Smokey's First Dressage Competition

aaaaaw another Smokey post! He is maturing mentally really well by the way, still asks for his "treats" when we get to the float (usually has all the gear in it so just tie up to that) but he's certainly no longer a baby, he's a really lovely young man now! Coming up the 2 yr anniversary of him being mustered from the wild too :o)

Anyway, we headed off to his first ridden show (he'd been to one inhand show about a year ago) and had only entered him in the morning's training test (no canter).

Was talking too much by the float and a little late getting on him so he only got 5 mins warm up! Naughty me! There was a dog show going on next door to the arena by a partly finished fence that was distracting for all, and stupid me learnt the wrong test so we got a course error pretty much as soon as it started!

BUT, apart from MY mistakes, he was lovely, did a reasonable test for 5 mins warmup, and did another 5 mins of work after we came out of the arena that was just LOVELY work, he stayed tied up to the float while I went and helped score some papers etc and was just impeccably behaved. My wee dude :o)

So, here he is!!! Starting from first hopped on (and some distracted tension) to the end of the test.... (we came 6th out of 10 even with our course error so happy with that!)