The competition started on Thursday with the Prix St. George so my fancy princess "Fabella" and I got our feet wet in the ring and scored a 64.8%. We had a nice 'safe' test but I know Fabella has another gear of more impressive movement in her its just a question of strength and condition at this point of time. On the saturday Fabella and I did try and take a bit more of a risk by riding for more expression in the Int. 1, but as it so often goes by taking more a a risk we had some expensive mistakes, so we scored a 64.2% and with that placed 4th. Overall I am more than pleased with Fabella because I have not had her for very long, but in the last couple of months we have really started to becoming a team and Fabella is really taking in every new challenge in stride.
On the Friday Orion and I danced through the Grand Prix and I was so proud of Orion because we have not preformed under flood lights very often and it was a very intense atmosphere for the horses because the class was held at night under the lights in the big out door ring. Many horses had a really tough time and there where lots of big spooks. But I have started to compared Orion to the lion from the movie "The Wizard of Oz", because just like the lion, Orion has also found his courage ;-) and we performed a clean test and scored a 67.9% placing us 6th in the class.
One little tip that I would like to share is (of course) related to dealing with show nerves, because I discovered another useful tactic while I was warming up Orion for our Grand Prix test. Before the class started there was a presentation in the main ring with carriage horses, so of course most horses in the warm up got very worked up nervous and tense from the carriage horses cruising through the warm up ring. Because I now know that the secrete to keeping Orion calm cool and relaxed is to make sure his focus stays on me and that I stay EXTRA calm, cool and relaxed. So because the atmosphere was super electric with tension I started singing one of my favourite songs to Orion under my breathe... (under my breathe is key- because everyone who know me knows how talented I am at singing ;-p) But it was really interesting to feel what a positive effect this had on both Orion and I, because it brought us both back to focus and gave us the feeling of harmony we needed for our test. I used this same tactic while warming up for my Freestyle and it worked great. This was only the second time that we have ridden through our new freestyle at a competition, and I once again had so much fun dancing to our "Elton John" music. What I really noticed while riding the new freestyle the second time is how much more confident I felt in my timing and I could focus more on the quality of movements, instead of just trying to keeping in rhythm with the music. In the freestyle we scored a 71.8% and placed 7th.
The best part of the Arnhem CDI is that its venue was the perfect preparation for Orion and I to get ready for Chio Aachen, which will be our next competition. I am so unbelievably excited that Orion and I have the honour of being able to ride in Aachen again this year... :-) :-) :-)
Below is the video to Orion and I Grand Prix test:
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