Excited....

Mary Poppins

Mary Poppins

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Oct 10, 2004
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I'm so excited, that I just can't hide it!!!

I wonder if I will ever stop being so overexcited about having a horse. I have owned him for 2 and a half years and I am just getting worse!

On Sunday I am off to another dressage competition. I had to cancel my outing last Sunday because of the wind, but this event is a sheltered drive that does not involve motorway or fast roads so even if it's windy/rainy we are going.

We have to leave at 7:30am so I will need to be at the yard at 6am to get him and my lorry ready. I can't wait!!! We have absolutely no chance of getting placed because looking down the list of riders there are some really good combinations who win everything. Which leads me to ask the question, if you consistently win at prelim dressage, why not move up to novice and let the people who really do ride at prelim level (i.e. ME) have a chance?
 
I think for some horses there is a cut off in dressage when they just can't go any higher but I would have said that most horses should be capable of Novice tests with the right schooling (although some people may just not be able to school to that level for whatever reason eg, no area to ride in frequently or no access to lessons). I know you always get those people who will trophy hunt or just genuinely feel comfortable and confident with prelim tests but the thought of doing something a little more advanced is just too much for them. Having looked at a few novice tests and read for one all the movements seem to come very quickly one after the other which does put people off.
 
A very lovely girl on my yard had this problem for some time. Her Welshy just didn't 'get' canter until she was 7, she couldn't do it. So she was out winning prelims but couldn't even contemplate Novice without their canter in place.
 
It's just when I look back over the previous scores, there are people scoring 70%-75% and winning all the prelim classes over the last 6 shows. If you are consistently scoring that high at each prelim outing, why not give novice a try? Don't they want to challenge themselves? It's only unaffiliated and supposed to be a fun, supportive environment suitable for people starting out in dressage. My RI is already saying that I should be looking to do some novice competitions at the end of the year. If Ben and I can give novice a try, surely these people can?

Most shows have a restricted and open section at prelim which I think is great. If you have never won at prelim you go in the restricted section and once you have that red rossette you can go into the open section.

It would give me HUGE satisfaction to beat one of the high scoring regular competitiors. Not holding my breath though!
 
Laura_107 said:
A very lovely girl on my yard had this problem for some time. Her Welshy just didn't 'get' canter until she was 7, she couldn't do it. So she was out winning prelims but couldn't even contemplate Novice without their canter in place.
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But how can you win at prelim without being able to canter? You have to do lots of canter in all the prelim tests?
 
While I can appreciate what your saying MP, maybe some people just don't want to go any higher, not everyone is hugely competitive and some people would be happy to stay where they are, there could be any number of reasons why they do what they do that we don't know or appreciate, yes it's unfair on the people below them but, maybe you and Ben will just have to up your game and go out there and beat them then you can happily leave them behind and follow your dreams.
 
Kite_Rider said:
While I can appreciate what your saying MP, maybe some people just don't want to go any higher, not everyone is hugely competitive and some people would be happy to stay where they are, there could be any number of reasons why they do what they do that we don't know or appreciate, yes it's unfair on the people below them but, maybe you and Ben will just have to up your game and go out there and beat them then you can happily leave them behind and follow your dreams.
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You are right, it does give me something to aim for.

It's one of the reasons that I might go affiliated once we both have some more experience of different venues. When you get a certain number of BP points you have to compete at the higher level so the competition is fairer. Something to think about in a few months I think.
 
interesting points raised.

well I am stuck in Intros haha. This being because our canter is atrocious and i am very nervous when cantering. I would like to do some prelims before the end of the summer if i can get back schooling. We often get placed in Intros, but for us the jump to prelim is truly massive in our schooling ability so we will remain just doing intros for the time being. I wonder if thats the case for others regarding prelims to novice tests.

I too have a comp on sunday, i am just doing an Intro test - it will be my first proper comp in about 18 months, but i am purely going to make the use of a big lovely school to ride in and then have a bit of feedback from the test, all of that for just £11….far cheaper than the £25 it would cost me to hire that school (our school has been flooded all winter so am starting to consider doing more comps just for the sake of having somewhere to school.
 
I do get were you are coming from MP and I have felt your frustration to.

