VADA/NOVA Summer Dressage - Final

Silva is home from the VADA/NOVA summer dressage show, where she and Faye Woolf's Aesthete (Stately) had a terrific weekend competing in the six-year-old classes at the Markel/USEF Young Horse Dressage Eastern Selection Trials. Here's an update from Silva:

Stately was awesome this weekend, like he always is. I wasn’t really sure what would happen since I hadn’t ridden all week. It was really nice because everyone was pulling for me, it was hard to focus, but Stately just did his job in spite of me.

Friday was the warm-up round and Saturday was the first selection trial, where he score 83.4%! On Sunday in the final round I needed an 8.1 to qualify to go to Germany. I thought he was better than he was on Saturday but the judges felt he was a little tired and I got an 8.09, only one tenth off the qualifying score! We weren’t sure if would take him to Germany anyway because it’s a lot of travel for a young horse so it’s probably a blessing, everything happens for a reason. We’ll probably go to the US finals in Chicago, though.

I scratched Rosa because I didn’t get her breeding papers in time – they’re still in Australia and there was enough going on last week.

Constantina was doing her first I-1 qualifier and she was great, she tried really hard and scored a 68%.

I also rode Coquette, a full sister to Constantina owned by Sheryl Griffith and broke by Melinda Walton. She just turned four; this was her first show and she was 3rd in the Materiale class and 6th in the four-year-olds class. She is really green and was just a trooper, she went right in the ring. I think she’s going to be a really great horse.