Moving up is hard.

The show was a mixed bag.  We did not qualify at Maiden for the Championship, but the Uno-pony carted my butt around safely despite my questionable riding.  There is so much to unpack here I am going to break it into two post.

First Dressage.

Uno's dislike of the sandbox is well known by now.  Our last time out with this test we scored a 4 for submission, along with several 4's and 5's with comments like, "severely resists."  This time all of that was gone *YAY*, along with our right lead canter *BOO*.   I am very torn - of course it pisses me off that we scored a 2 on a test, but the rest of the test was very fluid (for us) and Uno was really trying to work with me.

He really wanted to work with me - I just need to be hyper-vigilant about that left shoulder.

I think it is just a case of small changes and maybe going back to the Myler D-ring.  This is hard for me to really be disappointed in because we have only had like a week of totally clean transitions at home, and if he gets tense in his back I can still lose the outside shoulder which means picking up the wrong lead.

All of the halts and down transitions were SO much nicer to ride.

In this test, the right lead canter happens so quickly (the whole test is short) that is hard to get him to really relax his back.  Also unlike at home, I do not get to control the timing of the transition.

All that said - I really think we are right on the edge of a dressage break through.  We earned a 4 on the first canter circle, a 2 for the transition, and a 5 for the transition back to trot.  Our scores for those movements on the left lead were all 6's and 7's.  Our overall score was a 40.3, if we can match our other canter circle we would be looking at 32 - which is a damn good score for a naturally downhill, short strided, quarter horse pony and *me*.

This was a very soft transition - no leaping or squirreling.

I was just overall happy with how much he let me ride him and we will come back to work on the canter.