Did you ever get that turd polished?
Jun. 15th, 2019 03:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickA while back, I mentioned that I'd be signing up to ride some fucking intro dressage tests to see if I sucked any goddamn less than I sucked three years ago.
I did sign up for dressage tests. Intro B (two circles, a free walk, and two halts. Walk-trot, no cantering) and Intro C (four circles, a free walk, two halts, and some cantering). I figured we would do pretty well on Intro B because I really truly have been working on it and Da Birb and I can lay down some serious fucking trot circles what are round and have rhythm and shit. We are Trot Circle Experts, you betcha. I entered Intro C mostly because I wasn't going to put two hundred miles on the diesel pickup for one fucking dressage test. I did not expect much out of Intro C but what the hell.
In order to get there in a timely fashion, I washed the (mostly-white) horse the night before and hand-grazed him until he was dry. (You do not put a white, wet horse in the field unless you want a patchy brown horse. Having them be dry first improves your odds of having a white horse in the morning. He is not in a stall because (a) we do not have stalls at home and (b) when he's BEEN put in a stall, he lies down in the shit and then is not brown so much as manure-green. It is not really a victory, the manure-green color.) Horse was still mostly white in the morning, which WAS a victory. :)
Truck ran up to Outer Bumfuck Egypt (I live in Greater Rednecklandia, but there are no dressage shows here. If I want to do a dressage show, I have to drive to OBE, an hour and a half away up past Prince Gallitzin, whoever he was.) like a freaking trooper. It missed once on the long uphill slog but that may have been a slow shift (it's an automatic) because it didn't do it again the rest of the day. Also it didn't light any lights of engine fuckery. I'm calling it an anomaly and scoring this portion of the program for the good guys, too.
I got there in plenty of time. Go me!
I backed up the truck and trailer and parked without hitting anyone. Hooray!
I spot-cleaned my not-filthy horse and tacked him up and didn't forget any pieces of tack AND stayed clean while doing it (two layers of clothes -- a get-dirty layer and a horse-show-clothes layer underneath -- seems to work for me). So Much Win!
I signed in at the announcer's stand with my spare copy of the coggins, got my number, and was entirely unrushed. Plus I had time to pee. Awesome!
I rode a polite and calm warmup in the warmup ring wherein Bird paid no mind to any of the other riders or horses and did his job like an old pro. Shocker, but I'll take it for the winning because we are On A Roll over here Gettin' Shit Done.
So at 10:06 or so (you get a ride time), we go in to ride Intro B. There was no winning of Intro B. He spooked at EVERY SINGLE LETTER and at the Judge's tent and flew into a frantic and LALALA CANNOT HEAR YOU trot at three thousand miles an hour. It was awful. Inverted, counterbent, horrific. AWFUL. SO MUCH AWFUL. No steering, no brakes, no brain. It was the worst.
I mean, we more-or-less did the pattern, but it was in no way a demonstration of our skill level. Calling this effort not our best work is in the running for Understatement of the Year. It was so bad. SO SO BAD.
How bad was it? (There is video, which I will attempt to secure for your viewing pleasure.) It was 59.69% bad with collective marks as follows:
Gaits: 6
Impulsion: 5.5
Submission: 5
Rider Position: 6
Effectiveness of aids: 6
Geometry: 5.5
*oof* That's gonna leave a mark.
In the "Further Remarks" portion, we have "Some loss of attention and bracing throughout. Needs relaxation."
Yeah. You don't say. Again, not our best work out there.
Reader, there were tears. I am so fucking soppy.
Instructor, who is doing her very best at, like 26 or something, to be instructory to me (49), "He might be feeding off your nerves. You looked a little tense out there. Have you tried breathing? Breathing is good. Maybe some breathing would help."
I resent helpful advice which is correct and appropriately given. I mean, I'll DO it and stuff but it makes me utterly furious that I NEED helpful advice. I should not need helpful advice and I hate that it has to be given to me and I hate that I will buckle like a total fucking pussy and DO the helpful advice (which is, indeed, helpful but WHY CAN'T I SEE IT ON MY OWN WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME?) even though it makes me fucking furious.
Instructor: "Would you like to try riding one of my horses at one of these shows? That might help us isolate what's going wrong."
No. No, I do not want to ride a lesson horse. That's not even remotely interesting to me.
At 10:20 we go to ride Intro C, which I do not particularly want to do because am now fraught as hell and having to pretend to be relaxed which I am not and to pretend like I don't care which I totally do and remember to breathe and shit. It has been maybe fifteen minutes since I got done with the Horrible Terrible No Good Very Bad Intro B test.
