Why Dressage Makes my Eyes Bleed – Part 2

Have you ever had someone try to convince you that you should like a food that you just don’t like?
Take sushi for example. 
Let’s face it. Raw fish, wrapped in seaweed paper smothered in something that tastes a lot like cough syrup……
is just not for everyone. 
I find there are sushi lovers and sushi haters. I can’t remember ever meeting someone who said, “Enh…..it’s alright.” Responses are more along the lines of, “Ooooh I love love love sushi, I could eat sushi every day until I had mercury poisoning! I cannot get enough!!” Well, that’s usually my response.
Or 
“No. Absolutely not. Not happening. Gross. Raw fish will never touch these lips.”
Horses are a bit that way. There are horses that no amount of money could convince me to like. But those breeds and riding styles definitely have their fans. 
A very wise friend told me once, “It’s a good thing we don’t all like the same horse. ‘Cause he’d get awful’ tired totin’ us all around.”
Disciplines are in the same category. I had someone tell me there was NOTHING more exciting than riding a cutting horse. It was more addictive than heroin, and if I ever went cutting, I need to watch out because I’ll be dragging my saddle from horse to horse looking for the next cutting. 
Fully warned & with tons of anticipation I went to a cutting. 
It was fun. 
But it wasn’t the soul engulfing, mind blowing, physical, mental & endocrine rush that is cross country. 
When I told my friend that cutting was fun, but I’d pass it up for XC any day, He said, “well….just because you love lobster doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy shrimp once in awhile.”
Dressage. 
In spite of my freaking awesome, reasonably good scores…..
…..it just isn’t my thing. 
Yet, people keep trying to convince me that I like it. 
I had someone try very hard to convince me that upper level dressage is just as exciting as jumping. 
Um. Exactly what kind of jumps have they been going over?
Moving to Area III was a big shock for my dressage scores. Let’s see. I’m competing against Olympians. The judges have seen fabulous ride after fabulous ride……. so when you come in with “another nice ride” there are no “wow – finally a nice ride –  extra credit points” like you get in other areas……… where the competition is…….. less educated. 
WonderPony has always scored well in his lengthen trot. He’s a fancy little mover and he can toss his toes in the air with the best of them. 
In Oklahoma, that move got us a 9 for our lengthen trot. 
Oh yeah. 
When I got to Area III my first show out, we got a 5.5.
WHAT??????
This is when I learned that “toe flicking” doesn’t get good marks from experienced judges unless the hind legs are also moving forward. 

Toto, we aren’t in Kansas any more. 
At my last show, coming out of the ring I said I was disappointed in our lengthen trot. It wasn’t as extravagant as usual, and I even described it as “meh”. My coach said it was actually quite good….. muttering something about “his hind legs were really coming through.” We have been working on it in all those lessons after all.
I’m sure there was an eye roll in there somewhere.

Turns out. 
It was our best score. In a test that scored a 26.

Meanwhile, I have always struggled with leg yields and shoulder in. My horse has fabulous sideways buttons, but we lose our forward motion.
Every single time, in every single lesson when we start lateral moves I hear “FORWARD more FORWARD!”
But my trusty pony always kind of trots in place, sideways for sure, but not forward.
I got to thinking about this recently. The fearless leader did a few flat schools on WonderPony while I was out of town & he didn’t say anything like,”boy, he won’t go forward in his lateral moves.”
This led me to believe that HE didn’t have this problem with him……..

which meant it was me. 
After racking my brain, & trying to be aware of what I was doing when I asked for lateral work I realized that “tighter thighs” means collect & slow down. And every single time I would ask for sideways I would tighten my thighs. 
I looked down at my clamped thighs.
And took them off my horse.

And like magic – we were off to the races. 
Forward AND sideways. 
Oh My Gawd, I’ve been doing it wrong for 3 decades. 

Yep, dressage still makes my eyes bleed. 
If you missed Why Dressage Makes My Eyes Bleed Part 1, you can check it out here

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4 thoughts on “Why Dressage Makes my Eyes Bleed – Part 2

  1. TeresaA

    Ha. As a dressage lover those realizations are worth celebrating. I haven't done cross country but did loss of hunter and got terribly bored. But I do enjoy watching X country.

  2. emma

    lol relatable – but like Teresa i get pretty excited by those little discoveries and suddenly realizing something i thought i was terrible at is actually within my reach. still, tho. xc > dressage ANY DAY haha

  3. Mary Sherfesee

    I know I'm strange in that I like the dressage a whole lot better than cross country. Of course, I've only done cross country once, and we work on dressage weekly, but there is just something about that moment when you both start to speak the same language… Maybe with practice, cross country won't be quite so…vomit inducing, and become something I like to do.

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