First HRCAV Comp - January 2018

Well, that didn't go quite as I thought it might. Annie and I headed down to Bulla HRCAV Dressage Comp last Sunday (about a 3 hour drive) and things were very different than the usual dressage comp in many ways. For starters, the whole thing has a very amateur middle-aged woman (MAW) feel about it. Equestrian Australian competitions are awash with women, sure, but most riders are under 30, let's be real. And there are lots of big flashy trucks and goosenecks - all the professionals and more committed middle-class competitiors!

I don't remember seeing one truck and only a couple of goosenecks in the whole place - everything else was a plain old double float. Fancy ones, a lot of them, but just doubles.

That being said, we weren't in banjo country, either. The Adult Riding Clubs competitions I had been to in Canberra were rough and ready affairs with a good smattering of ex-trotters and pretty ordinary riding going on. This was definitely not like that, either.

What I witnessed was what MAWs with a bit of cash and a free rein (pun intended) can do. Lots of nice horses (nothing much flashy like in EA dressage), lots of prim and proper MAWs efficiently running about the place checking gear, looking after judges and making sure things ran to time. And it did.

The draw at HRCAV dressage comps is a little odd at first glance. A 'jackpot' event, as this one was, involves riding in two or more events over a competition. The draw puts the first test only half an hour before the second. The first time this happened, I was pretty annoyed - 30 minutes isn't long enough to hop off and give the horse a break, but too long to just keep riding around. This is something I will need to work on as it worked against me, in the end.

I assumed the 30 minutes is designed to give a buffer to arenas that run late but allowing riders to just get on with their tests without waiting around all day between tests. EA comps can involve a test at 9:00am and the next at 3pm, if you're unlucky. Not HRCAV!

I actually thought Annie did two pretty good tests. Certainly we would have done well in an eventing context, I feel. The second test was not as polished, for sure - Annie was pretty over it by then as we'd been going for an hour by that stage. There's only so much dressage Annie is likely to cooperate with, especially when trying to operate in a paddock full of cross country jumps! But, alas, the judges weren't with us. We only scored a 61.7% for the first and a disappointing 58% for the second. I didn't bother waiting around for the class to finish and pick up my tests - I found the marks breakdown online anyway and they were as I thought. Not sure why, but we just couldn't get much beyond a 6.

Annie is just a delight to take out and about, though. I am appreciating her more and more now I have baby Beretta to deal with. Everything scares him, he's difficult and complicated to ride as his natural talent is undone by his weakness and baby attitude. But Annie just gets on with it like an old hand. Stands at the float eating hay, warms up like we're at home. Does the test and goes back to stand at the float like a pro. Self-loads and eats hay all the way home. Love it.

Beretta's shoes come off in 12 days. Not like I'm counting down! I can't wait for them to come off - I find horses with shoes on inherently worrying but a young horse prone to leaping sideways when scared is really nerve-wracking! I value my feet and toes a lot! Other than that, I feel Beretta's shoes are interfering with his way of going. With heels too high and landing toe-first, he is not balanced and is struggling to lock his 'landing-gear' as he strides out. He often stumbles on the hard ground. We'll see if the transition to barefoot helps him, but I firmly believe it will.