The Stuff of (Dressage) Fairy Tales: Part 2

Earlier this summer I wrote about Jan's horse Lakota and his meteoric rise in the dressage world (click here).   Well, the fairy tale continues.  Lakota scored a 71 at the end of July in Prix St George, so Team Lakota decided to move him up to Intermediare last weekend.

In case you're not familiar with dressage tests, the levels build upon each other.  Moving from Prix St George to Intermediare adds half-pass zigzags and change of lead every 2 strides, etc.

So let's look at 14 seconds of a 5 minute test.  Here's movement #22.

The letters (FXH) tell you where to do the movement.  The next column tells you what to do.  The last column tells you what the judge is looking for in scoring the movement.

Here's what it looks like -


Lakota's Intermediare debut could not have gone better.  On Friday he scored a 68.8, and on Saturday 67.89.  He won both of his classes.  But hey, you can read all about it 

here

or

here 

and lots of other places!  Yep, he's famous. 

Needless to say,

 Jan is a very happy owner.

Good boy, Lakota.

It's Raining...Caterpillars!

Our freakishly wet weather has brought us an invasion of caterpillars.  Redheaded pine sawflies, to be exact.

They're trimming our Ponderosa Pines

Our infestation is just a small nuisance infestation,

nothing like this -

source

Ewww