After wathcing Liz and Dreamy do their dressage test, I started getting Otis and myself ready for our dressage test. The dressage arenas are down the road from where the trailer was parked, and Otis seemed to think I was taking him to the land of horsey torture! He kept whinnying for Dreamy, or any horse that would listen, and the farther down the road we got, the louder and longer his calls became. This wasn't looking good. Once we reached the dressage area, I decided to just let Oits stand around a bit to see if he would calm down. This didn't seem like it was going to happen, so I brought him across the street into a dirt parking lot, where we were farther away from all the horses and commotion. He seemed to calm down a little bit, but not much... After a few minutes I took him into the warm up arena.. big mistake... He wouldn't even walk.. he was just a big ball of nervous energy, and would only jog/prance. I decided to take him out of the warm up arena, and just let him stand around until it was time for our test. When it was our turn, I walked him over to the arena and walked him around the outside while I waited for the judge's bell. He was still being naughty, and not paying attention, so I was just hoping we could make it through our test without him bucking or exploding! The judge range his bell and down the center line we went. When I asked for the halt at X, Otis decided that he would start backing up! NOT GOOD! He was very tense through the whole test, and only relaxed a bit during the free walk. I wasn't very impressed with our ride, but had to keep telling myself that it is only April, and it was our first show of the season.
We had a little bit of time before stadium, so I had some lunch and watched Liz and Dreamy do a clean round in stadium and win their division! By then the dressage scores for my division were posted, and much to my surprise, we were in second place!
I got Otis tacked up for stadium and walked him down to the arena. He was much calmer, so I decided to skip taking him into the indoor to warm him up, I figured I would risk getting him all round up again, and the our jumps were very small cross rails, so it wasn't like I was going to risk him getting injured by not warmning him up. When it was our turn, we went into the arena, and did a small trot circle before we started the course. He was a bit excited, but not nearly as bad as the dressage. When we approached our fist jump, he started to refuse, but then jumped it, quite a bit bigger than he needed to. Our statium round wasn't pretty, due to the fact that I have a terrible habit of looking down at the jump, which throws both Otis and I off balance. Despite my bad habbits, (that I am working on) we made a clean round, and kept our second place standing!!
I was so excited that we placed, because the last two events I did, we got eliminated, so my main goal for the day was to just not get eliminiated, and we did it!!My long term goals for this summer are to get Otis so that he can deal with the warm up arena. I want to be able to get on him and warm him up at a show, instead of just standing around to keep him calm. Overall I had a really good time at the UNH two phase, and I can't wait to do more this summer!!
 |
| Otis and I with our ribbon |
