April Recap & May Goals

I know, I know, it's almost half-way through May..but that doesn't mean we haven't been working on these goals!!

April Recap

1. Make this the month of dressage. Even though our dressage work has improved tremendously since January, I am still not quite happy with where it's at. I would like our work to be more consistent so that we can start adding in new, more difficult elements. I also really want to feel confident in riding our test so I am not always dreading dressage day at events.

Half-success. We definitely did quite a bit of dressage work and I was pretty happy with our progress. However, I was seriously disappointed when we failed to break into the 30’s after dressage at Twin. I know we can do better than this!

2. Start adding in more difficult questions in our jumping lessons. I am really liking where our show jumping is heading but I want to make sure to keep Gatsby on his toes and thinking about every fence.

Oh god yes. Alexis has pretty much been scaring the pants off of me in all of our jumping lessons. And, judging from how stadium went at Twin, this NEEDS to continue!

3. Follow our conditioning plan more religiously. Although now that I've written that I've realized that I will be out of town the next 3 weekends and we didn't do anything last weekend...I will have to try to get some of these rides in during the week now that it is staying light later.

Ehh…this is probably pretty much a fail. We definitely did not follow our plan anywhere near religiously lol. However, I am happy to report that he was still raring to go after running XC at Twin and I am not too worried about his fitness at this point.

4. Sitting trot! We have definitely come a long way in regards to our sitting trot, I mean, I can actually ride it now! But, we are starting to get to the point in our career where I really should be able to sit the trot for our whole test and we are not even close to that.

We actually had a breakthrough with this in one of our recent dressage lessons and Alexis alerted me to some issues in my position that were hindering my progress her.

5. Finish Twin on our dressage score. My dream goal would really be to finish in the top 10 but I am focusing more on going clean right now. Fingers crossed!

What’s funny is that if it weren’t for my horrendous ride to fence 9 in stadium we would have been in 8^th! But, that cost us both the ribbon and my goal. Oh well:(

May Goals

1. Keep making progress in dressage! I really want to work on keeping him round and working through his back more consistently and this will ultimately help him with his own self-carriage.
2. Along those lines, work on his jumping technique. As Alexis and I discussed yesterday he is just too athletic and too talented to have any rails in stadium. However, his technique leaves something to be desired as he often jumps fairly flat. This isn't a huge issue right now but it will definitely become one as the jumps get bigger.
3. More trail riding! Now that it is warmer and staying light later I want to take him out of the arena more. I think it will be a good break for both of us:)
4. Not score any 4's in dressage at Woodside!
5. On that note, actually finish on our dressage score this time! (top 10 would still be nice:))
   

Twin Stadium & XC

I know I am SUPER last posting this but real life has gotten in the way of blog posting lately. I do still want to get this down so I have something to look back to though.

Stadium
The schedule at Twin has the lower levels riding stadium on Saturday and XC on Sunday. We walked our course on Friday after dressage and I was feeling pretty confident as we were walking around. The course was super twisty which is exactly what I like for Gatsby, lots of turns to make him think and help get him back to me. My only real concern was that most of the turns were to the left and he just loooooves to pop that right shoulder, I knew though that as long as I paid attention and really used my outside aides we would be fine. The course was as follows: Oxer, rollback to a vertical, bending line to a wall vertical, right turn to another vertical, rollback to an oxer, left turn to a looky vertical, right turn to another vertical, bending line to a square oxer, left turn to what I thought would be reset to an in and out. Oh no, I was wrong, as we approached the end of our course walk Alexis commented that he was "surprised they would put a triple combo on the Training course." WTF?!?!? At this point, I was scared out of my pants but hoping that they would at least lower the first fence of the triple, a huge oxer. Again, oh no.I practically had a mental breakdown in warm up on Saturday and Alexis commented on my round that he was surprised I was able to hold it together so well in the ring. Ugh. The first 8 fences were beautiful, according to Alexis it looked like a hunter round, despite the fact that I almost threw up before fence 5 LOL. And then, as we approached fence 8 I started to realize what a great round we had and that we were almost done. It only took about 3 seconds for me to realize that my nemesis, the triple (oxer-1 stride-vertical-1 stride-vertical) was all that stood between us and a double clear round. Unfortunately this was going through my head during the time where I actually should have been kicking him on and setting him up for the line. Oops.

