Cob Jockey

We ended up riding 2-3 on Saturday, and basically up until we went into the ring for it, I wasn't sure we were. I hadn't pushed Connor for two tests in one day since 2017, and it didn't go well back then.

If I had been by myself, I would've scratched, and I would've done too much in warmup. To be sure, Connor is a different horse now than he was back then, but we basically just touched on the stuff I thought would be hard and went into the ring early.

Again, sorry about the slo-mo GIFs

2-3 on Saturday was okay. We got a 62% and change. The simple changes weren't as crisp as they can be (what an achievement to even type that sentence though, lol) and the judge annihilated my geometry. What can I say, the ONLY time I have access to a Dressage ring is at shows and when I haul to GP trainer's. 

Got a 7.0 for this

The bad thing about Saturday is that my judge had a train whistle. Why is this bad? Because at this park, there's a ride-on children's train with a 10 mile course that goes very close to the show ring, particularly close to the ring I was in.

Like...seriously though.

So when I went off-course in 2-3 (ugh), in my deep-in-the-zone brain fog, not realizing I had went off course, I went back and forth with myself on whether that was the children's train or the judge's whistle. I decided it was the train and kept going, until the judge stood up in the booth and yelled at me. She was kind of nasty about it, but what else could she have done to get my attention?

The children's train only runs one Saturday a month, and happened to be running on this day.

GP trainer complained to the TD about the judge's behavior on my behalf and I also let the TD know about the whistle thing. To their credit, on the second day of the show they had switched the sound for that ring to a football whistle from a train whistle.

I laid awake all night thinking about where I went off-course and how I wasn't going to do that again on Sunday, when that same judge would be one of the two judges judging me. And then...I did it again. Same spot.

I don't know why I'm suddenly riding that test wrong when the points matter when I rode it beautifully at the schooling shows leading up to this, but here we are. It was inexcusable, but in my defense, at that moment I was riding the shit out of that test. I mean, you can see me remembering to half-halt in the video, lol.

The judge that had not seen me the day before scored me much higher than the judge that had, but they still averaged out for a 64% and change, 2% higher than the day before.

Judge that had seen me the day before:

Really embarrassing error aside, I was thrilled with this. GP trainer called it a "good place to start", lol, I know she wants me doing better than low-to-mid 60s. But at my first show of the year, I qualified for Regionals at 2nd level, finished my Bronze scores up, got two scores for All-Breeds and didn't completely embarrass my new trainer, so I'm counting this as a win.

Good boy

Next up, we're following GP trainer to a new-to-me-facility next month to do it all over again, but there's a lot of lessons that'll happen between now and then!