Gia - session 755 and 756 - Daniel Stewart clinic

 A few months ago, I submitted an application for the 2 day Daniel Stewart clinic at the NCDCTA festival.  Gia and I were accepted into the clinic, which was this weekend at Portofino Equestrian Center in Clayton.  I had no idea what to expect about the clinic.  I knew it was about rider psychology, but I didn't really know what all that would entail.

On Saturday, we arrived and found a place to lunge.  Gia was a bit perturbed that there were a couple of goats near the round pen.  It took her a while to settle, and I'm not sure that she really even did after about 30 minutes, but we had run out of time lunging, and had to be ready for the clinic.

I rode in group 2 of the clinic, but one of the requirements of the clinic was that you had to be present for the entire thing so that you could understand the "rules".  As I quickly found out, the point of the clinic was to stress your brain, not your body, and really get your thinking.  In a nutshell, you had to ride a simple dressage "test", of 3-6 movements, but they were called out to you as you trotted down centerline.  Did I mention that you also had to complete your test as close to "optimum time" as possible?  There were other challenges that he added along the way, such as a specific letter to start and end your test at, as well as specific gaits and positions to include.  At the end, you received a score of penalties, and if you went over the maximum number of penalties, then you "owed" him 50-100 sit ups!  

After I watched the first group, I left to get Gia tacked and warmed up for my ride.  Luckily, we would not be asked to canter, but the other stuff was daunting enough.  She warmed up OK.  There were a few places that she did not want to go near outside or inside the warm up arena.  She was also TERRIFIED of the fans in the covered arena, where the clinic was being held.  I was also concerned that she would be worried about all the people that were so close on the sidelines.  Luckily, she was not.  She was actually nicely focused on what we had to do!  I will include the videos of my rides, when I post the blog, but long story short, I did NOT receive any sit ups!  I even earned enough negative sit ups that I was able to "share" them with the other riders in my group that did earn sit ups.

Day two started a bit earlier, but I was in group 3 this time.  I arrived, got Gia lunged (she wasn't scared of the goats this time), and then sat down to watch the first two groups go, and learn the "game", as it included jumps this time.  For this event, we had to try to collect points that were posted on the jumps (a lot like Gambler's Choice), but we had to stay close to our "Optimum Time" again, as well as count our strides out before the jumps.  Other challenges included landing on the correct lead, starting and ending on a certain jump, and a "Squirrel" jump that was set higher than everything else, and on precarious jump cups, but worth extra points.  Any penalties would lower our score, and if we didn't achieve a set number of points - you guessed it - sit ups!

Gia was in the 2'6" division, which was fine, but what I didn't know is that we were going to have to canter our first jump!  Our warm up went a little better today, no spooking at random things.  She even went over the warm up jumps fine.  There was a bit of small bucking when I had to ask for the canter, and occasionally throughout the courses, but it wasn't as bad as I had thought it would be. We even took some tight turns, and had some good jumps!  We did, however, pick up many penalty points for a variety of reasons.  All in all, I think we earned 100 sit ups on the first round, but no sit ups on the other two rounds.  

This was definitely a fun and educational clinic in a lot of ways.  Gia and I learned that we can work together under pressure ... both of us.  We just have to work on trusting that more ...