# Questions, questions, questions! (mostly about Devon Horse Show!)



## Saddlebag (Jan 17, 2011)

If you are unhappy with your self evaluation then perhaps another trainer is in order. If you decided to take dressage, which is an excellent idea, you don't do the entire pattern at home but work on improving phases. It is no different than remembering a hunt course, one movement follows another, as in one jump follows another. You were trying to remember the whole course.


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## jfisher256 (Jul 12, 2011)

Saddlebag said:


> If you are unhappy with your self evaluation then perhaps another trainer is in order. If you decided to take dressage, which is an excellent idea, you don't do the entire pattern at home but work on improving phases.


While I would like to go somewhere else, more advanced, that would be great. The one thing I'm worried about (and shouldn't be) is my old instructor finding out and being hurt about it. Although, two other riders I grew up riding with left because _they _wanted to go a more advanced barn that went to shows every weekend. She practically molded me into the rider I am today. If it wasn't for her then I probably wouldn't be the rider I am today. But the lessons she teaches and shows she goes to (besides Devon) are pretty much at the lower level and I originally left her place a few years ago to get more advanced experience. That's when the place I got offered the lease and show spot from came in. My mom actually said she'd be willing to call them again.



Saddlebag said:


> It is no different than remembering a hunt course, one movement follows another, as in one jump follows another. You were trying to remember the whole course.


Yeah that makes sense now that I think about it. The only hunter courses I've ever memorized had the course spread out on paper with X's as the jumps. The only dressage test I would have had to memorize was just a piece of paper with typed out instructions on where to perform certain movements and such. So I guess it's not necessarily the fact that just like a hunter or jumper course, one jump comes after the other, just like moves in a dressage test, but probably that I do better with a visual memory than just reading something on paper. Maybe that's how dressage tests are in shows and big competitions. I don't know, I've never seen a legitimate dressage test before and I think that's probably why I've always been kind of afraid to do dressage :lol:


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