Now go purely on my score and how the test felt to be placed is just a bonus.

Ginger and I have not competed since last July my ankle stopped play and so we have lost 6 months of training time during a period that he needed the constant work. Now the weather is so bad I can't get him back in the work consistently he is playing up I have been away on course and things just aren't going well. I feel like will have to start all over again in March when the weather gets better that will nearly be a year out:frown:

We should of been doing novice this year yet we are back at prelim.

Good luck for the weekend ladies
 
Laura_107 said:
Sorry, numpty brain not working! I meant between intro and prelim!
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I understand completely why people find it difficult to go upto prelim from intro. Many people are not confident of cantering 20m circles and this can put many riders off.

I'm not out to go rossette hunting and I don't really care where I am placed, but I do want to be judged in a class with people who are at the same level as me. I guess I will just have to 'up my game'.
 
juliecwuk said:
I too have a comp on sunday, i am just doing an Intro test - it will be my first proper comp in about 18 months, but i am purely going to make the use of a big lovely school to ride in and then have a bit of feedback from the test, all of that for just £11….far cheaper than the £25 it would cost me to hire that school (our school has been flooded all winter so am starting to consider doing more comps just for the sake of having somewhere to school.
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Good luck for Sunday. We will have to do update threads with our well earned glass of wine on Sunday evening.
 
OwnedbyChanter said:
I do get were you are coming from MP and I have felt your frustration to.

Now go purely on my score and how the test felt to be placed is just a bonus.

Ginger and I have not competed since last July my ankle stopped play and so we have lost 6 months of training time during a period that he needed the constant work. Now the weather is so bad I can't get him back in the work consistently he is playing up I have been away on course and things just aren't going well. I feel like will have to start all over again in March when the weather gets better that will nearly be a year out:frown:

We should of been doing novice this year yet we are back at prelim.

Good luck for the weekend ladies
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I hope that you can get Ginger back in work soon. We are all feeling the weather. I was able to box Ben over to the indoor school at the riding school over the weekend, but for most of this week I have barely been able to do anything. Looking at the rain chucking it down outside my office window I doubt I will be getting any riding in today either!
 
I understand your frustrations completely MP but I think you just have to learn to look at it a different way.

In France your average showjumping class at an average-sized show has 60 to 90 competitors - a class of 40 is considered small - so it is very difficult to get placed (usually top 8) as there is so much competition. And unfortunately there is a lot of money here, even just on the amateur circuit, and a lot of the competitors have really excellent horses that will take them round clear regardless of how well (or how badly!) they ride. I have a super horse to compete, with lots of experience, but he is not a push-button horse and if I don't ride him correctly we will have refusals and poles down. And even when I do ride him correctly there's no guarantee we will go clear, because he has stiff knees and can't always snap them up enough to clear the poles. Add my confidence issues into the mix, and needless to say I gave up on winning stuff a loooong time ago :happy:

Instead I have learned to forget about the other competitors and focus on how well I do things - it has become less about my score and placing, and more about how happy I am with how I rode. Our score often doesn't reflect how I feel about my round, sometimes I'll have maybe 8 or 12 faults in a round but still be happy with the way I rode, and sometimes I'll get a clear round that I don't think I deserved. For me the achievement is in improving my riding and getting the best I can out of the horse - competing is just a way of doing that under a bit of pressure. If I ever end up in a prizegiving I think I might just pass out from shock :giggle: What I'm trying to say is not to think about competing as trying to beat other people - think of it as an exercise in self-improvement. I'm coming to realise that competing is more about beating myself than beating other people!
 
joosie said:
I understand your frustrations completely MP but I think you just have to learn to look at it a different way.

