Saturday was a fun day of showing. I took Sammy the dressage horse to his first event and Marta took Thunder to their first event together. Thunder and Marta put in a very good dressage test scoring a 33. She’s only had the chance to ride him a handful of times during visits to Canada and Florida due to the fact that she’s an animal surgeon in Maine. Was so much fun to be there and see them bond and perform as a great partnership.
Sammy did a great test. I’ve actually never ridden him dressage before so he associates me with jumping. As I was trotting across the arena from B to E he suddenly pricked his ears and geared up to jump out over E! Thank goodness I felt it and pulled hard on the left rein at the last minute. Phew!
He placed second after dressage with a 26. It was nerve-racking because his owners were standing there watching and Jutta is a top level dressage rider from Germany. My motto for dressage is stay on, stay in so that I can continue on to the jumping phase. Mission accomplished in style.
Sammy and I got to show jump that day also. He was brilliant! Warmed up very well. I didn’t overdo it so as not to waste his energy. Luckily I managed to get him to bump one behind and went over to the ring for my turn. He was a little surprise to see the crowd out to watch him jump, but focused on fence one right away when he realized we were jumping. He acted like he’d been doing it his whole life.
