By Marissa Collins
This article received an honorable mention in the 2023 GMO Newsletter Awards for first person experience articles for GMOs with 500 or more members. It appeared in the March 2023 Georgia Dressage and Combined Training Association Newsletter, Collected Remarks.
My name is Marissa Collins and I am a 29-year-old Adult Amateur living in Aiken, South Carolina. I compete Carino, my 19-year-old Iberian Warmblood (Andalusian/Arabian) at third level dressage. We have evented up to the preliminary level, competed in the 1.15m show jumpers, and received our USDF Bronze Medal in May of 2022. This year, we are hoping to continue to compete at third level dressage and, hopefully, make a move up to fourth level.
I am very grateful to have received the 2022 GDCTA Adult Amateur Dressage Grant as finances have always made it difficult to stay consistent in my training. Often, I can go weeks without a lesson and very rarely do I get to have training rides done on my horse. Receiving this grant allowed me to be more consistent in my training with my trainer Katie Erpel, as well as attend a clinic with Julio Mendoza.
In my training with Katie, we went back to the basics to identify the cause of my late changes. This led us to the realization that my two problems were 1. He pulled the slightest bit through all my transitions, even the basic ones and 2. He would not let me place his shoulders where I needed them in the canter. We started with basic walk to trot to walk transitions and trot to canter to trot. These have become a staple in our everyday warm-up and still to this day are the focus of most of our rides. My horse wants to pull slightly through the transition, just enough where I would lose the push from the hind end. This was the same thing he did in the flying changes. He gets a little bit against the hand, hollows the back slightly and then hind legs trail resulting in a late behind change. We also discovered that Carino would not let me move his shoulders in the canter. It is VERY difficult for him to do a basic shoulder in or shoulder fore in the canter. He will leap, he will sit, he will pull and do everything possible to not allow me to place his shoulders.
On August 7, 2022, I was able to ride in a clinic with Julio Mendoza. Julio started the clinic with making us slow down our trot to improve cadence. We worked on my position for better trot shoulder in and half passes, and we made a huge breakthrough that unlocked a whole new gear in those movements. Into the canter work and flying change work, he also wanted us to slow down as Carino tends to try to use quickness as a form of power. Julio then found the hole in our training, the inability to position the shoulders. Carino did his usual leaping and pulling to avoid the exercise. Having a second trainer pick up on this made me realize where my homework really is and what I need to work on.
We then went on to qualify for regionals at third level the following week by competing in the back-to-back Stable View shows. With Carino at the age of 19, I of course wondered if part of his resistance was physical. In September, we took two weeks off to get body work, chiro, and some maintenance to make sure everything was feeling the best it could as I pushed for the harder work. In October we competed at the Regional championship show in Conyers, Georgia. While I thought Carino and I put in a great test, our score was not as I hoped in the third level championship class. We placed 4th in the Adult Amateur Regional Equitation final and had a BLAST!
Fast forward to today, we are working toward starting our show season in April at third level. We are still doing MANY transitions. We have found the perfect combination of body work and chiro to keep him happy. We are starting to incorporate multiple flying changes towards our fourth level debut – hopefully, later this year. With all that said, while we have made incredible progress, fixing these issues in the flying changes has been a multiple month-long endeavor and something we still work on daily. This experience has really taught me to trust the process and that results do not happen overnight but rather through consistency.
