SMDA June Dressage Show

June 10th was the second show for the Southern Maine Dressage Association, and I entered Otis and I in the Intro B and Intro C tests again. I woke up that morning with a sore throat, and was not impressed that it seemed I had acquired my husband's cold on the morning of a horse show :( Despite the looming sickness, I loaded Otis into the trailer, and off we went.

Once I tacked Otis up and walked him around the show grounds for a bit, I decided to try the warm up arena, since there were only a few horses in there. Otis was being a bit naughty, but I was actually able to work him out of it, which was awesome! Usually once he decides to be naughty, he commits! I was very happy to be able to get some nice warm up work out of him before our first test. Wanting to end that on a good note, I left the warm up, and just walked around the outside of the show arena until it was our turn.

When we were next up for Intro B, we entered the ring and walked and trotted around the outside of the dressage arena, waiting for the judge to ring the bell. This is usually when Otis starts to get wound up, because we are suddenly all by ourselves, but this time he stayed relatively quiet :) We entered the ring at A, once the judge rang her bell, and Otis was AWESOME for the whole test!! He was calm, and willing and was just such good boy, I was so happy that he finally realized that this whole showing thing isn't really something to get so worked up about, it was like something clicked and he was just awesome! I couldn't have been happier with that test!

We had a little while before our Intro C test, so I brought Otis back to the trailer so we could both get a drink.

While we were in the ring waiting for the judge to ring the bell for our Intro C test, they announced the placings for Intro B, and we had gotten FIRST PLACE with a score of 67.2%!! I was so excited!

Here we are with our Blue Ribbon :)

As we were entering the ring to start our test for Intro C, a bicycle went by, and Otis thought it was going to eat him, and he had a mini melt down. Much to my surprise, I was able to calm him down, and get him back to normal before we entered at A and started being judged. Otis was very good for Intro C as well, we had a few little baubles in our canter transitions, which is something I have been working on at home anyways. There was even somebody just outside the arena, flapping a huge piece of plastic, trying to get their horse's ears up so they could take a picture (totally rude!) and Otis could have cared less! I was so proud of him, he usually would have used that as an excuse to act up. We ended up with a second place ribbon with a score of 65.8% for Intro C!


Otis and I had such a good day at the SMDA June show. He was such a good boy, and made SO much progress over the last show, not only in our scores, but in his attitude as well.

Green Acres Two-Phase

Otis and I went to Green Acres Stables in Madbury, NH on Saturday May 26th. I was excited to try another event, and I didn't have to leave until 9:00 am! I got there in plenty of time to find Liz, and luckily I was even able to park next to her (she had been there for quite a while before I got there).

I got Otis ready for dressage a couple of hours before our test, since we had never been to Green Acres before, I wanted plenty of time to ride him, just in case he decided to be naughty. I also wanted to ride over so I could watch part of Liz's cross country. Otis seemed pretty level headed for the amount of commotion that was going on at the show grounds. All phases of the event were in full swing by the time we got there, and there were horses and people every where. I walked him around the grounds a bit, and then decided to try the warm up arena, since there weren't many horses in there. He was doing pretty well, but there was another horse in there that would spook and bolt every time the horses on the cross country course would gallop towards the arena, and Otis decided to mirror it's reaction every time it did it. I decided to leave the warm up and rode him in the pasture area by the trailer for a few minutes. Once things calmed down in the warm up arena, I brought him back in, and I was very impressed with his behavior! I was able to get a really good warm up ride on him, so I brought him back to the trailer to chill out until it was closer to our ride time.

Otis was still being pretty good when I got back on him for our dressage test. I brought him into the dressage arena to wait for the judge to ring her bell. This was a bit different, usually we walk around the outside of the arena, but there wasn't room around the outside of this one, so we went in, and when the judge rang her bell, we went out, and then back in to start the test. I don't know whether it was the horses banging around in the trailer next to the area, or the fact that he didn't think we needed to back in the ring, but Otis completely changed his attitude when we went to start the test. When we halted at X, he start to do a little half rear! I did my best to calm him down, and the rest of our test went pretty well!

After cooling off for a bit (it was really hot out), I got changed and tacked Otis up for Stadium. I took him into the practice ring for a few minutes, then headed over to the jumping warm up. Otis was doing his normal leap over the fences, which was really frustrating, because we have been practicing a lot at home, and he hasn't been doing it there. Luckily, Liz was done for the day so she was there to talk me through it, and remind me to look up, not down at the fences. I finally got a good relaxed jump out of him, and my position was good, so I headed over to wait for my turn. We had to wait a lot longer than I thought because they let the younger kids walk the course before it was time to jump.

Finally it was our turn, we entered the ring, and did a warm up circle at the trot, Otis felt pretty good, and I was doing my best to stay relaxed, and think positive thoughts. He hesitated at the first jump, but went over it at this jarring leap. Fence number two was a bit better, but he was still doing his weird hoppy thing. Fence number three was the worst, it was a VERY small cross rail, and Otis came to a complete stop, it was so small, so I just kicked him forward, well he launched him self over the fence, causing me to lose my stirrup when we landed. I managed to get it back before fence four, which was pretty close. Things got progressively better after that, he started to relax a bit and jump more like he should. We still have a LONG WAY to go, but it was better then our stadium at UNH because I was more conscious of looking up.

Here is a video that Liz took of our stadium round, not pretty, but it's actually progress ;)

We ended up placing out of 8 riders, so I was pretty happy with that. Again, my biggest goal this year is to make progress with Otis at horse shows. I think we made really good progress in the warm up ring a this show. I was able to take him into the warm up ring, and actually do a good warm up with him, with out him giving me his bratty little attitude he has. Even though I had hoped for a better, more relaxed stadium round, we still made progress there as well.