Feel free to start a conversation about your training, experiences at shows, and questions that are important to you and the horse world.

This past weekend I went to show and did what I thought was an awesome job on my dressage test, however the judge disagreed. The score wasn't horrible and I didn't end up at the bottom of the pack, and the rest of the show was wonderful, the cross country and stadium jumping phases were awesome, but the dressage score still irked me. What do you do when your perception of what happened in the show ring is different than what the judge sees? My mother suggested that I make a book with the judges names and their comments on my test so that I can see what the consistent comments are that I might miss looking at the tests individually, and also to keep track of what each judge wants in order to tailor my ride to each judge as I ride in front of them again. What are your suggestions to help with the frustrations of showing and being judged?

Previously Kara Kask wrote:

I had that happen recently! I rode three tests and each test was successively better according to what I saw on the video and even according to the verbal comments made by the judge to the scribe, but unfortunately, the judge's collective marks were successively lower for each ride. Really inconsistent scoring. Hard to figure? I've found that I look at the judge's comments to see if they're on target and I also try to get my rides filmed to check what I see against the comments. Most of the time, the comments are spot-on. Like most riders, we have our areas where we need work and I bop myself on the head to remind me of them when I review my ride on video. If I like what I see, then I'm okay and know that I did better than I was scored and I have to be at peace with that. At the same time, I look for where we need work. I think mostly the rides that I thought were truly under-appreciated came from judges that seemed as if they wanted a higher-level frame or degree of collection from a training level horse and rider combo or a judge that simply was not watching the ride. (One time a judge missed my salute and deducted from my ride because she was still writing comments on the previous rider's test sheet even though she had rung  the starting bell for my ride. Stuff happens, we're all human!)