GP Freestyles!!

Today was the last day of the Mid-Winter CDI and the rain moved in!  I started Majek in the Intermediare II again, and this time he went in the Indoor (which I hadn't actually gotten him into before this test).  He was wild in the warm-up, another location which I hadn't gotten him into, but it gave me the opportunity to work through his tension problems in the warm-up.  It took me a good 15-20 minutes to settle him down and get him focused, he kept spooking and leaping around at the people and horses walking behind the bushes next to the warm-up.  I was a little worried I may have to scratch, but he settled down enough that I decided to try it.

The test went actually better than Saturday and Sunday in many ways.  He was very good in the arena, despite having not seen the inside of the Equidome before the test.  I had problems in the piaffe again, and make a silly mistake (totally my fault) in the ones.  He ended up with a 60% from two CDI judges.  I was pretty happy with that, as I knew those big-time judges would be much more picky about his balance and engagement.  He was more uphill in that test than he was all weekend, but it's still not enough for what those judges want.  I was happy with how he rode though given the circumstances.  It is important that competition horses learn to deal with unexpected circumstances like that, so I figured it was a good training opportunity.

Victor's freestyle went fairly well.  Unfortunately he was a little on the hand today and not quite as good on the leg.  We had a few bobbles in the beginning piaffe/passage work and he didn't have quite as much activity in the piaffe today.  I also got dinged quite a bit because he had his mouth open in much of the trot work and some of the canter work.  When he gets strong he sometimes does that and the CDI judges really get after you for it.  I also had some mistakes in the 2s although the ones were really nice and I scored a couple 8s on them.  I was able to stay pretty good on my music and hit all of my transitions.  We finished with a 69.1.  I was a little disappointed to not break 70, but I shouldn't be too hard on myself as this was the first GP freestyle I've ever done, and we really only got it finalized a couple weeks ago.

I didn't get to see any of the GP freestyles as I was getting ready to ride.  I did hear Guenter's music when I was cooling Victor out and it was really, really well done.  Evidently one of his clients is a pianist and composed the whole thing.  It was very different but really interesting to listen to.  I couldn't see what he was doing to it though.

Unfortunately some rain moved into Southern California so I spent some time watching the weather.  We plan on leaving first thing tomorrow morning to drive to Bishop, where we'll overnight, then finish the drive back to Boise on Tuesday.  It's been a long week, these shows are a surprising amount of work!  I think some of it is just the stress.  I'm going to need a couple days off after I get back to recover!