That was fun!

I can't post pictures at the moment - the icons for all the editing (bold, italics, pictures) have disappeared. I'll have to hope that they come back later. But we made it, had a good time and have learnt a lot.

We were extremely lucky with the weather for Jazz today. It was snowing and howling a gale at 5 am (Allan tells me, I was sound asleep!) but at 10 it was fine and we went. Now we are back the wind is picking up again to be too ferocious to take a lorry anywhere. So we got the eye of the storm, luckily. We loaded him and then Allan went to turn Tia out while I stayed with him. Boy was he cross! He went to launch himself against the windows and had to be reprimanded and pulled back with the chifney to stop him.

He travelled there OK, not brilliant yet but still better than last time. I have discovered that if he is held VERY short, he travels better. I normally wouldn't dream of tying a horse up that short to travel, but for some reason it calms him not to be able to swing his head around, so we'll try it next weekend. Superhubby will be fitting a tie ring to the top of the "shelf" and we will tie him down to that instead of up to the wall ring. That should also stop him getting his knees up onto the shelf (to say nothing of his feet!) and hopefully I can try leaving him to travel on his own.

He was terribly excited to be there with loads of horses milling around everywhere. So much so that I was pushed to kee him under control even with a chifney. At that point I thought that there was no chance that I would actually be riding him. He grew to at least 17 hands and was snorting and cavorting like a stallion. And screaming endlessly!

But after 20 minutes of being walked about everywhere to watch all the horses, he calmed down and I did ride him in the warm-up area. He behaved like a complete angel. He was totally unconcerned about the other horses and did some really top class work. So that was an unexpectedly good result.

We went in to the test itself, which is run inside some rather sparse white boards only 6 inches high. He trotted down the centre line ...................... and straight out the other end! Luckily I had warned the judge and she let us carry on and complete the test, which included two more unscheduled exits of the arena :-) I was asking for each tturn about ten yards before the point that I needed it, but he just ignored me and carried on towards the lorry park. I consider it a positive that I managed to stop him, turn him, and put him back in the ring again. I don't think I could have done that a few weeks ago, he would just have gone all the way back to the lorry.

The dressage test itself is only what I expected at this stage. He has passed his first test of "competing" with flying colours. He walked, trotted and cantered roughly where he was supposed to and his basic paces were a joy. I managed to control him, and he was such a pleasure to ride in a big open schooling area that I had a huge and stupid grin on my face. He even stood tied to the lorry quietly, and he loaded absolutely fine to come home. He's still not travelling brilliantly, but even with that he is improving so we can't ask for much more really.

10/10 I reckon :-)

C