Tania and Otis: Starting the Season off Right!

Sunday May 5th was the first show of the season for Otis and I. We went to the Hollis Equestrian Park for the Southern Maine Dressage Association's first show of 2013.

My goal had originally been to do Training 1 and 2 at this show, but Otis and I had kind of a rocky start to the spring, so I entered Intro B and C instead. The fact that Spring seemed to take FOREVER to arrive gave us a late start getting ready for shows, so I opted to do testes that I am familiar with for our first show.

When I got on Otis to warm up for Intro B he seemed pretty calm for our first show of the year. Last year at our first show, I couldn't even warm him up at all is was so wound up, so I was very happy with this improvemnt. I walked him around the grounds for a bit so he could see the sights, and then headed for the warm up arena. On our way to the warm up a small child ran up behind Otis, which scared him a bit. That combined with some people playing lacrosse down in the cross country course kind of unsettled him a bit. I took him out behind my trailer and rode him around there for a bit and he calmed right down. I am very happy that he is starting to realized that it's okay to be scared, but that it's also possible to recover from being scared and get to work.

I was feeling pretty good when it was our turn for Intro B. The judge rang the bell just after I passed A, so I turned Otis around to head into the arena. Just as we were rounding the corner for A, he spooked at "something" and I thought I might fall off for a split second. Thankfully we were able to pull it together before we passed A and started being judged. Otis was REALLY good for the entire test. He was a little bit tense, and the judge told me I needed to make my circles rounder and less egg shaped, but other wise I was VERY happy with our test. We ended up with 3rd place out of 6 people and a score of 69.38%.

I got some really good canter transitions in the warm up ring before Intro C, so I was feeling pretty good as I entered thing ring. Otis was even better for Intro C. I actually got so excited thinking about how good he was being that I almost forgot my test! I was just trotting along grinning like an idiot, when all of a sudden, I realized... DUH your doing a fricken dressage test..20 meter circle at B!! Luckily I snapped into it just in time, and didn't go off course! As we were heading down the center line to finish our test, Otis tripped just as we were halting and he pulled the reins out of my hands... so not such a great end to a wonderful test, but he tripped, can't fault him for that. We ended up with 1st place out of 3 people with a 71.5% for that test!! Even with a 5 on our final halt, we got a 71.5!

Needless to say, I decided it was time to try Training level in June. I signed up for Intro C and Training 1 for the June show. I figure Intro C will be a good warm up/relaxer for us before we try Training 1 for the first time.