30 Sept and the first of the Winter League BD Quest competitions. The day was hot and humid, making for quite lethargic ponies....
And I suspect that after Pig-gate at Gatcombe, Fred was possibly a little tight having travelled for over 4 hours in the trailer. This combination made for a slightly skew-whiff Fred.
Whilst I was plaiting up and we were waiting for our time, Fred definitely had plenty of 'sparkle'! I even decided to warm up in the black arena in case I set anyone else off.
Bizarrely, having scored 68.81% in my last test I was quite nervous about whether we could repeat the miracle.
He warmed up a bit hit and miss, sometimes with his head in the air like a gi-raffe and other times in a nice frame. I tried opening him right up on a long rein, shortening him up, lengthening etc etc all our usual techniques.
As I rode in to the arena for my test time, I'm afraid to say I got a bit of 'stage fright' when I realised the other competitors in my class were waiting in the wings...
It felt like the world's longest test suddenly. It was polite and we were accurate to the markers mostly (bar a little wobble in the two 10m half circles when Fred assumed we were going around!), and just unfortunately a couple of quarters popping in on occasion where I think Fred was feeling a bit tight.
The final person to go in was on this incredibly floaty horse and Kaye and I looked at each other and went "May as well get our coats!", we agreed that with the best will in the world our beloved horses were never going to be able to move like that......
And so you can imagine my surprise when we beat it and came 2nd! Bizarrely, at the beginning of the year I would have been delighted to score 63.93% in a BD Affiliated Novice test.... And yet now I'm like - hmmmmm, that was mediocre. It's funny how our own perceptions and perspectives change. One day I hope to be thinking this way about Elementary! Lol. We can dream.
Our team finished in 2nd. So another double 2nd in my BD journey. Although when I look online, it seems to have discounted the team placed first and now we appear to be in first so that would be interesting.