Intro C, recall, is the test I entered so that I wouldn't have to drive two hundred miles for one test. Apparently I'm OK with "one hundred miles per test" for some reason. Dunno. Anyway, this was not the one I figured we would do well at because he's still slightly wobbly on canter transitions and given our supernova of incompetence in Intro B, I did not trot into Intro C, fifteen minutes later, with any degree of enthusiasm.
So how did that go? 66.5%
Collective marks:
Gaits: 7
Impulsion: 6.5
Submission: 6.5
Rider position: 6.5
Effectiveness of aids: 7
Geometry: 6.5
Note that Submission has been fixed. A 6.5 is almost decent.
In Further Remarks we got "Good Job! much better accuracy!"
Yeah, because the horse wasn't flailing about like a goddamn upside-down freight train and was actually interested in listening to aids and stuff.
Here's the video of Intro C.
On individual elements of the test, I had an 8 (Circle Left 20 Meters, trotting) and two 7.5's (Circle Right 20 Meters, trotting; initial halt at x) and a 7 (free walk). There was one 5.5 where I FORGOT WHAT I WAS DOING (the Trot to Medium Walk transition between F and B) and there was a bit of an Oh Shit moment in that transition which is helpfully noted as "against rider's hand".
I was dead last in the Intro B class.
I was first place in the Intro C class. (There were only two of us but I still turned in a fucking solid Intro C effort.)
I think there might be something to this "remember to breathe" shit. Also had I managed some fucking breathing in Intro B, we would have won that class. I watched a lot of it to see the level of work being done there. We are totally CAPABLE of doing a good enough job to take the class. Just... gotta breathe.
The turd is not shiny yet, but I have been suckered into continuing to try to polish it.
Because this is a schooling show, the prizes aside from ribbons are small baggies of horse treats. Bird does not know what the fuck a horse treat is. He does not get anything that could pass as a Horse Treat except for early-autumn yellow-jacket riddled pears from the pear tree. Those are free and plentiful. Not sure Bird will be impressed with real horse treats but I'll try feeding them to him.
If he's not impressed, I know a Genie Pony who will eat almost anything...
I did sign up for dressage tests. Intro B (two circles, a free walk, and two halts. Walk-trot, no cantering) and Intro C (four circles, a free walk, two halts, and some cantering). I figured we would do pretty well on Intro B because I really truly have been working on it and Da Birb and I can lay down some serious fucking trot circles what are round and have rhythm and shit. We are Trot Circle Experts, you betcha. I entered Intro C mostly because I wasn't going to put two hundred miles on the diesel pickup for one fucking dressage test. I did not expect much out of Intro C but what the hell.
In order to get there in a timely fashion, I washed the (mostly-white) horse the night before and hand-grazed him until he was dry. (You do not put a white, wet horse in the field unless you want a patchy brown horse. Having them be dry first improves your odds of having a white horse in the morning. He is not in a stall because (a) we do not have stalls at home and (b) when he's BEEN put in a stall, he lies down in the shit and then is not brown so much as manure-green. It is not really a victory, the manure-green color.) Horse was still mostly white in the morning, which WAS a victory. :)
Truck ran up to Outer Bumfuck Egypt (I live in Greater Rednecklandia, but there are no dressage shows here. If I want to do a dressage show, I have to drive to OBE, an hour and a half away up past Prince Gallitzin, whoever he was.) like a freaking trooper. It missed once on the long uphill slog but that may have been a slow shift (it's an automatic) because it didn't do it again the rest of the day. Also it didn't light any lights of engine fuckery. I'm calling it an anomaly and scoring this portion of the program for the good guys, too.
I got there in plenty of time. Go me!
I backed up the truck and trailer and parked without hitting anyone. Hooray!
I spot-cleaned my not-filthy horse and tacked him up and didn't forget any pieces of tack AND stayed clean while doing it (two layers of clothes -- a get-dirty layer and a horse-show-clothes layer underneath -- seems to work for me). So Much Win!
I signed in at the announcer's stand with my spare copy of the coggins, got my number, and was entirely unrushed. Plus I had time to pee. Awesome!
I rode a polite and calm warmup in the warmup ring wherein Bird paid no mind to any of the other riders or horses and did his job like an old pro. Shocker, but I'll take it for the winning because we are On A Roll over here Gettin' Shit Done.
So at 10:06 or so (you get a ride time), we go in to ride Intro B. There was no winning of Intro B. He spooked at EVERY SINGLE LETTER and at the Judge's tent and flew into a frantic and LALALA CANNOT HEAR YOU trot at three thousand miles an hour. It was awful. Inverted, counterbent, horrific. AWFUL. SO MUCH AWFUL. No steering, no brakes, no brain. It was the worst.
