Raleigh warm up

This weekend is the big Raleigh USDF show! Yay. It's been such a long road to get where we are now and I'm so thankful for having such wonderful horses and people in my life to help me along the way! This weekend we went to Rivendale to practice getting in the dressage arena away from home.

 I am sticking with the intro tests for Raleigh even though our canter has improved vastly, it still isn't quite ready for the show ring. In between Foxtrack and now, I've made a ton of progress with my riding. I've learned to disengage myself from Roanie's drama, stay calm, and just re-ask her to participate. It has helped her become much steadier in the bridle. When she throws her head up or shoves her haunches inside I don't take it personally anymore, and I just tell her that I need her head and haunches in the correct place. I've also learned that she takes FOREVER to warm up, and the longer I ride her, the better she gets. Learning these two techniques has been crucial in making improvement. The week leading up to Rivendale I actually was feeling confident that the show wouldn't be a total disaster, which is a rare thing for me!

When we arrived at the grounds, Roan was good and calm. I went ahead and tacked her up and hopped on. In typical horse show fashion, you never know how a show will run time wise, they could run ridiculously early or late. I made sure that I gave myself PLENTY of time for warm-up. We trotted with loose reins around the warm-up arena, cantered some diagonals, didn't nag her for anything for the first twenty minutes or so. The warm-up arena was on a hill which helped us get really warmed up and balanced. We did some serpentines up and down the hill, all the while just letting the terrain balance her and slow her down. She was lovely and I couldn't have asked for a better warm-up. Test time.

Walking over to the arena I said a prayer that the test would go as well as the warm-up, and tried to keep myself calm and steady. The judge honked the horn and it was show time. We picked up the working trot and headed down the centerline. Roanie was a rockstar. She was soft, supple, and obedient. I couldn't even believe the horse I was riding. While the downward transitions were a little bit rough (not surprisingly) the rest of the test was wonderful. The judge agreed and we came out with a blue ribbon and a 71%

One test down, two to go. Intro B went even better than A and we came out with another blue ribbon and a 72% Time for intro C. The test with the dreaded canter. Six months ago had someone told me that we would score a 7.5 on a canter, I would've laughed at them. It wasn't an issue at all in the test (aside from tripping stepping into it, oops.) We came out of that test with yet another blue ribbon and a 69%

Overall, it was a wonderful day! T-minus one week until Raleigh. We're going to keep working on transitions and adjustability within our gaits this week to see if we can't be a little more consistent in our transitions.