Moora CNC - Dressage

I hadn't planned on doing Moora this year, Friday was my birthday and I had thought that it might be nice to do something without horses for a change. Then we decided to go to Spain in June so a weekend away without horses for my birthday wasn't going to work out. 

A very cute unicorn

Instead we had a weekend away with horses, dust and lots of friends. Hubs and I took Friday off work. We had a nice morning, going for breakfast with my parents and the dogs, walking the dogs by the river before packing up and heading off to Moora around lunch time.

Does not want to know!

In the past I've always driven to Moora in the dark. It's an awful road to drive on, so I wanted to leave at a good time to get there with time to set up, settle in, reserve space for our friends and ride in the light. I didn't want any stress on my birthday! 

Playing puppies! Lucy wants Oskar to grab her stick

We pulled in just after 2, found a big space to park, unpacked our stuff, settled Henry in a yard, and then went off for a ride. Coolie was feeling super, I kept it short since the ground was so hard. By the time I got back most of our friends had rocked up. 

All dressed up!

We helped them get set up before settling in for an evening of dinner and playing cards. 

Birthday cake!

Saturday I was up first with dressage at 10.22. After walking the horses, and lunging a very energetic Henry who turned into a bit of a kite, (I think I found his show name though!) I plaited Coolie and got myself ready to ride. 

He would never be a kite!

I headed off with about half an hour to warm up and was able to warm up in the second warm up area nearer to the arenas which suited me great. Coolie was feeling really quite good, nice and responsive and so we headed down early. As soon as we got close to the arena he tensed up. I tried walking, relaxing my bum and smiling but it didn't help so I trotted and worked on changing the bend and flexion. As I approached the judge he nipped to the loo, which worked in my favour because we did a few extra laps and helped settle Coolie.

 

Only a bit tense

We went in and nailed the center line. He was much more consistent and relaxed which helped our score. His medium trots felt really super and his free walk was lovely and swinging. He canter transitions were a bit tense and we lots the rhythm in the canter a bit but I worked hard to get it back and he listened so much better than at Harvey. This weekend I really wanted to make sure I wasn't changing anything major and I think I was successful. I also wanted to smile through my test and I managed to remember to for most of it! It helped my friend was pencilling for the judge made me laugh before we went in.

I came out feeling that the test was a huge improvement and that we would end up finishing in mid field, and I was right. We scored 38.8 which I feel is about right for us. We will get it down lower one day!

A bit of stretch there

I spent the rest of my morning helping friends get ready and watching their tests and show jumping. I walked the XC and didn't stop moving until I had lunch at about 2pm! XC looked quite straight forward. The ground was hard though so I planned to not go for time. 

Canter took some work

My SJ was at 3.30 Saturday arvo, but I'll write a separate post for that!

Fairly typical for us