KRISTA RYALL

 Krista Ryall and Minnetonka

2022 GOAL: forward and relaxed in new places

 I’m an adult amateur rider, learning dressage. I have a 10 year old hanovarian mare and a six year old lipizzaner mare! I live in northern Ontario and it is hard to find local training. I recently went to my first recognized bronze dressage show! I hope to do more showing next year!

7 HOURS

August 2022: Prepare for first dressage show. Go to new places and ride forward and calm

Methods: To start, thIs is my first young horse ever and the first horse I’ve started myself….

The whole summer was spent going to new places and focusing on going forward in a relaxed manner. Less worrying about “requiring” the contact as I’d gotten too heavy with my hands. I started with a new trainer in May. She said our main goal was to be forward and relaxed in new places. We focused on walk and trot primarily. I had a total of 13 rides, including going to a local barrel racing show where we just entered in the warm up ring. We went to our first show, 8 hours away, with the trainer and her students.

Results/Reflections: We had great results overall. The show was (mostly) better than i would’ve imagined. She was alert and a bit nervous but listened and was completely obedient during the warm ups. The trainer helped me use her higher energy to ‘capture’ it with the contact and get her very round and powerful, but obedient. This was through adding more outside rein back in versus in practice where I’d been softer. We got third place in one of our classes (walk trot intro).

Unfortunately on the final day, i think i had asked just too much from her. Our warm up was excellent….. but when we entered the ring for our test we both got tense, and she ended up bucking and i fell off. Hard. Luckily nothing was broken, but it has required some time off to recover. It was scary and unfortunate to end on that note, but overall i am very grateful for how good she was in general and hopefully i will not overdo it again next time.

Next Steps: Goals short term are to get back in the saddle as soon as possible and try to carry on in the relaxed and forward manner…. and to not get myself scared. Once that is going well, in the longer softer frame, i will practice asking for a bit more roundness again, like we did at the show.