Wairarapa A&P - Friday

Another early start - so my friend Alicia (Kody's rider) came over Thursday evening, and we were on the road before 5am on Friday with Violet and Kody to head over to Wairarapa A&P in Clareville. The drive over was easy with good weather for the Rimutaka Hill, so we made it there in great time.

Settled ourselves in and eventually had my first class. Friday was only dressage for us, so a very laid-back day. We were doing Novice 2.3 first off, and Violet warmed up so nicely! Then there was a bit of a fu-fu with the official timing and we were put back 50 minutes (argh) then pulled forward about 35 minutes after that (double argh). So we went in a little overcooked, but a few transitions outside the arena seemed to get Vi nice and focused before we started up the centreline. A warmup pic, and trotting in the arena:

I was very happy with the test. Our walk needs a bit of work, I seem to switch off my riding when we transition to walk, which leads Violet to become inattentive. So our walk marks weren't fantastic, but the rest of the sheet was pretty good with mostly 7's and 8's:

Our final mark was just over 62% (64% from the judge at C, and 60% from the other judge). One judge wanted to see us going forward a little more, but overall the comments were really positive - even "some really lovely moments" which I thought was nice. Those results put us a few tenths of a mark off 4th place, but I was just really happy with the outcome overall - especially for my first ever registered dressage test:

During our lunchbreak between tests Miss Vi found herself a new favourite snack - mini donuts. She would do absolutely anything for them. So cute. I think she stole half a packet off Alicia, then another half packet off me! The next test was 2.5 which I had trouble memorizing - there is a long trot in it which I kept thinking didn't 'fit' - so oops... once in the arena I just missed it completely! What a twit!:

Violet and I were both a bit off-focus after the course error, but then got back on track for another really nice test. I was super stoked to pick up a '9' for one of the circle movements, and nothing less than an '8' for any of the other circlework. Our final score was 61.48 after my silly course error. One of the sheet comments down the bottom was "such a good partnership" which put a real big smile on my face for the rest of the day. We picked up 4th place in that test:

After all the dressage was finished we took Kody for a quick ride to let him have a look at the sights - he was really spooked to begin with but only took 10 minutes to calm down and be the dude that he is. A mob of sheep moved in beside the truck at bedtime, they seemed to be enjoying the cross country fences:

So it was a very successful (I think!) first attempt at registered dressage. I'm very grateful for Violet (and all of Rackil's great schooling) for showing me the ropes, so to speak.