Chatt Hills HT: Dressage

So as I mentioned, Leo and I had a great ride around the grounds the evening before. He was surprisingly relaxed and I was happy to get on for dressage warmup on Saturday to pick up right where we’d left off.

After a 20 minute or so warmup, we headed down to the rings, where Leo took one look at the XC courses in the distance and went:

Luckily the judge gave us a little bit of time and a couple laps around the arena gave me 90% of Warmup-Leo back. Which, as you can see, was still AH-MAZING.

Gaits: 7.0
Impulsion: 6.5
Submission: 7.0 (this one made me laugh)
Rider: 6.5
Score: 30.3

Now, I will say, I thought a couple of the marks were a bit generous. I’m not sure I would’ve scored his canter transitions as an 8 and 7.5, respectively, but then again, I’m not a judge so what do I know?

His free walk has always been pretty non-existent, but also something we haven’t worked a ton on at this point. I was so proud of his medium walks, because he has a tendency to fling his head in the air randomly at the walk, but held himself together. And I could feel the halt wasn’t perfect, but I also wanted THAT halt on the books, before it devolved into this:

So plenty to work on and improve…as always. But considering his average score over his show career of four events is 35.95, I was over the moon with the 30.3.

4th place, baby!