It started off a little cool and breezy today here in San Juan. Not complaining, as it's probably 30 degrees and windy at home. :) I made sure to work Bolero a little extra so he would be settled in his test. He actually was a lot better than I expected, went right to work in the warm-up arena although a little spooky and then had a very solid, if conservatively ridden, ride in his first Third level test. I was careful as I wasn't sure how he'd be in the test, so I underrode pretty much everything. I was thrilled to score almost 70% (69.769 or something like that) and place 2nd in a very competitive class of 5-6 open rides. I'm going to spend this coming week trying for a little more power and activity behind and see if I can iron out the right-left change. He wants to kick against the right leg in that change, which he was doing in the warm-up a little, although the left-right change is super (he got an easy 8 on it in the test).
Today I took a lesson from Leslie on Victor, mostly to deal with some of the overall roundness and reactivity problems that I have. He was overall much more supple over his back to begin with today from the previous few days work, and she wanted me to make sure I got a forward reaction to the leg and didn't get too "digging" with my spur (which is easy to do on him since he's kind of lazy). She also wanted him a little bit overtempo today (a little extra forward). She had me ride some tic-tacs then ride forward out of them to keep him in front of the leg (especially the right leg, so I'd ride a right-left-right tic-tac then ride medium to make sure he stayed in front of the right leg). It was a good gymnastic to keep him thinking forward in the one-time changes and it also improved the quality of the canter. We also did some trot-walk-trot transitions to make sure he didn't quit behind into the walk (which he loves to do), and that made him much more active as well.
We watched much of the I-1 today in the afternoon. It was hard-fought, with lots of high quality horses, good riders, and well-ridden tests. It was fun to watch such a competitive class! Leslie had a super ride on Fine and Smart (aka Smarty) and ended up tying for first although she placed second with 70.5. First was Guenter with 70.5, second was Leslie with 70.5, third was Beth Ball with 70.3, fourth was Mette with 70.1. Talk about competitive!
Tomorrow I ride the GP freestyle on Victor. Bolero will just get schooled, he has three tests next weekend but since I wasn't sure how settled he would be I only entered one this weekend. Wish us luck!!
Playing catch up but Yay Bolero & congrats to Leslie on an awesome catch ride!!!
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