Summer Fun Working Equitation Show, Day 2

My goals for day 2 were to get 5% better on my dressage test, and to get the gate in Ease of Handling.  I was feeling a bit more relaxed, and hoped Cupid would be too!

I put Cupid on the lunge line to see if he needed to work anything out, but he didn't seem to have any excess energy.  Since our test doesn't have any canter, I didn't canter in my warm up either.  I was a bit worried that Cupid will anticipate a canter during the test, since up to now he's always had one, and sometimes he just tries to be too "helpful"!

Cupid was still tenser then at home, but it definitely felt better than the previous day.  Our geometry was better, I tried to bend him more through our circles, and our halt and rein back seemed easier too.  I was optimistic we reached our goal - and we ended up getting almost 8% better so I was really happy with that!  (Even though our score was still under 60, we were 2nd in our division!)

We had several hours before our Ease of Handling.  I took Cupid on a few walks and let him graze, the rest of the time he seemed content hanging out in his stall.  I didn't do much warm up, having already ridden earlier plus with the heat.  We just practiced some transitions, and moving the haunches for the gate.  The obstacles were the same as the previous day, just in a different order.

The first two obstacles were the 3 barrels with the cloverleaf pattern and the picking up the pole / spearing the ring / returning the pole.  Those went well - I still chose to do the 2nd one at the walk.  The third obstacle was the "jump" which at Intro is just a pole on the ground between the standards.  For some reason Cupid got really revved up over it, and landed in a canter tossing his head a bit.  I'm sorry to say it threw me off a bit and made me tense, at the worst possible time because the next obstacle was the gate.  This time I made sure to open the gate towards me, but it got away from me again, and swung all the way open.  I struggled with it a few moments, then looked at the judge and asked if I could take a zero.  So I was pretty disappointed I didn't meet my goal, and even though the rest of the test was fine I felt like overall I actually did worst then the previous day and was feeling really disappointed about that.

I was surprised to see afterwards that I ended up getting about 1.5% higher then the previous day!  Even for the jump, we just got a 5 with the comment "broke gait" - I was expecting no higher than a 4 and some comment about total loss of control, lol.  And the last obstacle was the "cup" - which has you trot up and stop between two vertical poles, with a cup on one of the poles and you pick up the cup and move it to the other pole.  So basically it's just a trot - halt - trot transition, and we got an 8 on it, yay, I didn't even realize we ended it on such a nice note!

It was a fun weekend, doing something a little different.  I was hoping it would give Cupid and me the chance to try a new setting, and ride in front of the judge without quite the pressure of a dressage show that would go on our USDF "permanent record."  Even though I was initially a bit disappointed when we finished on Sunday, on further reflection we just had a bad moment in an overall okay round, and took away a few things we can continue working on.