Show Recap: June Dressage Schooling Show

Montego and I finally made it to our first schooling dressage show of the season! A little later than I was hoping to because ideally I would love to show before the heat of the summer (me + heat = a disaster). Our plan was to enter in Training 2 and Training 3 to attempt at getting some qualifying scores for our GMO end of year championship show, and see where we are starting out this year. This was also the first time I was going to be trailering my own trailer and horse to the show rather than just riding passenger.

I got to the barn about 3 hours before I was planning to pull out to make sure I had everything in order. We are lucky the show is only a 7 minute drive from our barn so super low key drive to get there, a perfect maiden voyage to test everything out. I planned on just bathing Montego, cleaning my tack, loading up the trailer, and doing some other things around the barn before leaving. Probably over estimated how much time I needed, but it was nice to not feel rushed.

Montego has been on solo-turnout for a while 1. due to him mounting Luna and 2. he has been acting as a buddy for the horse currently on stall rest due to colic surgery. For some reason, he decided he no longer could stand not seeing any friends and continued to SCREAM while getting his bath which he never does. Decided braiding was really overkill for such a low-key show so we skipped that, but I did give him a nice 1/2 dose of Perfect Prep to make sure he was a chiller by the time we arrived at the show.

We were one of the last two scheduled riders for the day, but the lady in between us ended up being a no show so we brought the show home. Our warm-up was mediocre, but I am not a big fan of a long warm-up anyway so I was ready to just see what we were gonna get in the ring. Montego was feeling a little tight and resistant to bending through his back so I figured we might get some tension points in our tests. He is really due to get his hocks done which I think will make his overall demeanor much happier in the sandbox.

Our Test 2 test definitely did not feel like our best ride, but he was clean and concise in his transitions and we got some great feedback from the judge. I am heavy on my inside rein to bend instead of pushing him with my inside leg to outside rein (something I am working on constantly in lessons). We still managed to score a 70% so on par with our previous tests.

Test 3, I was a bit scattered brain after a long day so far, he was tired from no break in between and I was chasing him around more this test to get any sort of energy we had left. My geometry for this test was WAYYY off… problem of riding in a shorter and wider ring than regulation. But the judge still loved Montego and we scored a 68.27%. I am really happy with both tests and it gives us a good list to work on for our show season this year.

These two solid scores definitely put us on a great track for the rest of the year, now for planning the rest of our season and getting Luna started in the dressage world too!