I’m glad you went! Sounds like it was a productive day, did you get any pictures?
Yay! Glad to hear it went well!
Oh, correction. 3rd test was a hairs breadth from 63 
My biggest take away, honestly, was that I’m not asking for enough. He had juice to spare after a 30 minute warm up and 3 tests. By the third test I could just see his mind racing, he knew there was a job to be done and he was anxious to get it done. Which also was the best score of the day.
I think I’m molly coddling him too much. Letting him get away with sloppy work because I’m just so happy that he works at all, if that makes any sense. Like, you’ll trot when I ask? AT the letter?! Well then, good enough. It took me years to get a trot without loping first.
I don’t know that we’ll ever get true relaxation. That lovely, floaty, relaxed trot that I know he can do (because I’ve seen it at liberty) is probably too far buried under a decade of bursting out of the chute and being cowboyed. But we can keep working towards it! And how much fun will it be to see improvement in the scores month over month (fingers crossed).
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Yay!! I’m so glad you went and had a positive experience.
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So glad you had a great time! Hope you got some good pictures of your first show.
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They actually had a photographer but I’m guaranteed to hate the photos. I’m not concerned though.
Mostly I’m loving how this has ignited a bit of a fire. I’m now obsessing over the training scale and planning rides to improve on the collective marks, lol.
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So when is the next show 
?
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Ha! I plugged them all in the calendar. This club hosts 6 shows, one a month.
You guys were right about the friendliness. I had people offering help left right and centre. And the judges comments… like a book. Very clear and detailed, nothing left to interpretation. I get it was just intro, so probably easier to do that, but really excellent experience.
They seem to offer up to 1st level, which is exactly where I hope to land with this guy before he retires, assuming he retires in 3 years.
And the judge was the same one for the rated show last weekend, so whoever said it’s the same judges for less money was spot on, lol. And she was just lovely. I didn’t speak with her other than to say thank you but she looked so kind, and so engaged with every test, standing and acknowledging every rider.
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I realize this show is over, but I’m going to offer up my warmup strategy.
At home I will take a day and ride my warmup until I feel my horse is ready - loose enough, focused enough, responsive enough, foward enough. Check the time, walk around for a couple of minutes (mimics walking to the show ring from warmup), then pick him up, trot once around the ring, and proceed to ride my test as I would at a show - not trying to improve anything, or work on anything, just ride it as best I can with the horse at that moment.
After riding the test I walk and think about it. Did it go well? Could it have been better with a little longer warmup? Did my horse lose energy and could a shorter warmup help?
If I think a bit more warmup might help then I can immediately do the little bit extra focusing on how my horse feels, walk a couple of minutes, trot round once and ride the (or another) test again.
With this ride plan I am trying to find the feeling of my horse is ready to go do the test. Once I know that, this ride routine will let me figure out how much time it takes to use as my show warmup time. I can also take a break after the test, then warm up to ready feeling and ride another test to get an idea of how much time I’ll need before my second test. After using these warmup times at a show I can figure out if I need a little more or less time.
I wouldn’t do this ride plan more than once a week or so because it’s not a schooling ride as much as finding information, though I often did finish with a short schooling of something that needed it.
I found my horse usually wanted 20-25min, then 15-20min, then 5-10min warmup times before each of three tests at a one day show. But the key was knowing what my test ready horse felt like, and how to get there without getting into the weeds of trying to improve skills or do more than a check on required movements (like SI, LY, simple changes, etc), or doing too much if was ready sooner than I expected . One of my horses absolutely needed to have a five minute free walk and gawk at the start of our first warm up at any show, so I added that to his first warmup time.
I also planned out my schedule to the minute (with some built in contingency) and stuck it to the trailer door on show day so I wasn’t trying to figure out the my next test is at X:xx, and I need yy minutes to warmup up, plus tack up and walk down to the ring time, plus five minutes to review my test, so I have to start tacking up at ?:?? at the show on the day.
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This is awesome, thank you.
I know things I’ll change for next time. Warm up at this venue is in a small court indoor. One half was being used for lunging so I was limited to 20 m and found it hard to do much. But this was just me being uncomfortable. In hindsight I could have ridden around the lunging horse etc.
My first test was basically an extension of the warm up. In the future I’ll definitely try to be more intentional with it.
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I would speak to management about the lunging if it is interfering with your warmup, in a nice “hey I just noticed longeing in the only warmup area, is that allowed?” Most shows confine it to an area away from the actual warmup. It’s one thing at Intro but by the time you are doing First/lateral work you need the warmup space.
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I agree with Fordtraktor. At the schooling dressage shows I attend there’s a marked area for lunging. At the recognized dressage shows the lunging is in an entirely different arena and you can’t even handwalk your horse or stand inside the ring to coach.
It’s entirely possible that’s just the way it works at this local schooling show but you might find others operate differently.
I no longer ride around lunging horses having been clotheslined before.
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I confess I was a bit annoyed but I wasn’t really in a position to say anything, being the newbie.
Next time I’ll just be more assertive with my riding.
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Definitely would not recommend this strategy, just let the organizers handle it if it comes up again. Trying to ride around a lunging horse in such a small area is a safety issue, and playing chicken in the warm-up ring is a terrible idea in general. You can’t assume that other riders are a) paying attention, b) in control of their horses, or c) capable of making smart decisions. It’s frustrating, but defensive driving is the name of the game or you become part of the problem yourself.
If it were me I’d probably send the organizers an email about it between shows and see what they say. I’d be willing to bet there’s already a rule in place about it but even if there’s not they might add one if someone raises the issue. I for sure wouldn’t go back to a show where I only had a 20m circle available for warm-up, they should know this could affect their future entries.
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By assertive I mean just ride. Not get up in people’s faces :D.
There were three people in the ring. One was longeing. But I let that throw me off enough to lose focus because I couldn’t execute my plan. I could have asked that she be done so the whole ring was available, many things I could have done but didn’t.
Definitely if it were to happen again I would ask if it was the norm and make a decision from there.
I’m definitely not going to be the fly in their ointment, lol. It was a well run show.
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