What a European dressage show is like

I mentioned in my post yesterday that after buying far too much at two amazing tack shops, Tanja took us to a show to watch the PSG rides. But this particular venue was quite special - not only was it just outside of Vienna, but there's a huge Rider's Lounge where you can order REAL food (nothing like American horse show food, yuck) while watching everyone ride.

But first, a tour of the grounds:

One of the permanent barns

Outdoor dressage arena

Inside one of the temporary barns

And you think the rigs with LQs are nice in the US... !!!!

So much matching (no, I didn't buy it, sheesh!) 

Indoor show arena

Turnout

After a tour of the grounds, we headed in to the Rider's Lounge for lunch and found a spot to watch the warmup.

I need this at EVERY show. Schnitzel for lunch with a view of the ponies. WHY can't American horse shows be like this?!?!? WE ARE MISSING OUT, GUYS!!!

Warmup was... interesting. I don't often have a chance to watch upper-level horses go at the shows I attend, but I was surprised be a few things here. First, tophats! Most venues in the US require a helmet when mounted. Here, they don't care, and most riders were wearing the classic tophats. Second, not as much bling. Seriously, I see more bling on the AAs at First Level than I did here. I guess they spend all their money on the horses?

And of course, the frame that the horses were working in caught my attention.

This is a PSG horse warming up

Two more PSG horses in warmup

I'm not singling out these horses - I have no idea who they are, or who their riders are, and I've tried to remove identifying information. I just found it very, very interesting that while I've never seen horses warmed up this long/deep/round/rollkur/whatever you want to call it while the US, it's common here. They do ride the horses "up" for tests, however.

And speaking of the tests, watching these folks ride gave me some confidence. I have this image in my head of all upper-level riders being like Charlotte on Valegro, but the PSG riders have some of the same problems that I do, albeit on a grander scale. Most of them completely biffed the 10 meter circles. Halts were not square. Half passes were sometimes more like diagonal lines. One poor rider had a desperate time getting her horse back from extended canter. One horse had a pacey walk, and others were tense and jiggy and screamed for their buddies. My circles may be 20 meters and maybe I'm doing leg yield instead of half pass, but everybody seems to have issues, even when you're at PSG on a fancy warmblood. 

Watching rides while eating an Apfelstrudel for dessert is a whole new level of epic.

Awards ceremony

All in all, a most excellent day. Thank you again, Tanja! I can't wait until my next visit (although my bank account needs some time to recover from the tack shopping).

Enter at A! (Photo courtesy of DressageHafl)

EPIC XC schooling with Lauren & Andrea

Yesterday, Andrea from Project Runaway,  Lauren from SheMovedToTexas, and I all met up at MeadowCreek Park for a day of cross-country schooling. I'd been planning to go schooling at MCP for a while - I hadn't been there in years but they have a really nice course - if you don't count the train that goes right behind the XC field about every 30 minutes. Going XC schooling was on Lauren's "30 things to do before I'm 30" list, and I'd managed to sucker talk her into coming along with me and taking Reddums. MCP is about equidistant between me and Andrea, and it wasn't hard to talk Andrea into bringing O schooling. Sometimes things just work out perfectly, and this was one of them!

Flying Attack Haffie!

We'd had a "snowstorm" and freeze two nights before, and there were a bunch of jumps with snow on them, as well as snow patches in the shady areas. It was kinda strange - I've never schooled XC with snow on the ground, even when I lived up north!

Yes, there is snow on that jump (!?!?!?). No, we did not jump that one.

Paddington was fantastic. I'm not gonna lie and say that every spot was perfect and every fence was awesome, but he jumped everything I asked him to. We are having really bad issues with falling in on the left shoulder (seems to be getting worse, and we are gonna work on that more in our next dressage lesson) so I focused on keeping him straight and not letting him duck left. Lauren made us an awesome video of the awesome parts of our ride. You can see the train going by at :19, O blasting by us at Mach 8 around 33 seconds (note that Paddy doesn't bat an eyelash at this), and my FAVORITE part - the water - at around 1:00.

 It's funny what you learn from videos - apparently I say "good boy" after every fence! Who knew?

Rockin' the baby ditch.

Haffie in the water! Last time in a water jump he just sort of trotted through it, but this time he really attacked it. Progress!

And just to keep it real, here are our bloopers. Note that they are rated R, for adult language. ;)

I obviously didn't ride the log very well - he was flat and strung out on the approach, and I didn't ride him straight. The ditch at the end was something I shouldn't have asked him to do - I think it was too much for him. He jumped it like a deer the first time, but then refused to go over it again. Eventually I got off and Lauren and Andrea helped me lead him over a few times. He wasn't happy about it, but we made it work. However, since he was a superstar for everything else, we'll just pretend like that never happened!

This ditch has alligators AND lava in it. JUMP FOR YOUR LIFE!!!

Afterwards, we played musical horses. Lauren rode Paddy, then Andrea wanted to try Paddy out too. You'll have to visit their blogs to see vids and pics of that, but they both did awesome and Paddy was very good.

Andrea on Paddy, Lauren on Reddums, and me on... O-Ren?!?! Yep, Andrea let me ride her and she was AWESOME! What a cool mare!

All in all, it was a great day and we all had a ton of fun! It was nice to have such a confidence-building schooling session just two weeks out from our first schooling Horse Trials at Pine Hill on Feb. 16. Hopefully I'll see Andrea at an event, and maybe next time we can convince Lauren to bring Simon out. Woot!!!

I think there are bugs in our teeth!

Thanks to Lauren for all the awesome pics and vids! And be sure to visit both Lauren's and Andrea's blogs for their stories about the day. No spoilers from me, but there are some funny stories to be had. :)