First Level Debut

 So I have not really said anything about this because I thought it was going to go really poorly and I didn't want to get my hopes up.  At the end of last year, I tentatively set the goal of moving up to first level at our unrecognized series with the intention of MAYBE showing recognized once or twice this year.  I spoke with our Dressage trainer about my pie in the sky dream of getting my USDF Bronze one day.  She kept insisting that we were ready for first level, but the imposter syndrome is strong and I just didn't believe it.  

I know that most people would be upset with how in front of the vertical he is, but it has taken so long for him to build the strength to reach forward, up, and out.

Uno out-shined all my expectations.  Outloud my goal was to score above 50, and in my head, I just wanted to get through the tests...  And we did all that and more.  I am going to look more at the scores and what to work on before the next show later this week, right now I just want to celebrate the fact that a year ago we could barely make it through the canter portions of intro and only had a 50% clean test rate - we blew every other canter depart in the ring pretty consistently.  And the year before that, we could barely make it through our w-t eventing tests...

Why yes, we did actually lengthen the canter AND COME BACK AT THE END OF THE ARENA!!

Saturday Uno and I worked together (and minus a rouge flying lead change!!!) put in two clean tests that both scored above a 60%!!!  I was so happy I could have cried.  We are a real dressage team.  We can actually do the thing and score decently!  Plus Uno worked WITH me the whole time and our submission scores were the highest they have ever been.  The tests flowed nicely and I never had that "Oh shit, out of control" feeling.  I asked and Uno tried his best to answer. You can't ask for more than that!!

As a side note - he is totaly terrified of his fuzzy shipping halter I got for Christmas...

This pony man!