I-1 Freestyle Debut at Festival of the Horse!!

Today I rode my first EVER freestyle at the CDI Burbank; I've never ridden one at any level at any show before. :) It was ambitious, and given another chance, not something I would do again! I was pretty nervous today, more so than normal, and unfortunately that affected my ride. I had a couple of pretty significant mistakes in my test, Monkey got stuck in the first canter pirouette and walked for a stride or two (which garnered me 4s from the judges--a very, very expensive mistake on a co-efficient movement), and then I had a counting error in the 3s (which gave me 5s all around from the judges). I was pretty disappointed, although I really should not have been, given my inexperience with riding freestyles. It was just a little too much pressure for me today. I finished with a good score of 67.1, which was great given the mistakes. I wanted higher, but to quote a great philosopher, you don't always get what you want. :) I finished 6th, but 3rd through 6th was very tightly contested, with all 4 scores between 67.1 and 67.8. The bungled pirouette was indeed very expensive from the perspective of placings! I had to follow Steffen on his WunderKind Weltino's Magic in the draw, which didn't help matters any. He won the class (again), I don't remember the score but I'm sure it was high. On the plus side, I made the mistakes early on in my test, but was able to put things together again and ride a very clean ride afterwards. In the past a few mistakes like that in the beginning would have sent me spiraling downwards, but I was able to focus on the future and keep riding like everything was working well. So that was great! I'd also like to give a big shout-out to another Northwest trainer Jessica Wisdom, who placed 3rd in the I-1 freestyle with her Welsh stallion Cardi. GOOD JOB JESS!!! Onto the Rancho Murieta CDI!! I leave tomorrow morning for Sacramento, hopefully it will go as well as Burbank.