Dublin Horse Show

My husband, good man that he is, took me to the Dublin Horse Show last weekend. I grew up riding horses and continue to love them. I started taking lessons when I was 4 and competed in horse shows until I moved up north around age 12. I competed in English and western pleasure, jumping, western games and I even started learning a little bit of dressage on my mom's old dressage horse just before I stopped riding. I use to go to horse shows with my mom at the Washington County Fair Grounds and the in the Colosseum at the Minnesota State Fair. I particularly remember watching the dressage shows at the Washington County Fair Grounds as a little girl with the most beautiful horses. I still love watching dressage and went to the Dublin Horse Show to see some dressage. The show was mostly show jumping, judging of different horses, and a very small bit of dressage. It was not even in a dressage ring but was rather a short demonstration to show how dressage is related to show jumping. The announcer described dressage as "the bit between the fences" and showed how show jumping riders use dressage- the collected canter and counting of strides- between jumps. It was interesting enough but I wanted to see some flying lead changes for crying out loud! (I did at least get to see some extended trots where the horses look like they are dancing on clouds). The Highlight of the Dublin Horse Show has to be the Puissance Wall which is a jump that gets built higher and higher as the competition goes on. Ten horses were involved when the competition begun. The wall went from 5 and half feet in the first round to 6 foot 3in the second round to 6 foot 11 in the third round and to 7 foot 2 in the fourth round. By the end of the fourth round there were only 2 horses left, one from Belgium and one from Ireland. The fifth round the wall was raised to 7 foot 4 and was bested by the Irish horse and rider. It was quite exciting and nerve racking to watch! An American horse and rider took third in the wall so we were proud. Here are some pictures from the regular jumping, the dressage demonstration and the Puissance Wall.

To see some real dressage check out this youtube video. It is absolutley amazing what horse and rider are able to do- I MEAN GLORY TO GOD, PEOPLE!