Thursday 4 May 2017

Throwback Thursday

Throwback to 2009 or 2010 when I was riding my anglo-arab mare and heart-horse Ellie and scoring pretty well at First Level.

8s! Four of them! I definitely didn't appreciate those as much back then as I do now

I was going through some old ribbons and tests and found this one. It was just from a schooling show, but 63% is a respectable score. More importantly, check out those four 8s! Also two 7s in the collectives, on First Level Test 4! I would be thrilled to get these scores now, even at training level. This seems like so long ago and a level that feels so hard to get back to, but it's good to remind myself that I was there once. I trained one horse (who had never done dressage until me) up to second level and I can do it again (Unfortunately I can't find my later tests, but we improved at First Level, were solidly schooling second, and then showed at Second once in 2012 before she foundered).

Ellie and I circa 2009

This time around I have a different horse who needs to learn more slowly, and I have more problems with my equitation to fight, but I also have a lot more knowledge about what I'm aiming for and how to get there. We can do it!

4 comments:

  1. Aw I love that last pic!! I also often go back and look over stuff I did before with my last horse to remind myself that, YES I can do it and we will get there again even if it's hard to see the incremental day to day progress right now.

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    1. Looks like we both chose yesterday to be retrospective to our past competitions with our previous mounts :)

      I love that picture too, I don't have many photos of me riding her (usually nobody to operate the camera), so I really treasure the photos I do have.

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  2. I feel like with your average green horse, the biggest step is just getting them to training level! So much to know, so many 'basics' (that are legit complicated and hard for them) to teach. You've totally got his!

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    1. I think this is true but I was worried it was just me, I'm so glad you said this, thanks!

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