30 July was a busy day for BKRC, we had a BD Quest team at Badgworth and 3 show jumping teams at KSEC.
This was our first (and my first) "official" BD competition as a BD member (well Quest member)
My team were all in Prelim 14, but after Hartpury I wanted to keep going with my dressage journey and so I opted to do Novice 34.
In the run up to the show Fred let me know that his saddle wasn't quite to his liking. He's not rude about it any more , he just won't bend around my leg or flex his neck to a certain direction - this week it was not flexing right - and it also made my right leg feel short and tight, dropping my left shoulder and all sorts. So to 'balance' it, I had to drop my right stirrup down a hole. That seemed to be acceptable to Fred in our last practice on Thursday.
As it was my first official BD test, I wanted to plait and look smart.
BUT OMG how it rained! I got Freddie in about 11.15 so he could dry out before my test and give me time to plait.
I plaited outside the box as it was a bit lighter - and we got soaked (Fred had to wear a rug to dry and not get wetter!!) His face in this pic pretty much says how he felt about it all. Not least cos his buddy Ruby had literally just been turned out in to the big grassy field and he was NOT. (Wall of death and lots of screaming ensued and had to be pacified by allowing him to gobble down some of the grass outside his old paddock lol)
And the rain just kept on coming. I saw a couple of my team mates warming up, and I stayed with Fred keeping him company and just watching the time slowly tick down as the rain became more and more relentless.
I finally got tacked up and on board at 1.30pm. We went out to 'spooky' sand arena, there was just me and one other person 'warming up'. I mean I use the term loosely because we were getting anything but warm.
But I did lots of things Jayne had been teaching me - Jayne was writing this time for the judge so warming up was down to me. Firstly, I just pushed him forward, forward, forward in the trot with circles put in, because at that point we were sharing the warm up then a bit of canter. We worked on the canter for a bit and then back to the trot, changing the speed. When we had the arena to ourselves, we did some lateral work - leg yield, shoulder in, some 10m circles into a medium down the long side, then back to 10m circles.
I was just walking timing my next 'pick up' to be when I heard the bell go at 2.06 for the person before me when I got called down. And so my 'pick up' was around the arena before I went in, which seemed to work!
We turned down the centre line and I thought, that's good, straight. Felt a little nose pokey so I asked for more roundness and balance ahead of the corner which went well. The first circle was good, then into the 10m half circle, which I was worried about overshooting and so instead of making it as smooth as I could I sort of whipped him round so his pace just 'checked' before completing the tear drop to the track. So I tried harder when we did it on the other side.
Before going in and during the test I just wanted to make sure I sent him forward, and that was the comment from the judge - a nicely forward test.
In the canter he was forward but not soft in the contact and he's still working his frame out when I'm saying 'more' not pogo pony in a tight frame. We just lost a smidge of balance coming out of canter at C into the first medium trot so it wasn't as good as the second and that was reflected in the marks - 6.5 and then 7. He did a really good final stretch down trot (also a 7) and then finished nicely with a good turn on to the centre line, balanced trans to walk and then halt (all 7's!)
I obviously didn't know how the test had gone at the time, I felt Freddie had given it his best, but this time I felt I had let us down missing some of the set up - like the first half circle and first medium. Soaking wet and freezing cold I snipped out Freddie's plaits, gave him a big pat (we ran out of carrots earlier in the week) and told him he'd earned his grassy turn out as we headed for the big field.
I wasn't sure what to expect - I'd said beforehand to myself I'd like to have hit 62/63% for my first BD test, 65% would be amazing, so I was just stunned when I saw 68.81% and second place.
It took a while to sink in. I just stood there a bit stunned. I didn't cheer or cry, I just stood there a bit gobsmacked and still soaking wet.
Our team finished in second place - just 0.46 points behind the winning team - and I wasn't the drop score! They finished on 207.73 and we finished 207.27 - GO TEAM BKRC
The teams scoreboard
