Saturday, October 8, 2011

10-8-11 Intro B

I walked Harley between the dressage "arena" fence and the arena rail. Down the "Scary side". As he approached some jump standards standing up near center marker, I realized he was a little afraid of them. A little pat and some sweet talk, he walked right by them. He also saw letter marker "R" laying down, and thought a bit of fear at it, too. Again a pat and some sweet words. I noticed the judge half-watching us. She said something to her scribe, who giggled. I turned at the long side end, and headed back towards "A". As we got just around the warm up area in front of "A", she rang the bell.
hah. We're over the scary side boogers. Let's do this!

His work felt good. Not super good circles at trot, but his free walk seemed a little better to me, and his trot was nice. I felt a few moments of collection, but he didn't hold it very long. I didn't expect him to, it's Intro level. Harley's transitions were much better in B than in A, so I was pretty delighted.

As he came down centerline at the end, he was straight, and solid. His halt was square, and I was delighted. I saluted, and took quite a few steps foward. As we were leaving the arena, I muttered to Harley..

"Hey buddy, much better job this time! I heard 6s, did you hear 6s? I think we got at least some 6s, and that's not bad stuff there!"

A long relaxing walk on the buckle to cool him down. Hot day, fuzzy horse, he enjoyed marching over the obstacle arena course, over some poles, past some flower boxes, and over a wooden bridge. Marched right along, pretty happy with himself.

Test A? 58%
Test B? 62.5%

That's one score towards qualifying for series Championships in December. One down, one to go. Let's see if we can't kick that out tomorrow, Harley, hmm??

3 comments:

Dressage Person said...

Congrats on your test scores! Glad you are having fun out there. I'm desperate to get back out to the showing arena... too bad my guy just slipped up and hurt his stifle (not bad, but bad enough that taking him to a show would be a not-so-great idea).

Chat soon! Don't forget to update me on the flexions work after the showing season ends.

SunnySD said...

Really cool to read about your dressage test and how well Harley did, especially after the last post about CRNG and the random gunfire next door. Good grief! Congratulations to you both :)

Jennifer said...

Thank you.. thank you thank you both ...

And yes... CRNG shooting, then the other neighbor's dove hunting?

It's been nice not to hear guns going off this week. :)