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Gallery Page 1

Basic Dressage Introduction Clinic

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photos by Marcia Goodwin, thanks Marcia!

Our “ Introductory Into Dressage” clinic was really great! We had close to 25 members and friends come. Danica Woods our clinician was so much fun to listen to! She is so knowledgeable and made everything so easy to understand. I think those who were there have a new outlook on dressage, not so scary or intimidating any longer.

Saturday turned out to be a real nice day, yet did get hot in the afternoon, but hey…. we are in southern California in July!!!! We want to thank Tony and Jose from Sunshine A-Z Friesians for making the huge arena level and rock proof. A big thanks to Marcia, Sonja, Erin and Mark for coming out Friday to stake and mark off our court. Translating meters into feet was first priority for us dummies, as school was many years ago, but 5 heads figured it out and proceeded to weave the rope thru our stake holes and placing the letters at the correct spots. Now that day was about 100 degrees, and we all took turns standing in the sprinklers like little kids trying to cool off! Sheri and family did another great job setting up the food and drinks and all the extra help from everyone for putting up the pop-up tents. And Carol thanks for getting ALL the emails out to the members!!!

Danica did about 2 hours under the shaded gazebo with a workshop consisting of the history of dressage, rules, terms, what to wear, tack for your horse, and what the judge is asking to see you and your horse do in introductory level. Everyone had a pamphlet with pages of information to read and look at and ask questions as we went along. We also had a big dry eraser board with the arena and letters and showed us the pattern we were going to watch our demo riders do. There were lots of questions and the answers were quite easy for everyone to understand. Danica is a great people person instructor, making the day so enjoyable for us all!

We had pizza, salad, drinks and watermelon for lunch and after a short break our riders got ready. Kim Branch ( Danica’s daughter) riding Griffin showed us all how to ride the test correctly…. but very slowly while Danica was critiquing as they rode. Next it was Krysti and Dutch’s turn. Neither of them has ever been in a show of any sort. They did awesome!! Krysti was so afraid of not making circles perfect but with the help of some cones it was much easier. I think we will see them in some shows soon!!! Jane and Jochem were next. Danica first fixed her with the correct seat position for the English saddle, as Jane is a faithful western trail rider. After about 10 minutes the pair looked much more relaxed going forward nicely. An extra thanks to James for helping down in the arena with the horses and also being the Water Boy!

Sonja, thanks for letting us use your place! After the clinic was over we all chatted and asked more questions of Danica and drank MORE WATER!!! Another great clinic that our club put on, and an awesome clinician, THANK YOU DANICA!

Sincerely yours,

Marcia G