In France your average showjumping class at an average-sized show has 60 to 90 competitors - a class of 40 is considered small - so it is very difficult to get placed (usually top 8) as there is so much competition. And unfortunately there is a lot of money here, even just on the amateur circuit, and a lot of the competitors have really excellent horses that will take them round clear regardless of how well (or how badly!) they ride. I have a super horse to compete, with lots of experience, but he is not a push-button horse and if I don't ride him correctly we will have refusals and poles down. And even when I do ride him correctly there's no guarantee we will go clear, because he has stiff knees and can't always snap them up enough to clear the poles. Add my confidence issues into the mix, and needless to say I gave up on winning stuff a loooong time ago :happy:

Instead I have learned to forget about the other competitors and focus on how well I do things - it has become less about my score and placing, and more about how happy I am with how I rode. Our score often doesn't reflect how I feel about my round, sometimes I'll have maybe 8 or 12 faults in a round but still be happy with the way I rode, and sometimes I'll get a clear round that I don't think I deserved. For me the achievement is in improving my riding and getting the best I can out of the horse - competing is just a way of doing that under a bit of pressure. If I ever end up in a prizegiving I think I might just pass out from shock :giggle: What I'm trying to say is not to think about competing as trying to beat other people - think of it as an exercise in self-improvement. I'm coming to realise that competing is more about beating myself than beating other people!
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Thanks for that. You say exactly what my RI says. I don't think that she wants me to get downhearted when I am beaten and keeps telling me to just focus on Ben and just be pleased with him if when he goes well.

One of the best things I love about my horse is just how calm he is in show environments. He had never travelled and been out to a show before I got him but he has taken it all in his stride. At our last outing there were horses rearing, spooking and going mental all over the place. Ben was just perfect and I even had someone ask to walk round with me as her horse was going mental and Ben calmed him down!

I will report back on Sunday!
 
I don't do dressage comps but same thing annoys me jumping wise....people who are clearly capable of doing 90cm-1m jumps (proved when they decided to whack the warm up fence to silly heights) and then go jumping the 60cm classes....:stomp:

Hope the comp goes well MP, sure it will!! I admire people who can go and have fun competing, I get way to wound up and nervous to enjoy competing!! :giggle:
 
Vicki100 said:
I don't do dressage comps but same thing annoys me jumping wise....people who are clearly capable of doing 90cm-1m jumps (proved when they decided to whack the warm up fence to silly heights) and then go jumping the 60cm classes....:stomp:

Hope the comp goes well MP, sure it will!! I admire people who can go and have fun competing, I get way to wound up and nervous to enjoy competing!! :giggle:
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Thank you. I LOVE going to shows. I'm not really competitive, at least I didn't think that i was, but if I am totally honest I would love a rosette. I am hoping to do more jumping once the ground gets better. I just want to do it all - dressage, jumping, showing. My RI thinks that I should aim for a mini one day event in the summer but I'm not too sure about that. Solid jumps don't fall down.....
 
Thanks for asking guys.

We had so much fun, we really did. Ben travelled really well and we seem to have got over our little loading blip as he now just walks straight on. The venue was lovely with really nice people. Everyone was chatting in the warm up ring and saying nice things about each others horses. There were some other heavier type horses like Ben and I didn't feel the odd one out at all, I felt right at home. I even got invited to join a riding club with one lady and meet up hacking with another.

There were some firsts for me. I got on him in the lorry park and walked round the lorry park before we went into the warm up. This is very trivial to most, but I have always walked him in hand to the warm up ring before. In the warm up he initially had a look round, but it was an interested nose rather than looking at things to spook at. He was completely relaxed.

The test was in an indoor school and he has always become tense going from an outdoor warm up into an indoor, but at the show he was no different at all. It was like he was at home. The first test I was very pleased with him. I felt that he was rhythmical, he was in a nice contact and the test was accurate. Unfortunately the judge didn't agree and said that he was lazy and I was working to hard. I didn't feel like I was working hard at all and certainly didn't feel that I was pushing him on, but it's interesting that she thought that. We got 59% and last place!

I went into the second test thinking that we had to go faster. And we did, but I felt I was rushing him and we lost our rhythm and all the connection because he just went flat. My RI is always saying not to confuse impulsion with speed and I was annoyed with myself when I came out because I felt that I hadn't ridden him in the way that I had been training him. The judge didn't like this test either and said nothing about impulsion but stated that he looked rushed and connection was lost. We got 57.8% but not sure where that placed as we left before the end of the class and the results are not up yet.

So I had a great day, I don't really care that the judge didn't like Ben. I love him and enjoyed riding him and that's all that matters. I will certainly be going there again.
 
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