Our First 8! =)

Cupid and I went to a show at a new to us venue.  It turns out he does not love this venue, and was pretty tense.  I knew it was bad when he wouldn't even eat a carrot the whole day, which is very unlike him!  I'm not sure why he was so tense, he's been handling other new places fairly well and I thought this place was pretty inviting in that the warm up was adjacent to the show ring, so you always had other horses around.  

We did Training 2 and 3 again.  I wasn't thrilled with how it felt because Cupid felt tense and braced.  He kind of leapt into the canter both directions.  But there weren't any major mistakes, and the judge was seemingly in a generous mood.  So I was thrilled to see two 7s on our first test.  And our first ever 8 in our second test!!  It was for our first halt, with our final halt earning a 7.5.  I was equally thrilled to see a 6.5 for the canter circles both directions, which I think is also a first. 

Photo purchased from show photographer Artistic Equine

I think the scoring was generous, but I was ecstatic nonetheless!  Kind of made up for our last show, which felt a lot better to me but our scores were dismal.  We earned a qualifying score in case we want to think about pointing to championships next year, though I'm not sure if it's worth it for us.  My main goal will be getting ready for First Level hopefully early next year.  I'm a little sad we weren't able to finish the year there but now that I'm finally starting to understand dressage I can see we're not quite ready.  Haha, the more you learn the more you realize how little you actually know!  (or something like that)