Loch Moy - Dressage

With the day being so packed with awesomeness, I will be breaking down the three phases of Loch Moy in different posts...I hope the anticipation isn't too much to handle!

The morning of the show was an early one since fellow trailer mate, Brita, had a dressage time before 8am. Luckily for me, I was so beat after CHA and lessons and keeping myself busy, I came home and crashed early so waking up at 4 wasn't so bad. More importantly I didn't have any time to get in my head and get nervous.

Brita put in nice test with her boy and we quickly ran off to get a cart for Emma to walk our XC course. Fellow blogger, Austen, also joined us! She was such an amazing help and event lent me her belt (opps!) for the day.

Thanks Austen for this picture! 

Well right after our course walk, we rushed back and I got myself ready. I thought I had given myself enough time, but I didnt plan on Tillie coming off the trailer a nervous ball of tension. They were running ahead of schedule and I should have declined and opted to do a few minutes longer...so I only got about 20 minutes.

Luckily, Tillie JUST started to settle and while she didnt feel that great, it was good enough. Re-watching the video the first few times, I focused on Tillie and agreed it looked better then it felt. BUT when I watched it and focused on me, I was appalled at how noisy of a rider I appeared to be. **Sigh** I guess the quiet ride all around will come with time.

I am grateful I had such a strong support system which included a bonus of Emma yelling profanities at me to get me to look up not down at my horses neck....I never want to show again without them!

Anywhere here is the video:

So yea....that happened. In the moment, it happened so fast I was shocked. But I went back in and asked to finish. We did, and silly mare tried to pull the same trick again. Not really sure what gremlin was lurking on the inside of the right entrance, but Tillie thought there was one for sure.

The moment I knew I botched royally

It ended up taking a lot of the pressure off and you could even see her relax that much more since I did. I was severely disappointed and it was my first Elimination in dressage ever - but I guess there is a first time for everything right? I was even more disappointed that, despite the judge allowing me to finish, didnt score the remainder of my test...with it being a starter trial, we all assumed they would to at least give my something to go off of.

If only we had a test to score the lovely parts! 

I was really ready to cry. I felt tears stinging and kept trying to tell myself it happens, but it still just sucks. At least this event still allowed me to jump (which I was really not feeling up to at first and felt maybe this test was a bad omen). But Emma convinced me to and insisted I would regret it if I didnt.

Oh haaaaaay fancy pants.

So lesson learned: I need to prep for a longer warm up and I need to not forget to steer.