Well today was a bit of an emotional roller-coaster, let me explain…
I took Dustry to Sparsholt for his first competitive outing since last October, I had entered him into 2x affiliated (open section) BD prelim tests, and was hopeful that he would perform ok given that I have been working hard over the winter, at home, and with my instructor Amanda Brewer, but also conscious that he hadn’t been out for a while so could be excitable.
The warm up seemed to get very crowded, very quickly (15 horses in a 30×60) and when I asked for a canter transition Dustry popped into canter perfectly and then exploded, put in a huge buck and twist and fired me through the air. During ‘my flight’ I clearly had the foresight to think ‘I know, I’ll land on my thumb!’ Ouch! The organisers and other competitors were fantastic, they all halted as soon as possible, while Dustry cantered round the arena a couple of times looking confused at the equestrian version of Granny’s Footsteps he seemed to have ended up in, and then stopped.
Back on (and trying to ignore my painful thumb) I went in and did both my tests, and they felt terrible! I honestly thought that they were only worthy of high 50% marks and was so disappointed to have had such a frustrating and useless time. Back at the lorry I burst into tears (those who know me will know this is a VERY rare occurrence!) I think the pain from my thumb, tiredness, hunger, frustration, and an almost certain knowledge that those were some appalling tests all got the better of me.
With a heavy heart mother and I walked down to get a hot drink and pick up my test sheets….and that’s when it happened….that’s when I had it confirmed for me once and for all that dressage is magical voodoo because in Prelim 19 we had scored 67.95% and come 2nd in the open section and 2nd out of all 14 class entries too!
Things got stranger still when I picked up my test sheet for Prelim 15 and read the ‘71.09% 2nd place’ written at the top!!!! We came 3rd out of all 17 entries in that class too! I have never managed to break the illusive 70% barrier yet so I was overjoyed to have achieved a personal best, WE DID IT, WE SCORED OVER 70%!!!!!! Talk about ups and downs (and I don’t mean the bucking!) to add to that we won PRIZE MONEY too! £20! whoooooo hoooo!
So, even though I have a fat thumb which is turning blue, and I’ve just had to evict arena surface from my pants and pockets I can safely say that I just had a fab morning at dressage, I’m going to celebrate with some pain killers, a cup of tea, and a double decker because I’m so rock n’ roll!