Being the winner of the warm-up is a real thing. I always laughed when I heard people say it but then, that’s exactly what we’ve become. The key has been to only give myself about 15 minutes to warm-up that way I don’t psych myself out and Brantley doesn’t think his job is done. Of course this only works if judges are running on time which she wasn’t on Sunday and we had about 45 minutes to pre-game.
Brantley trotted around the arena with this quiet confidence around the other horses who cantered about. He was long and low and super rateable in all his gaits, I started to worry a bit that I loaded the wrong horse on the trailer. He even offered a couple of flying changes which he does when he feels super good and happy about life. He yielded to my leg walk, trot, and even the canter as I moved him off the circle to continue on the rail. Who are you? We worked on making sure I had body control and he even gave me a great rein back a few times. I called it quits and walked over to the dressage ring to sit and just watch.
When it was our turn to walk around the arena, I greeted the judge and called out my number (I know I wouldn’t be able to read it from where she was). She smiled and we carried on. The area where the arena is parallels the Training path of the cross-country course and is blocked off by a patch of reeds and tall grass which has never given us an issue but he was a little nervous walking the corner. Once he got passed it I didn’t give it a second thought. The bell rang and we entered at A. Straight and forward down the centerline we go… And then…
I stayed on and we continued our test. Mind you this was the second time he spooked in that corner and it just got worse. I stopped to give him a second and think about it because he was really upset. We continued and held it together through the rest of our test but came out with a 48. The judge’s comments were the best…
“Unfortunate tension today. Good effort. Lovely horse. Work on confidence.”
To be continued…
Ctrl+hAlt+Del 
I said basically the same thing on Insta, but reeds just seems like a poor landscaping choice. I imagine the noise and waving motion would spook at lot of horses, at least more often than a plain ole bush would.
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He definitely wasn’t alone. We’ve been in that arena a few times but obviously last time they must’ve blown left instead of right. 😂
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