Gia - session 1036 - Portofino dressage show

 I took Gia to the Portofino dressage show yesterday to do the Starter A test.  This would be her first time cantering at a show since her surgery.  Warm up went fairly well.  She was a little nervous, but nothing out of the ordinary.  She had great energy, was nicely forward, and I was able to work on suppling her and straightening her.  When we worked on the canter, she was fairly obedient.  I came a little out of the stirrups to allow her to balance without the interference of my seat.  She cantered around for quite a bit in both directions.  

Then I went to finish our warm up by running through our test.  Suddenly, she was tight, anxious, not listening to my aids, and everything I asked her to do was interpreted as "canter?"  I worked through her sudden change as best I could, as she also threw in a few bucks, showing her displeasure,  here and there.  We sort of had it together by the time we had to go in, but not really.

Our class was in the covered arena, and the atmosphere there only made things worse.  Gia wanted nothing to do with that arena.  She resisted going in, but finally did.  She trotted off fairly well, but her entrance at A was messy.  That was only the beginning ... The trot work was mostly ok.  The walk work was ok, and the free walk was good.  The canter never happened, but if we could have gotten a score for bucking instead, that would have been good.  I was proud that despite how horrible it all was in the middle, I was able to get her together in the end and come down centerline with a decent trot and halt/salute.

Definitely not our best day, but there will be another ...

One of the VERY few good moments in our test


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