Dressage Sunday

We came fifth in our class (a joint fifth)! This is by far our best placing, as we even got a rosette. Bizarrely, our percentage was worse than last time, 56.09%, but I noticed that the judge had been harsher throughout and even the person who came first 'only' got 65%. So looking at it in this light, we did well – especially as there were 10 horses in our class, so at least we reached the top 50%. 

I am happy. And Rainbow behaved really well. I made sure to warm her up properly, as she takes a quite a long time to loosen up and start working properly. 

The only thing that I wasn't too pleased about was that Rainbow was almost a bit too relaxed. As you can see in the video I had to keep kicking her forward and there were a couple of moments where we really lost momentum (luckily, on the video, it's not as noticeable as it was sitting on her!). I am also aware that we're not yet very polished and although I can get Rainbow onto contact during lessons, in a test I have to concentrate on so many things, like the route, tempo, etc. that I seem to forget about the contact. Ho hum – it's another test and more practice will make perfect....One day perhaps :). As my mum said, it probably wouldn't be as much fun if we were good at everything straight away, – it wouldn't be very interesting. 

The judge's comments in summary were: 

Could be a little more forward. 
Needs to be much rounder and softer over neck and back to improve suppleness. 
Try to ride a little more forward into a softer contact, then will do a better test. Well tried.

Warm up

After our test

Our cameraman and supporter

Results

Our score card