El Sueno Show Recap

The show was really fun all around. I had a great support team there, including my wonderful hubby. The weather was perfect, except for a flash rain (more like a drizzle) randomly for just a few minutes.

Our first ride was Beginner Novice Dressage Test A.  Overall it went well. We had a short warm-up, working on forward and back, adding in more contact as we got Hemie more in front of the leg.

The test went fine. I progressively asked for more and more of Hemie throughout the ride, though our work to the left (first half of test) was still better than our work to the right (second half of test). I felt good about it, and the judge gave us a 40. I'm especially proud of our free walk, which got us 6.5 (x2). I didn't push for bend, was more focused on good connection, relaxation, and steady rhythm.

Our second dressage test was Beginner Novice Test B. Hemie was very distracted at multiple times throughout the test, I think by the chestnut calling out, but who knows. At home, I would have made a turn, or transitioned gait, or asked for lateral movement - something to get his mind off of the distraction and back to our work. But in a dressage test any of that would have led to going off course, so I just kept wiggling the bit in his mouth and made my aids noisier to try and get his attention. It didn't work out too great, and we had movements that really suffered (we couldn't hold our canter, for example). But overall and besides that I thought the test went fine. Generally speaking this is a harder test, but we ended with the same score of 40. Go figure. Oure best part was again the free walk, and our ending halt.

Next was time for our combined stadium and cross-country jumping. There was hardly anyone competing, yet somehow Hemie and I were standing around for over 2 hours waiting for our round. We hung out in the warm-up ring, watching the competitors go and snuggling anyone who stood nearby. I kept dropping my stirrups to give my ankles and break, and my kind husband kept bringing water. Hemie seemed content to hang out there all day, actually.

Overall I felt good about our round, and proud of myself for being more present and proactive during the round. We again had a hiccup at the jump out of the water - not sure what that was about, but besides that all was fine. We even did the large solid round option at jump #8.

We placed 1st in both our classes (don't know how many were in them...I think just 1 other person), so we took home some pretty blue satin...and an extremely random prize of a bottle of lotion.