposed to get there walking or trotting. Otherwise, we made it okay. Dazzle would stand next to the mounting block for me to get on so I got on without it. I got marked down for that. If I do it again next year, I'll know more what I'm supposed to do and we'll do better.


My first class was Intro B, a walk/trot. I was shaking, but we headed in. I made a mistake heading into my first 20 meter circle; I tried to start it at S! I realized I was in the wrong place and straightened out so it looked like I just faded off the wall a few steps and no one knew what had happened until I told them, haha. I was focusing on having a steady trot rhythm instead of going forward which wouldn't have stayed steady. I felt pretty good about that test, though I felt pretty silly about trying to start my circle at S.

I stayed on my horse and watched the other riders until my last test. I did a few transitions to warm up and headed in. That was when I felt I might faint, I felt light-headed. I had made sure I ate breakfast or it would have been worse.

We started out fine. I had a moment where I thought I forgot a trot diagonal, then remembered there are none in Training 1. We made it through our canter left. We had good geometry. We headed into canter right, and that end of the arena was deep and wet. I asked and she took canter. I look down and she looked on the wrong lead and felt like it with how frantic her gait felt. I dropped to trot for two strides and asked again. We got the correct lead and finished the test. We got out of the arena and Melissa told me I had been on the right lead the whole time! So again, my biggest error in the test was ME not Dazzle. I didn't really care though, I was just happy to be done.


Melissa came up with the scores for my first two tests, she was freaking out. I got a 75.8% on Trail and a 4th place ribbon, and 69.5% on Intro B with a 2nd place ribbon...I had lost to HER; she and Bayberry got a 79%!!!!! That score won her the Hi-Point for the day and she won a beautiful Dressage saddle pad with BMDCTA embroidered on it on one side and a rider on a dressage horse on the other. She was thrilled. She said when she saw the score she crumpled onto the ground and cried. She worked SOOO hard for that score. When she told me my scores I started to cry too. I was just hoping optimistically for a 65%. When my Training 1 test score came in, I was a little disappointed it was a 57.4%, but that was 2nd place out of 4, so it was just a harder test. They score harder every step up, so a ride worth a 69 at intro is only a 57 at training. I beat older ladies, so I feel good about it. I lost the first place to Annie, a friend who was riding her huge Appy/TB gelding. She about fainted when I told her she'd won because she had accidentally done a late canter/trot transition.

So, I ended up with 2 2nds and a 4th for the day, and and least two scores that will count for ACAAP and CRBA points. I don't know if they'll accept the Trail score. I got all the paperwork ready to send in and so tomorrow I will be able to drop it in the mail.

Norman video-taped our Intro B's and my Training class and Ted took over 1200 pictures with the digital camera. I will have pictures up and video as soon as I can.

We were both thrilled with how many people showed up to support us, at least 75% of the crowd was my family and friends. Thank you guys! It was awesome to have someone cheering us on, I've never gotten to have people at shows like that. I appreciate it and I can't wait to see what we can do next year!

This is the only show planned for this year, so now we start work for next year. I'm hoping money and the help of someone to groom will allow me to show more next year. The plan is to do a Training test and a First level test, but if we aren't quite to showing 1st level we'll do more than 1 of the training tests. Melissa is hoping to show 2nd level next year as her big goal. Everyone at the show banned her from showing Intro ever again, lol. Both Rae and Trish were there cheering us on and they were thrilled with our results. Patrica especially knows how far Dazzle and I have come and was beaming after our tests. We couldn't have made it this far without her.

I told Melissa that next year I'll put her down as my coach since I didn't make a fool of us this year, lol. Hopefully we can make great progress again this year to surprise ourselves at next years show.