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.