Stressage it is not...

not sure it's entirely DREssage yet either but it's definitely not stressage.

Little worried this morning at 9am when I got to yard that I hadn't cleaned tack, plaited pony, sorted lorry, done stables or anything and I was due to leave at 10:30am BUT... all fell into place lovely.

I did haynets and waters and sorted lorry out ie filled water canister and unlocked all the doors (unless you unlock them from the outside, you can't get in, even if you unlock them inside lol).

Then I started to clean tack and H turned up so she did my bridle while I did saddle, boots, gaiters and stirrups. Piled all that into lorry. Fetched pony. Mum groomed him while I plaited.

All hail QuickBraid or whatever it is. Fab stuff. Got 10 plaits in his mane :thud: bearing in mind,when I first plaited him, I had 26 .... this is a great improvement and the Quickbraid meant I could get the plaits a bit chunkier without them springing out.

Lorry started first time. Pony loaded without hesitation. Minor worry when we couldn't remember the way there but just as we got to J6, H piped up that that was the right junction (we had been aiming for 7 lol)

Got there with 50 mins to spare (!) so had a sausage bap :fat: then pony unloaded cool as a cucumber, didn't move a muscle to have bum washed (cow pat like poo splatted on it tut) and even put his head down for H to put his bridle on.

Clambered on and almost died at the warm up, it was rammed. There were 11 people in there. Tried to warm up but it just didn't happen. They were running Medium and Adv Medium classes at the same time as my lowly novice classes so it was really busy and T-Jay just got upset by all the horses coming towards him, especially those going sideways so we stood outside and snoozed.

Went into N35 having not even had a canter in the warm up! Minor steering trouble in canter on one circle but otherwise he was nice. Didn't feel like he had much sparkle, felt quite asleep but turns out we got 64.61% and third place - whooo so more points and a rossie to go with it too.

However, the two things that I am most pleased about are the 8 we got again for FWLR and the 7 I got for my position & seat. I'm dead chuffed with those.

Hung around for an hour, managed to get into the warm up arena before N38 but he just did everything as I asked and was fine so let him go back to sleep to be honest, he literally had his chin resting on the fence!!!

Pleased with N38 but don't know how we did as we came away before my scores went up and I was in the upper half of the class so we'd have had to have waited hours for sheet.

Trundled up the ramp with no problems to come home and travelled, as always, like a dream.

Am very pleased with him today. He's a superstar :)

oh oh oh AND I wore my "dressage oss" t shirt, looked fab :D