An evening of entertainment!

By Imogen Johnson

YH Blogs

20 January 2012 14:45

Last week Your Horse writer Katy, gear editor Allison and I donned our thermals and headed to Keysoe Equestrian Centre in Bedford for an evening with Jill Day and Inger Bryant.

The clinic saw willing volunteers riding through their dressage tests in front of an audience of British Dressage judges and trainers, including Jill and Inger.

Members of the audience were then invited to comment on the scores they would have given for each movement before Inger talked through her own suggestions. Following that Jill suggested any appropriate training for the rider to take on board in order to improve their test marks in future.

It was a really interesting evening, which turned into a ‘good cop, bad cop’ style routine between Inger and Jill  - Inger being on a more forgiving side in terms of marks and cause for improvement - poor Jill, who handled the training side of things said she felt like the bad guy with her constructive criticism!

Not being a judge myself, I found it really interesting to listen to a group of judges discussing how they would each mark a movement and especially interesting to listen to the discussion when judges didn’t necessarily agree.

The most interesting test and training to watch was with a young rider called Amy Nash. Riding an Advanced Medium test Amy’s horse was a tad on the spooky side so her test wasn’t quite what she hoped for. However following some training with Jill, where Amy worked on improving her horse’s reaction from her leg, the combination was a different picture entirely.

Amy and the rest of the riders were great sports to get on with it all in front of an audience of judges and trainers – I think I’d have found it a little daunting to say the least.