I mean, we more-or-less did the pattern, but it was in no way a demonstration of our skill level. Calling this effort not our best work is in the running for Understatement of the Year. It was so bad. SO SO BAD.
How bad was it? (There is video, which I will attempt to secure for your viewing pleasure.) It was 59.69% bad with collective marks as follows:
Gaits: 6
Impulsion: 5.5
Submission: 5
Rider Position: 6
Effectiveness of aids: 6
Geometry: 5.5
*oof* That's gonna leave a mark.
In the "Further Remarks" portion, we have "Some loss of attention and bracing throughout. Needs relaxation."
Yeah. You don't say. Again, not our best work out there.
Reader, there were tears. I am so fucking soppy.
Instructor, who is doing her very best at, like 26 or something, to be instructory to me (49), "He might be feeding off your nerves. You looked a little tense out there. Have you tried breathing? Breathing is good. Maybe some breathing would help."
I resent helpful advice which is correct and appropriately given. I mean, I'll DO it and stuff but it makes me utterly furious that I NEED helpful advice. I should not need helpful advice and I hate that it has to be given to me and I hate that I will buckle like a total fucking pussy and DO the helpful advice (which is, indeed, helpful but WHY CAN'T I SEE IT ON MY OWN WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME?) even though it makes me fucking furious.
Instructor: "Would you like to try riding one of my horses at one of these shows? That might help us isolate what's going wrong."
No. No, I do not want to ride a lesson horse. That's not even remotely interesting to me.
At 10:20 we go to ride Intro C, which I do not particularly want to do because am now fraught as hell and having to pretend to be relaxed which I am not and to pretend like I don't care which I totally do and remember to breathe and shit. It has been maybe fifteen minutes since I got done with the Horrible Terrible No Good Very Bad Intro B test.
Intro C, recall, is the test I entered so that I wouldn't have to drive two hundred miles for one test. Apparently I'm OK with "one hundred miles per test" for some reason. Dunno. Anyway, this was not the one I figured we would do well at because he's still slightly wobbly on canter transitions and given our supernova of incompetence in Intro B, I did not trot into Intro C, fifteen minutes later, with any degree of enthusiasm.
So how did that go? 66.5%
Collective marks:
Gaits: 7
Impulsion: 6.5
Submission: 6.5
Rider position: 6.5
Effectiveness of aids: 7
Geometry: 6.5
Note that Submission has been fixed. A 6.5 is almost decent.
In Further Remarks we got "Good Job! much better accuracy!"
Yeah, because the horse wasn't flailing about like a goddamn upside-down freight train and was actually interested in listening to aids and stuff.
Here's the video of Intro C.
On individual elements of the test, I had an 8 (Circle Left 20 Meters, trotting) and two 7.5's (Circle Right 20 Meters, trotting; initial halt at x) and a 7 (free walk). There was one 5.5 where I FORGOT WHAT I WAS DOING (the Trot to Medium Walk transition between F and B) and there was a bit of an Oh Shit moment in that transition which is helpfully noted as "against rider's hand".
I was dead last in the Intro B class.
I was first place in the Intro C class. (There were only two of us but I still turned in a fucking solid Intro C effort.)
I think there might be something to this "remember to breathe" shit. Also had I managed some fucking breathing in Intro B, we would have won that class. I watched a lot of it to see the level of work being done there. We are totally CAPABLE of doing a good enough job to take the class. Just... gotta breathe.
The turd is not shiny yet, but I have been suckered into continuing to try to polish it.
Because this is a schooling show, the prizes aside from ribbons are small baggies of horse treats. Bird does not know what the fuck a horse treat is. He does not get anything that could pass as a Horse Treat except for early-autumn yellow-jacket riddled pears from the pear tree. Those are free and plentiful. Not sure Bird will be impressed with real horse treats but I'll try feeding them to him.
If he's not impressed, I know a Genie Pony who will eat almost anything...
no subject
Date: 2019-06-18 02:06 am (UTC)When I lose my shit, we do poorly. Intro B.
When I hold it together better, he is fine. Intro C.
When I DO MY JOB, he does his.
Dressage scores are supposed to be entirely based on how well you ride the horse you are on. Some horses, with bigger flashier movement, are deemed to be "easier" to score well on but in theory you can ride any horse to great scores. In theory. But everyone who wants to do well in official, international dressage competition rides a warmblood. (I am not even remotely in this group of people.)
Anyway, the scores we get are pretty reflective of how well I have trained my horse to do the movements expected of us. There isn't a whole lot of score based on the horse that isn't ALSO wound up in his training.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-18 11:52 am (UTC)