You might have already seen that we are back on board. After getting the all clear from the back lady I started getting back on and just doing a little walking around. I had my eye on Dressage Riders Online’s new Walk Only ridden class. but with the weather being so up and down, I wasn’t sure I would be able to get anything filmed before the deadline.
But last week, just before the deadline, the weather improved. One evening after work, my 3rd time sitting on Scottie after our break, we managed to film our walk test and get it entered with about 20 hours to spare. I wasn’t 100% happy with it as I knew there were improvements to be made. But for our 3rd ride back, I thought it was incredible! He was good as gold, albeit maybe not quite as responsive as he could have been. But I really cannot fault him.
I was shocked when the results came out last week and we had come 3rd out of 7! I was over the moon with this. Our score wasn’t great, 56.19%.. But the winning score was only 58.33%, so we really weren’t far behind. Looking at my score sheet, it’s mostly 5.5s with the occasional 6.
The comments were fair. Good rhythm, but lacking energy and suppleness in places. Also while there was clear stretch in the free walk, there wasn’t a big enough difference between our medium and free walk. What is a fair comment. Overall, I think this was a fantastic effort from Scottie and hopefully we can make some good improvements from this.
This month I am hoping to be back doing an walk/trot long reining test as well as our walk only ridden test. I want to continue with the long reining as I think it is good for him to work without a rider. But I also want to do the ridden to give us some light schooling exercises to work on.
Last Updated on 14/01/2022
