First of all a huge thank you to Equiventures staff, volunteers and sponsors for putting on a great event at the Florida Horse Park. I really appreciate the chance to practice the advanced dressage and show jumping during the Advanced Combined test. I also obviously need it as I had an error in dressage with the new USEA tests. Without the error our score would have been 23! As it stands it was 25.
Woody was wonderful all day in the heat and humidity. I was very pleased with both shoulder ins, our right half pass wasn’t as good as our left. His first medium trot was quite nice, the second one not so much. Our extended trot was good from beginning to end but I know there’s more in there. When we practice at home I take him near the neighboring cows and he turns into Valegro. Now if I could produce that it the ring we would get a 9 for sure! His changes were lovely, all FOUR of them. Our halts were square, we got a little low in front during rein-back. The hardest part of the test is going from collected canter to collected trot at X and then halting to finish the test at G. I don’t know if it’s just me but I don’t do a lot of that particular transition with my upper level horses. I came across that movement in pure dressage tests I competed in at home (Kingston) a few years ago and realized how difficult it is. The horses assume you want walk or halt so it’s tough to get into a good collected trot in an uphill balance. We didn’t manage that (the uphill balance) for that transition but you can bet we’ll be working on it. ?
He warmed up fantastic for show jumping. We (Anne Marie and I) didn’t want to over do it in the heat. There were A LOT of verticals so I was anxious about our success. I counter-cantered the first fence (a vertical) and heard him tap it behind. I thought to myself “oh no here we go show jumping by brail”. Fence #4 was a very square oxer and I suspect I came back into the saddle too early (preparing for my tight turn to fence #5) because Woody hit the front rail behind (4 faults). After that he jumped better and better especially over the verticals at the end. I was pleased with our pace and we won! Hurray! Go team OHE. ❤????
Here is the video of Woody’s show jumping round:
Training sessions this week and then Rocking Horse Advanced on Thursday and Friday. Yippee cross country time.?