We kind of crashed through the first fence and Gatsby legitimately did not have enough room for a stride before the vertical so he stopped. The rang the bell, I regrouped, told myself I had better ride it perfectly this time and not let it become an issue, and started through again. The second time was great, he did hit the middle rail but I am chalking that up to him being a bit shaken up from our first go through. Those 12 penalties would ultimately cost us the 8th place ribbon. Definitely a disappointment but at least I know what I need to fix for next time.
This is where I started to feel sick...

Cross-Country

I was surprisingly not nervous at all in XC warm up on Sunday. I was super excited to get out there and just hoped that Gatsby felt the same. He warmed up great and before I knew it we were heading over to the start box. We took it slow to the first few fences, fence 2 was super looky and I really didn't want a stop early one. After fence 3 my first minute marker went off a bit early and I kicked him forward into a gallop, there was no turning back after that. I got a little nervous to the u-log on the hill (our previous nemesis) but I rode it just like Alexis told me to, picked his nose up and away we went. At this point, I was remembering that this horse really does LOVE cross-country. My half-halts were pretty much ignored and I had no option but to really trust Gatsby that he could gallop this fences without killing me.

Clearly having the time of his life

I could tell he was really enjoying himself and everyone said afterwards that he looked amazing. And despite the fact that he was mostly ignoring my attempts to slow down (he took the angled houses in 2 strides where everyone else was doing 3 or 4), he did come back to me when he knew it was necessary. The drop into water sharp turn to the corner, down banks to the skinny house, coffin, and twisty turns through the second water were non-issues for him. I'm pretty sure I galloped through the finish flags with a GIGANTIC smile on my face. I could not be more proud of my horse.
Don't think Training height will be an issue for him:)

Twin Recap: Dressage

So this has taken forever for me to post...better late than never right?

Gatsby and I had a great time at Twin, ultimately I would have like to do a bit better but, seeing as we hadn't competed in 2 years, I think we pretty much rocked it:)

Friday: Dressage

Our ride wasn't until 4:18pm which was actually nice because I wasn't able to get down until 9:30pm on Thursday and didn't have time to bathe or braid. I took him out for a warm up ride around 10 to get some crazies out after a day off on Thursday. He was really nice, relaxed, and forward...until we walked back to the barn. Freak. Anyways, I was pleased but also slightly nervous that he would then flip me the bird when I went to get on him a second time that afternoon; you never know with this horse. I spent the rest of the day bathing him and braiding and watching other riders from my barn and it felt like 4:18 was literally forever away. When I finally did get on I was surprised to find that Gatsby was still nice and relaxed, not as forward and engaged as earlier in the morning but oh well. Unfortunately another rider from our barn was scheduled at 4:12pm so we warmed up in the area near her arena. Looking back, this was a bad decision on my part but I didn't event think of it at the time. I also think that I warmed up for a touch too long and Gatsby was on his last legs for the day. When we finally sauntered over to our warm up area, which, even though it was right next to the other one, was a completely horrifying place to my horse, the wind picked up. Great, now my horse is annoyed, spooky, and tense right before going into the ring...ughhh. Given the circumstances, I think we had a nice test and I was really happy with how I handled him and kept it together. I was disappointed that we didn't get better marks for our lengthenings and also that he picked up the wrong canter lead going to the right but those are things to work on next time!

Hmm....He actually doesn't look half bad here.


Look at that adorable face:)


My favorite picture from dressage.

Well my lunch break is over now but I will recap stadium and XC later:)