9 February
So this was a little bit of a last minute decision.
I wasn't sure how work was going to pan out this week and on Thursday, a combination of getting ahead of my work and getting a gauge on the times for the BD comp, I realised that I could jump on the end of the BD comp doing Elementary 50.
This was a new test for me. I've only done Ele 42 and 44 so far, but the test looked straight forward enough and just had the simple change which we've worked on. So I went for it.
With just 24 hours decision, I obviously hadn't had time to practice my 10m circles and I just told myself, remember they are smaller than you think......
I'm pleased that we got 62.5% because I honestly was expecting around 57/58%, I sort of had a melt down, which started in the warm up.
I hacked Fred into Badgworth pre-test to 'chill his beans', came back and kitted up. Thankfully remembering at the last minute that I would need bridle numbers as this was a BD competition. I had decided not to plait, but now on board, I wished I had. I felt like not plaiting made us stand out as 'not prepared'. I headed up to the warm up, there was just me and the other competitor left.... her friends were watching as she practiced some 'fancy moves'. I don't recall now what, walk pirouettes or something and lateral work. As I opened the gate, I had a crisis of faith and I almost wanted to blurt out to them that I'd missed my class in the morning and Jane had kindly said I could ride my Intro test at the end of the day HC. As if that would explain to these onlookers that clearly I wasn't there to ride the BD ELEMENTARY, this unplaited doofus on a pony.
I'd allowed 20 mins warm up only. I think I just felt really intimidated in the warm up and I panicked. Fred felt flat and I'd been using my phone as the timer and was unfortunately getting riled by messages that were coming in and , and, and.....
I think in the end, I over drilled Fred. Panicked by him not feeling whatever it was I was expecting (and I say that because I don't know what I was hoping for!) I did 20 mins full on trot and canter. Without Nat there to guide me and prompt me to stop, or do this or do that, I tried to do bits of everything and failed.
I had arranged for Jane to call, as Nat suggested, but I think I was hurrying Fred too much and that showed in the first trot circle when he broke to canter. He only does that when I don't have him properly engaged. The whole test is a bit of a blur, I don't recall even looking around my 10m circles to gauge anything, I don't recall if I tried to shoulder fore through them, I do remember just before the corner for my medium telling myself to relax and just enjoy this, and he then got a 7 for his medium trot.
But he became very fussy in his contact after that, flicking his head around for the whole 20m and 10m (which again I didn't look for, because I was stressing about the head movement) but knocked out another 7 for his medium. I think I was like 'phew its a medium trot, we can do that bit'.
He jogged in his free walk AND THEN Fred refused to pick up left lead canter at A to go to medium - we literally picked up wrong lead 3 times, until just ahead of 'M', completely blind panicking now, I lurched him in without any regard for frame now and made the worlds smallest circle it would seem.
I think we did manage the simple change through walk this way - I felt relief that he would strike off right, but when we came the other way I panicked that he may not take his left lead again and never really established the walk - hence the 6.
But the last move was to canter on a long rein allowing the horse to stretch, THIS I KNEW freddie could do and so relieved I let him out and he kept his balance. So we finished on two 7s.
So given the abundance of mistakes made, 62.5% wasn't so bad :) and I will keep going. I think I just need a bit more help in the warm ups
Since I didn't get any video or any photos of the test, I'm going to use this one Brian took of his Medium trot from November.
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