Dressage debut at Addington

This weekend Grace and I officially ended our 'getting to know each other' period and started our busy schedule of Winter events. On Saturday we boxed Grace up surprisingly quietly and headed off in the Autumnal sunshine to Addington Manor Equestrian Centre. Our first test was Prelim 13, and after a mistake on the first element (oops!) I couldn’t relax and clearly passed my tension through my seat to Grace. She decided that the judges and arena markers were out to get her, and that the boundary of the ménage was actually a show jump in disguise, after which she proceeded to try and jump out in a break for freedom! Not a successful test, and entirely my fault... but luckily I had a 20 minute ‘cool down’ period to collect my thoughts.  

Entering the arena for Prelim 7, both Grace and I were in a much more relaxed frame of mind. The test ran brilliantly, I couldn’t help myself from grinning much of the way through. The only mishap was when Grace locked onto the edge of the arena again... definitely going to have to try and solve that one! As we left the arena I felt amazing, even more so when I realised that we had scored 65%, and got an incredible 9/10 for our canter work - what a fantastic mare! With this score, and a placing of 3rd overall in a class of 29 competitors, we have qualified for the Addington Winter Championships on 10th April 2010. Our first competitive outing together, our first rosette and our first championship qualification – all in one go. A brilliant start to our partnership!  Huge thanks to my partner Craig for successfully rebuilding the gearbox on the Landy with just 48 hours to go so that he could still towe us, and to my Dad for calling the tests for me, and for putting up with my mood after Prelim 13! Bring on next weekend...