Global Dressage Masters and more

I'm going to attempt to cover a few different things in tonight's post.  This past weekend the Global Dressage Masters took place at the Jim Brandon Center in Wellington, the main reason I wanted to go watch this event was to see Valegro and Charlotte Dujardin in person and they did not disappoint.  Valegro is the quintessential equine athlete, I can't think of a single thing about him that is not to like and Charlotte does such a great job piloting him and making everything look super easy, they had a couple minor mistakes in the freestyle but certainly didn't take away from the overall performance and this horse is still so young, he is sure to be a medal contender for the London Olympics, if you haven't seen him yet definitely look him up on youtube!  Ravel and Steffen Peters put on a great performance as always and ended up the winners of the evening by .05, Ravel is such a relaxed looking horse and Steffen is so precise in his riding, they're always a pleasure to watch in action.  I also took advantage of the show going on this weekend and got Nico out to school on the grounds, I thought taking him out to the show environment and schooling him with no pressure of competing would be a good first outing for him down here this season and I was very pleased with how he went, he felt very relaxed schooling and hacking around the grounds.  Generally speaking I've been thrilled with how Nico feels in his day to day schooling right now, he is feeling stronger over his back and more supple than ever and is trying very hard.  Something I wanted to talk about at some point in this blog is the importance of the consistency of the rider's aids, I started to really dissect and focus on this back in August as it dawned on me that when we ride a lot of different horses frequently it can become very easy to get complacent with our aids.  As we all know, correct responses to a rider's aids have to be conditioned into a horse through consistent training, consistent aids, consistent responses and consistent praises.  This all sounds very simple and straight forward I know but when I really started to think about it a few months ago I realized that it's super easy to become complacent, for example,do you ask for something as simple as a walk trot transition with the exact same aid (same timing, same positioning and same pressure) every single time or do you sometimes get a bit complacent and get away with it because the horse is smart?  Anyways, I realized that I wasn't getting the exact responses I wanted from Nico going into the piaffe and passage work, mainly because I was being a bit wishy washy in my aids, since then I've made a conscious effort to be super consistent each and every time I ask for a transition and I think this has made a world of difference in his work, when I'm correct he is correct as well, I feel he is more and more in tune with my aids and I'm getting better and better responses from him for them, again this all sounds so basic and simple I know, but in all honesty when we sit down and really analyze it it's a very complex thing that requires a rider to really focus on each and every aid they give to their horse and if we are 100% accurate in our aiding we give our horses a much more fair opportunity to really understand what it is that we are asking of them.  On a side note, Dressage Daily has a fantastic interview with Canadian Pan Am team member, Tina Irwin, worth a read for anyone who is interested, a very insightful and inspiring interview!