Friday night I went to a local riding club to do some dressage. This is somewhat like the clear round jumping where you will get a ribbon for being clear, in dressage you get a ribbon for being above 60%. Aristocrat did a fairly easy test with some leg yield and rein back. Cassius was entered in his first dressage with flying changes. He is quite stable at home, but not as good at competitions yet it turned out.
Over all the horses did their absolute best. Their jockey however really needs to re-install the GPS. I have only once before forgotten a test, that was because Cassius was trying to buck me off. Friday however I managed to not only forget one test, I forgot both and had TWO mistakes in one of them. I simply cannot explain it. This had quite the impact on the results, but without the mistakes I would have been above 60% on both horses. With two mistakes and a lot of bucking Cassius ended just below and I am very pleased with him. I would have never thought it was possible to get around 60% on that level on him. Hard work and a lot of lessons pays off.
Aristocrat ended around 65% with my mistake, he has gotten a lot better at home but still forgets to breathe when he is out. He will get much higher scores when I can actually help him around the course.
I have done some editing of the video this time. Both because there is no reason to see me losing track of direction, but also because I know that no-one wants to watch 20 min of mediocre dressage on an amateur eventing horse. Aristocrat first and then Cassius (just fast forward if you don’t want to see it all. I totally understand.)