Oliver does his first canter test at a pure dressage show.

Well, not much happened. It was such a small show that they put me in with one other BN rider, two Novice riders, and a Prelim rider. Oliver warmed up beautifully and was really listening, but when we got into the arena, Joe yelled that the bell had rung and I already knew that, so I got rattled and forgot to halt at C (too many eventing tests) and the judge rang the bell. Then, of course I was rattled for the rest of the test, and a small herd of horses came up over the ridge and Oliver gawked at that….some jigging in the free walk, anticipating at times…gave us a 57.9%. Yuck. Not terribly bad, but good enough to land us a 3rd place ribbon. I threw that test away. Comments were: lovely young horse with a lot of potential, work on relaxation yadda yadda yadda. Stuff I already knew. The second test, which was BN B, went much, much better. I thought it rode very smoothly, up until the point of where I picked up the wrong lead and it took me half a circle to fix it, so that got me a 4. 7 on gaits, 7s on all the right side work (which is weird since that is his bad direction), and comments of being slightly on the forehand for the left rein work, and again a comment on “lovely young horse”. A 37.9pp this time, which also got us a 3rd place – 1st place was the Prelim rider with a 33. So, all in all, not too shabby. I need to stop letting my reins get too long and start getting his balance towards the rear more consistently, and I think we’ll be scoring in the low 30s in no time. He was a very good boy.

Greg has been out to work on him, and the improvement this time was so much better that we have high hopes that we can continue to work through his scar tissue. Greg said that the 5th or 6th time was the magic number, and he was right - no more short striding on that inside right hind. I rode him today and he was so much more uphill and pushing from behind - I could really tell the difference when I stretched him. His withers stayed more up in front of me than before, and the balance was better. I've done a much better job of not allowing the reins to slip through my fingers - studying the way the upper level riders hold their hands at Rolex really helps, as I can visualize this. We have Foxtrack on the horizon for our first debut at BN, which will be low key and no pressure, and then I'm planning on doing some unrecognized dressage stuff with him for practice and schooling some more XC and possibly a hunter show or two to gear us up for Five Points in September. We're finally heading somewhere!

Oliver remains sweet as always....yells hello when I go and get him from his paddock. It still give me a thrill to hear him. I doubt I'll ever get sick of that.