Cadence and me at our first show.

After our first show we are one third of the way to earning the bronze!  We achieved scores over 60% in first level!  It was an amazing experience, with emotions

ranging from “why am I putting

myself through this?” to tears of joy after I successfully completed my first test. Cadence was wonderful.  It was nice to have a partner who had been there before, and one who didn’t turn into a lunatic at the show grounds.  Cadence was a gentleman all weekend.  All of our mistakes were from rider error.  So……I’ve been studying the judges’ comments and will hopefully have most of those corrected for our next show in June.

Now that he’s unofficially for sale I think about what is coming next.  Cadence has been the perfect horse for me.  I know he’s calm, level-headed and willing to work and he does his best every day.   I know all of his buttons and how eager he is to please, and how a simple “good boy” will encourage him to work even harder.  We are truly a team.  I’m  never afraid on him.  Whether we are working indoors, outdoors or hacking around outside he is a gentleman.  What is horse #2 going to be like?   What am I going to have to give up to get a bigger mover?  Is it worth it?  If I get a younger horse, am I going to lose all of the confidence that Cadence gave me?  Am I going to be frustrated  bringing up a green horse and hanging around first level for the next couple of years instead of having a school master showing me the way to a higher level?

My daughter & Cadence at a schooling show in May 2012

she says I’m at second level I am truly at second level.  I also know Cadence isn’t the same horse that he was six months ago. He’s better! I used to prefer to ride without stirrups; I couldn’t keep my feet in the stirrups and it was easier to ride without them.  That has changed. I rarely lose my stirrups anymore.  Yesterday in her determination to improve my seat, my trainer took away my stirrups when we were working on canter/walk transitions.  I was thinking this was a good thing.  However the new Cadence is much more forward than he was six months ago.  And I quickly realized that riding without stirrups isn’t nearly as easy as it was in the past.  Cadence, being the gentleman that he is, wasn’t going to shift into a higher gear if he had an unbalanced rider on his back.  So, those transitions didn’t go so well for us.  But alas, my trainer doesn’t let me struggle for long.  Once I had my stirrups back it was amazingly easy to do those canter/walk transitions.  As a bonus my seat had improved.

Next week our focus is going to be on sitting trot.  Ugh…..

I tried out a horse at the barn that was bred for Grand Prix movements.  When I felt the trot on this horse I couldn’t believe the difference.  It was like I was sitting on a rubber band!   It took everything I had to remain balanced in the saddle while posting, and the sitting trot was even more difficult.  I was amazed when my trainer said that my legs and body were in the correct position during the trot.  He was so sensitive I accidentally asked for a flying lead change by just a shift in my seat, when we were supposed to be doing just the canter one loop of first level.   He was also so much more forward than Cadence.  While I’ve made vast improvements on Cadence, he is still my “steady eddy.”   I completely understand now why people don’t buy the upper level-type horses when they are first learning dressage.  They’d never stay in the saddle!  I’m still exhilarated thinking about that ride, three days afterwards.  I know now the movement I want in my next horse.

Today I rode with my new spurs.  These are simple blunt end, 1 and 3/8 Sprenger spurs.  However the difference was simply amazing.  I had a new horse. I actually had to hold him back at the canter.  Two days ago, he was moving so slow we had to go back to what we were working on a month ago – getting him to move forward.  I came home depressed and frustrated.  Today, we moved a step ahead.  It was such a great feeling.

The next step is to work on suppleness.  During the one loop today Cadence went to X as an “8″ but ended up as a “5″ when he’s going back to the wall.  We’ll be working on suppleness to get him flexible enough for the counter canter.

However the first show is in May and I get nauseous at the thought of it.  I do not feel as if I am ready for it.   I haven’t done the entire first level test in several months, although we are working on various parts of first and second level tests.  The more progress I make, the more particular I am becoming and the more I realize the difference between a 60% test and a 75% test.  My own goals have changed from the bare minimum score for a bronze, to one more towards 70%.  I have around 30 more lessons, and another 20 rides on my own until that first schooling show at the beginning of May which is the precursor to the rated show, and my first official scores towards my bronze later in May.

