Heels Down, Kick On

In the New Year, I set myself a(n albeit small) goal of trying to become marginally less shit at dressage.   This afternoon was our third ever -and final, for a while- pure dressage outing. And even though we haven’t come home bedecked in ribbons, I do think we can tick ✅ the box of ‘getting better’ ☺️ . ...   Neither Flora nor I will ever be dressage stars. We are neither talented enough at this discipline, nor enjoy it enough. Flora especially can’t seem to find it in herself to be less tense when we are in the test situation itself, even though she’s come on in leaps and bounds at home in our lessons and schooling sessions and will happily flop round beautifully in the warm up! Even on our hacks, leg yielding and transitions have become the order of the day and have replaced our usual pottering or galloping about 🙈 . Alas, the judge’s comments are always the same: 6s and 7s, a “lovely little horse with correct paces” who is “well/kindly/carefully/sym...

Unaffiliated Prelim again, but this time, it’s the second Prelim class of the day rather than the first. Simply due to the fact we’re relying on a lift from a very helpful, lorry-owning friend, partaking in the final class of the day. And therefore, we are attempting to make the smallest nuisance of ourselves possible. Anyway, anyone who read my post after our last attempt might remember that my biggest issue was the big, fat, inevitable MEMORY LOSS 🧠❌. And that was a simple test. This one, even though it’s the same bloody level, is complex! Not in terms of the movements, just the basic route around the arena🙈. Hence, I am sitting with a Merlot, drawing silly little diagrams whilst trying to visualise the test without looking down at the paper. Like some kind of weird spiritual medium, allowing the Dressage Gods to use my unworthy, shite-at-dressage body as a vessel to communicate the test to the paper. It’s not the first time this kind of mental powercut has occurred eithe...

Today was our first ever pure dressage competition. Previously, we’ve done three dressage tests ever in our lives, but always part of a mini ODE or Arena Event. It was only a local, unaffiliated Prelim – but it still had me questioning why we do this to ourselves… it seems to me that competing with your horse is only 10% fun, and 90% a rather costly way to sh*t yourself. Allowing for the fact it’s been a full year since we went anywhere (with the exception of a show a 15 minute hack away in the summer), the stress levels were running high. I was so organised originally: we’d been practising and improving with both our lessons and ‘Project Relax’. I spent yesterday schooling, tack cleaning and boot polishing in my bathtub (tack only – I did not get in with it) and running white saddle pads through the washing machine when my husband wasn’t looking. My stuff was packed. I even wrote myself a little itinerary for the morning. Then, the alarm went off as planned at 6am. I hadn’t...

It’s been 11 days since Project Relax (or Project ‘Chill The F*ck Out as I really like to call it) began. Only 6 of those have been ‘school days’. The rest have been hacking days or (sadly) rest days, due to a little inconvenience known as ‘work’. However, I am pleased to report (in fact, I’m over the bloody moon to report) that I am genuinely seeing some progress with Flora’s work in the school.   My last post described the first session we spent schooling alone, after a lot of tension and head throwing the day before, running through a dressage test with a friend. It was a pretty successful session, with a vast improvement seen on the video recorded by Alice. The next night, we had a lesson. Our instructor let me spend a long time working Flora in in walk, just like the night before, but with more leg yielding and some turn on the forehand at the corners of some squares to encourage her to step under from the beginning. Once she was warmer and looser, we moved...