9 February 2025
It’s been 7 months since we did our last dressage competition! and that is the longest I’ve gone without competing Fred. Between me getting Covid and the arrival of winter, it’s amazing how time passes. I was due to compete 2 weeks ago but it was storm ‘someone’ so it was called off, and moved to Sunday 9 Feb instead.
As ever, instead of starting back unaffiliated, I jump straight back in to BD Quest. I did do a Prelim just to warm up and get my head back in the game..... Probably should have just done two Novices as Prelim still gives Fred time to "think" rather than "focus".
Anyhoo... Since it’s winter (and Freddie always gets a bit ‘sparkley’ when the weather gets cold) and we’re a little bit ‘ring rusty’ I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but Freddie surprised me and put on his Fred Astaire hat – not his Freddie Kruger hat! And almost behaved like a grown up!
We warmed up for 20 mins with the other horses - all very civilised - so I gave him a couple of minutes downtime as a “breather” but when I picked him up again, he decided that the EVERYONE standing around the arena were definitely ‘Fred-eating-monsters’. Sigh. It’s very funny (for me) but slightly distressing for all the other competitors as a naughty ginger pony threatens to comes flying in their direction. It’s very “un” dressage behaviour. :D
However, both tests went well. The first one less well as someone left a coat on the side right by one of the dressage markers. Yes….. a coat. I expect you have read in the news about those killer coats that lie in wait, pretending to be all innocent until a ginger pony about 14hh walks past which IS their only dietary requirement…. We asked them to move it before the next test, which resulted in a better score.
But I am really happy with him. He scored 66.8% in the first test for 4th place (out of 7) let down by a series of 6's at the end after a change of rein to the killer coat got him in a wobble.
In the BD 'My Quest' Novice 3 - a really nice test to ride - we scored 67.6% and that is right back up where we left off. I was pleased that we got 2nd place ahead of some ‘regular’ British Dressage competitors and had really promising comments. I was particularly happy with those relating to "good ground cover in mediums" and "fluent trans". I was also delighted that Fred remembered how to get 7.5s for his free walk (did it twice), because he kinda worked those out on his own lol.
s ever, plenty to work on and iron out, but hopefully lots of exciting things to come this year. Even our duff test still helped our team to a 2nd place though so that was good and we were just a couple of points from 1st!
Below, the scoreboard, some grainy pics and the obligatory plaited up pic.
Prelim 3
Novice 3
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