Laura's Dressage Outing - March 2018
Hello, Laura here, one of the Equetech Real Riders. This weekend Mikey and I headed to our first dressage show this year, in fact it was my first dressage post my back operation last November and the last time we did some dressage was last June; so it had been a while! We headed out with a goal in mind, to get a last-minute qualification to the Chiltern and Thames Rider Dressage Championship in a few week's time, we needed a score of more than 60% and to place 1st or 2nd, after a bit of a wobble in my practise session on Friday evening I was beginning to think I had bitten off a bit too much and maybe putting unnecessary pressure on myself, however, we set off for the show with the goal of doing our best!
I don't mind sharing with you that I was quite nervous, the last few months have been trying to get back in to the swing of things, so just getting ready for the show and driving to the venue I could feel the nerves starting to build. The warm up went well which gave me a chance to settle the nerves a bit, Mikey was feeling pretty relaxed, although he needed a little bit of encourage to move off the leg a bit more! Our first test was prelim 7, and having not been inside the boards for a while we had a couple of "green" mistakes, including hitting the boards on the right rein in canter due to me not having enough contact in the outside rein! However overall I was pleased with the test, we scored 68.6% and managed a 2nd place ‐ we got our qualification at prelim, phew one down! I decided not to do too much of a warm up for my 2nd test (novice 28) as didn't want to overcook it, we did a bit of medium trot and practised my canter half circles back to the track with a few strides of counter canter and then went in, the 2nd test overall felt even better than the first, our walk let us down however there were some really lovely moments, thankfully the judge agreed and gave us 70.8% and 1st place! We did it. we bagged our second qualification of the day. Super chuffed! Now to practise, practise, practise ahead of the championships in a few week's time!
By the way for those of you that don't know, there is a new BD rule that means you need to display 2 competition numbers now, if you don't, you can lose 2 points from your score, check out the behind the scenes video to see the Equetech Bridle Number Holders in action ‐ we used them yesterday and they are super easy to use!
Until next time, Laura and Mikey x
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