I made it out to the last CDCTA schooling show at the Warrenton Horse Show grounds on Thursday night. I wanted to get Oh So back in the ring before Marlborough, but we did second level tests 1 and 2. I think the judge was quite generous, because we ended up with a 68 and 70%! She was very complimentary of him at the end of both tests, which was nice.

He’s been a bit tense on the flat this week, probably because he’s been doing it since I left for AECs.  I had to get my jump saddle stitched in a few places, so I haven’t jumped since the combined test. It took me awhile in the warm up to be able to sit the trot. His back was a bit tight, but when they ended up running a bit late, it gave me a few more minutes to work him. By the time I went in for my test, it was much better. The medium trots in sitting felt better than usual, but they didn’t look very good on the video. I haven’t been practicing  those enough at home.

With both tests, I knew there would be some parts that weren’t totally confirmed. We had a slight miscommunication in a couple of the canter-walk transitions where he almost halted because my leg wasn’t totally on, and the same in one of the walk pirouettes. He’s still a bit unsteady with his head in the walk-canter transitions, but he was fairly obedient. He was also less reactive when I brought my outside leg back for the traverse, and I was able to show a bit more angle this time out.

Overall, he was very obedient and gave me a lot to work with and practice on while riding through the tests.

Today we went out for some fitness work and I jumped a couple of cross-country jumps while I was there in preparation for Marlborough next weekend. I have a jump lesson tomorrow, so we’ll see how that goes. I also wanted to put a link in here to Oh So’s pedigree. I was randomly looking at it the other day, and I’m not sure everyone out there has seen it. http://www.pedigreequery.com/private+pleasure2