Dressage Dorset Showground

A very eventful but successful evening dressage for the clueless showjumper! 

Arrive at Dorset Showground for mum to ask 'Did you put your riding boots in?' With a slightly panic stricken look on her face. As you can imagine the answer was 'No' from me! In the 30 years I've been riding this is the first time we've ever forgotten such an item! 

Luckily dad stayed at home because he'd rather watch paint dry than come to a dressage competition! After many phone calls to his mobile phone that he may forget is 'mobile' to the point he should have it on his person it can only be described as imagining a scene from James Bond but with a much older Bond (sorry dad!). The only vehicle left to drive is my Audi TT sports car, so running out the door, boots in hand, flies off to Dorset at speed and does a quick drop out the window to mum so I can change into my boots for the warm up. In a flash of white he's back out of there before he'd even laid eyes on anything dressage! 

First test is Prelim 7 - warm up goes really well, I remember my test and it goes pretty fluently. Nice, tidy and accurate - feeling pretty proud of myself until I get out the ring and Deb Hounsome has arrived and says 'You might get eliminated as you left Rolys boots on' . Que an expletive from me and an oh well never mind, it was a good warm up test anyway.

Luckily for us the judge probably felt sorry for said showjumper entering her dressage arena so only deducted 2 marks. Leaving us on a final score of 74.31% and coming 2nd! Yes without the boots issue we would have won it but hey ho! We live and learn.

Then onto the second test which was Novice 30 - Again a lovely warm up, really listening and practiced all my fancy moves of medium trot, half 10m circles, changes of canter lead through trot on diagonals, medium canter ... the list goes on! 

I had Deb Hounsome kindly calling this one for me, because I'm out of my depth learning letters and movements along with trying to remember how to ride dressage at the moment! Super test, couldn't fault Roly and I managed to keep it cool, calm and collected.

Final score of 74.42% giving us the WIN!! 

I'm chuffed I got 8's for my riding in both tests too!

We've qualified for all sorts of unaffiliated dressage championships now so there might be a few more dancing trips out much to dad's disappointment! 

Video of the Novice test attached! Thank goodness for our support team to make what was an eventful start run smoothly!