A few months ago, Aoife told me about dressageanywhere.com (thank you, Aoife!). It's this great site where you can pay a fee to enter a class, film your test, and submit it to be judged. They offer awards such as rosettes and even a little bit of money for 1st through 3rd place (how many placings they pay depends on the size of the class). Awards aside, the idea of having your test judged, by a recognized judge, without ever having to leave your property is very appealing to me. It's a way to show within your comfort zone and it's inexpensive. What's not to like?
Most of the classes are the British Dressage tests. Their system is a little confusing at first, but the tests look a lot more fun than the USDF tests. You have to buy the tests, they keep them a lot better guarded than USDF does. I bought mine through dressagediagrams.com and paid £2 (about $3.50 USD) per test for the downloadable version. If you don't want to pay that much, they will mail you the tests for a significant amount less.
When you enter the competition, you will have an option to pick the level you want to show. From there they give you an option of a couple of different tests to ride. The prices of the classes range from £11-£18 (about $18-$31 USD). You can do training classes too. They even offer Jim Boyle's ex-racehorse competitions! Along with that they have Pony Club dressage and RDA (Riding for the Disabled) competitions with online qualifiers and championships. On top of everything, there are musical freestyle competitions. Seriously, was this not a completely genius idea?
The site also allows you to do a Team Challenge also. You need at least three team members. The team can consist of as many riders as you want, but they only use the three highest scores. If anyone would be interested in joining me on a team, please let me know :) *hmm-hmm....Aoife.....since you brought this great website to my attention.
I'm going to try and get a dressage arena set up this week so my friend and I can enter a competition or two. Entries close the last day of each month, so I will do a review and post my results as soon as they are up! So excited!