• My feet don’t fall out of the stirrups more than twice a lesson.
• I can canter all the way around the arena, keeping him in a marginally questionable collection.
• My horse is mostly on the vertical at all times.
• I don’t rock so far back it looks like I’m napping at the canter.
• We no longer cut all of the corners in the arena.
• I know where the letter “E” is even though it is no longer on the door.

I admit, at cocktail parties I keep my accomplishments to myself.  Somehow, something is lost in the translation when speaking to my non-horsey friends. In fact, I found myself struggling a few weeks ago, trying to explain why I didn’t want to go skiing.  “Because I need two scores at first, two at second and two at third in order to reach my goal and I spent a ton of money on lessons and board not to mention all of the time spent at the barn. (Oh and by the way I am sorry I snuck out of your party to go ride last summer – it was a beautiful day and I just couldn’t resist, and I was only gone for a couple of hours.) And I’m doing all of this so I can hopefully get those two scores at first at my first show and I don’t want to take the risk of breaking my leg and ruining all of the work that I have done.” sounded quite odd.  From now on I’ll just say I’m out of wax.

We’ve been working on the canter over the last two months and Cadence is improving remarkably.  We earned a comment of “that’s a ten” by our trainer last week.  And our trainer doesn’t make statements like that unless she means it.  He’s much stronger to the left than to the right.  The “ten” comment occurred to the left.  But on Friday we received a compliment to the right.  For THE FIRST TIME EVER!  That’s a huge accomplishment.

Another milestone has been the collected canter.  When Cadence is warmed up he is a wonderful mover.  He’s holding himself together longer now.  And last week we began working on his collected canter.  It’s such a wonderful feeling, having your horse collected underneath you.  I never knew there was three stages to a workout.  The walk. The warm-up and then the collection.  I received a “talkin-to” during my first week at the new barn, for skipping through the steps and asking for collection too soon.  Now we walk for at least 15 minutes before the first trot. I focus on limbering him up and focus on turning him to the right, which is his bad side.

With our new trainer, we can’t move forward on any movements until we have mastered the basics.  I’ve noticed her over the last two weeks slowly introducing more movements, such a leg yields and serpentines.  Whenever she asks us to do something other than a circle I am thrilled with our progress, because I know we are progressing.  Or at least we are close to mastering the circles.  At all gaits.  So I was thrilled last week when the order came through for a canter serpentine.  The first simple change was okay.  We did it within a few steps. The second was a failure.  And then we moved on to something else.

Throughout my year of dressage training I’ve struggled with the simple change.  For whatever reason, something that should be simple is not.  The name of the movement taunts me.  Simple…simple…simple.  When we practice alone, Cadence does the simple change.  During a lesson, not so much.

I felt relieved when during the next lesson another order for the canter serpentine was heard through my headphone.  Time for redemption.  I eagerly aimed Cadence at centerline, and failure.  Epic failure.  Not even a teaser first loop.  It was that awful running trot.  We moved onto something else.

So today, practicing alone, we worked on the canter serpentine.  He was brilliant.  Perfect simple change every time.  We did three changes, went back the other way, did three more changes, went back the other way, and did three more.  And of course, we were alone.  No one to witness our masterpiece. Hopefully we’ll be able to keep it together during the next lesson.

The last few days I noticed Cadence eagerly places his head over the stall door, waiting for me to put on his halter.  He seems to almost enjoy our workouts.  We’re working at a much more forward pace than before.  And I’m having to spend more time in the posting trot, which I always avoided before because my legs became too busy and I never felt like I was doing it correctly.  We’ve figured out it’s slow moving Cadence that makes the legs busy.  When he trots forward my position improves greatly and my legs quiet down.   His canter remains as an area needing major improvement.  It’s difficult to keep my legs long when I’m constantly having to remind him to stay in the canter.  Or, not cut the corner.  We’re working on that and on him being more responsive to my aids.  When I say trot he has to trot off.  When I say canter he has to canter. Well, that’s the goal at least.