Well after seeming to crack our right canter lead, I decided to do an intro and a prelim with Scottie this month. They were both nice tests and Scottie went nicely and we got both our canter leads. However, we scored much lower than I expected and even after my feedback and video from the judge, I’m not 100% sure why we got these scores. Maybe the judge was just having a bad day!
For the Intro A we got 56.3%. This was much lower than expected as I think it was possibly our nicest test yet… and there is nothing obvious as to why we got this score. But we scored about 0.5 less for each movement than we usually do and even got a couple of 4.5s which again I think was bit mean.
Our collectives were lower than usual too:
Rhythm = 6 (12)
Suppleness = 5.5 (11)
Contact = 5.5 (11)
Rider’s Position = 5 (10)
Rider’s Effectiveness = 6 (12)
The main comments were the same as usual, not supple enough and not accepting enough of the contact. However, she also said I need a deeper seat. Which is something which has never been mentioned before. I have always ridden short and I have put my stirrups down about 3 holes over the past few months to try and improve my seat and legs, but it is never something which has really been mentioned before.
I was disappointed by this score as I am not sure why it was so low.
My Prelim was also low, but I was expecting that. We got 54.8% for our first ever prelim. It started off really nice with a 7 and lots of 6s and 6.5s for our walk and trot work. It scored much better than our Intro. Our canter let us down. We managed to get both our canter leads first time, however, the canter itself… I have no idea what Scottie was doing! But we got both our leads and did the movements, so I was happy. But our trot between and after the canters only scored 5.5s due to the excitement of the canter.
Our collectives were again, fairly low:
Rhythm = 6 (12)
Suppleness = 5.5 (11)
Contact = 5 (10)
Rider’s Position = 5.5 (11)
Rider’s Effectiveness = 5 (10)
The comments were very similar to that in the Intro. Needs more suppleness ect. And the canter will improve with work.
I’m finding the Intros quite frustrating atm as each test feels better than last month, but our scores just keep going down and I don’t know why. But I think I will keep doing both intro and prelim until our canter improves a bit more.
This is quite a hectic month for me and Scottie will be moving yards before the end of the month (if I can find somewhere to go!) So realistically I will be filming our tests in the next week or so. But I am working hard at trying to improve our suppleness and canter and hopefully that will show in our next tests!
Watch our tests below:
Last Updated on 14/01/2022
