Thoroughbred Makeover 2015: Dressage Test Practice
When the makeover started to get closer and closer, we finally realized that Arrow had never been in a dressage ring nor done a dressage test! That seemed a little important since we were signed up for the dressage division at the makeover. So we immediately started looking for dressage shows or somewhere I could at least ride my test. Arrow’s first test and show took place on October 3rd, 2015 where he did intro A and C at Longview Horse Park. I decided to take him to the horse park the night before to get used to the area, walk around the dressage rings, get past the “scary” judges boxes, and practice my tests in the rings. Arrow didn’t care about a thing! There was even a young Friesian acting a little deranged and that didn’t bother Arrow at all! When I took him over to the warm up arena, he was fine until he saw the running horse statues. All he did was stop and turn around, and then we walked past it again and he was fine. We have learned that Arrow is very good at analyzing the issue quickly, and getting right back to normal. On the day of the show, we arrived early and I took him back to where we were the previous night because of all of the activity that was happening. He looked around a little, but immediately ate grass after. My ride time was getting close,so it was time to get on and warm up. There were quite a few young horses and younger kids in warm up so it wasn’t easy, but he handled it VERY well. Also, he didn’t react at all to the horse statues this time. I think he realized the previous night that they were not alive and were not going to attack him out of nowhere. We headed out of warm up and towards our ring. I trotted and put him to work to make sure he wasn’t thinking about being alone, but it turned out that he didn’t mind being by himself! Both tests were a success! We stayed in the ring and completed our patterns with only a few issues; all of which I was expecting. One being,the turn up center line (which we always overshot), and two, our geometry at the canter. It was hard enough getting him to canter and keeping the canter, the shapes just made it more complicated. We received a first place on intro A and a second place on intro C! Our scores were 62.188% (intro A) and 56.250% (intro C).
Arrow's first ribbon
The following weekend there was another opportunity for Arrow and me to ride another dressage test. My mom had an event, Heritage Horse Trials, that weekend and they allowed a ride a test the night before. They squeezed me in a spot and allowed me to ride the test I was going to ride at the makeover, training level test 2 even though the day was meant for eventers. Like the last show, I got there early and walked Arrow around the new area. This time they had flags lined around the dressage rings. Of course, Arrow didn’t react and just wanted to eat grass. He wasn’t as good being tacked up as he was at Longview and I think it was to do with all of the trailers driving around. As soon as I got on him, he immediately went back to his normal self. I had to ride the large arena test in a small arena which made it twice as hard, but he handled that well also. We did the same test twice and scored a 56.2% and 52.7%.
Arrow standing by the "not so scary" flagsEndFragment