UDS Show Recognition Form The Utah Dressage Society recognizes two (2) show formats: Shows that conform to USEF and USDF Dressage division rules; Shows that conform to the UDS Short Tour Series rules. For either format, show management must pay a show recognition fee to UDS. The fee is $50 for each day of show recognition. If the show is one show over 2 days the fee is $50. (i.e. USEF issued ONE licensure #) The Show Recognition form must be submitted with the required fee a minimum of 6 weeks prior to the show's opening date. *** If you are a competitor (not show management) and would like to obtain UDS recognition for a show please contact the competitions director at competitions@utahdressagesociety.com first! Select Format Choose an option Name of Show Date of Show * required Name of Show Facility Is this one show over 2 days? * Yes - it is two days with one license. No - it is two days with two licenses. Each day/show will be submitted separately. No - it is one day only. Select an Address Link to Prize List or Show Premium Judging Officials Judge's Name License "r" "R" "S" Other 2nd Judge's Name License "r" "R" "S" Other Contact Information First name Last name Email Phone Select an item ($) * USDF/USEF Show Recognition Form - $50 Short Tour Show Recognition Form - $50 Comments Go to Checkout Thanks for submitting!

Immerse yourself in the elegance of dressage as we invite you to join the Utah Dressage Society. Our mission goes beyond the arena; we're here to educate, inspire, and encourage dressage riders throughout the beautiful state of Utah. UNLEASHING THE ARTISTRY OF RIDING Immerse yourself in the elegance of dressage as we invite you to join the Utah Dressage Society. Our mission goes beyond the arena; we're here to educate, inspire, and encourage dressage riders throughout the beautiful state of Utah. LEARN MORE Welcome to the Utah Dressage Society! Discover the joy of dressage with the Utah Dressage Society. Founded in 1969, we're a passionate community of riders dedicated to educating, inspiring, and encouraging equestrians across Utah. From our humble beginnings to hosting prestigious events, UDS is the hub for those seeking the artistry of dressage. Join us and let the journey of elegance and excellence begin. ABOUT US Our mission is to educate, inspire, and encourage dressage riders around the state of Utah, and to promote the sport of dressage in our community. Our Sponsors Upcoming Events Sat, Feb 21 Steffen Peters UDS Symposium / Location is TBD Details Feb 21, 2026, 9:00 AM Location is TBD Sat, Feb 28 'L' Education Program - Session B / Sage Creek Equestrian Details Feb 28, 2026, 8:00 AM MST – Mar 01, 2026, 5:00 PM MST Sage Creek Equestrian, 3181 W 3000 S, Heber City, UT 84032, USA Session B is about judging criteria for gaits, movements and figures. Sat, Apr 25 'L' Education Program - Session C / Diamond Equestrian Center Details Apr 25, 2026, 8:00 AM MDT – Apr 26, 2026, 5:00 PM MDT Diamond Equestrian Center, 8875 W 8800 N, Lehi, UT 84043, USA Session C is about collective marks, equitation, rider biomechanics and basics. Recent News Meet the Candidates 2025! Oct 25 UDS Newsletter: October 2025 Oct 1 2025 BOARD ELECTIONS - Seeking Nominations Sep 2 VIEW MORE

About Us The Utah Dressage Society (UDS), an affiliate of the United States Dressage Federation (USDF), exists to educate, promote, encourage, and inspire its members and the general public through programs, publications, and competitions, in a way that enhances the image of dressage and promotes the welfare of the horse. Dressage is the gradual, harmonious advancement of the horse, both physically and mentally, to develop its natural abilities and to make riding a graceful and pleasurable experience. The programs of the society shall be educational and competitive and provide a framework in which individuals can progress with the schooling of their horses and themselves. Our mission is to educate, inspire, and encourage dressage riders around the state of Utah, and to promote the sport of dressage in our community. History of the Utah Dressage Society Established in 1969 by dressage enthusiasts, including Johanna and Eva Adolphi, the Utah Dressage Society (UDS) has flourished into a vibrant community. The first meeting drew eight individuals, sparking the inception of our passionate journey. The inaugural Utah Dressage Society Annual Show on August 19, 1972, featured 25 horses and 33 riders. By 1975, it gained recognition with Elizabeth Friedlander Searle as the judge. Today, the UDS Annual Show in August boasts 200 rides over two days with two "S" judges. With nearly 200 members, UDS continues to grow as dressage spreads through the "wild west." Our roots trace back to an early schooling show in 1969 or 1970, where a simple sheet of paper led to the formation of a dedicated dressage club. Since then, UDS has become a hallmark of excellence in equestrian circles. Meet the Board of Directors John Maznicki PRESIDENT John has been involved with Utah Dressage for 10+ years competing, breeding, coaching and volunteering. He has come to know many of our local members through the UDS, and looks forward to getting to know more of you by adding being on the board as part of his service to the local community. president@utahdressagesociety.com Dana Prior TREASURER I grew up in southern california and started riding at age 10. I took a break from riding when I went to college in Washington to study Spanish and accounting. After passing my cpa exams i decided to get back into riding, which is not only where i was introduced to dressage, but also my lesson horse Harley - who I eventually bought. Because of my analytical brain, I immediately started loving dressage and we have been a team ever since! We have participated in many short tour shows over the years and just started showing in recognized shows this past season. I volunteer wherever I’m needed from scribing to gate calling or test reading. I look forward to continuing to volunteer by serving the Utah dressage society! treasurer@utahdressagesociety.com Debbie Baxter DIRECTOR OF COMPETITIONS Coming Soon! competitions@utahdressagesociety.com Eva Adolphi FOUNDER/SPECIAL ADVISOR My mother was the horse crazy one and dragged me off to ride at the Lazy Bar Ranch when I was 8. At 12 I was given a horse and by 19, when we got our own property, the emphasis changed to Dressage I was a founding member of the Utah Dressage Society and served on the board for 33 years! I am now the adviser to the board. I have been a show secretary, show manager, and competitor. I am a USEF licensed Technical Delegate and enjoy traveling to shows in other states. I also enjoy working with my students. I attend the USDF Convention every year now that I am retired, usually as a delegate. Sydni Cook VICE PRESIDENT Coming Soon! vicepresident@utahdressagesociety.com Kim Judd DIRECTOR OF MEMBERSHIP From the time Kim could say "horse", she has loved horses! When she was a teenager growing up in Sandy, she went down the street to a family's stables, and asked to work in exchange for riding lessons. Unfortunately they usually forgot to give her lessons, but she got very good at mucking out stalls! Kim graduated from BYU with a degree in Ballroom Dance (which was also how she met her husband: they were competition partners). After living out east for 14 years, Kim and her family moved back to Utah, and she finally realized her dream of starting to learn to ride! Dressage feels like a natural switch from ballroom dance: the partnership, the technique, the constant striving to be better, then even better! After riding for 6 years, Kim's husband asked "when are you going to do a dressage show?" Becoming part of the Utah Dressage Society and entering shows has been such an amazing experience, and Kim is excited to use her extensive secretarial skills (developed over 22 years and 5 kids!) to help support the board of the Utah Dressage Society! membership@utahdressagesociety.com Sian Griffiths DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS Siân Griffiths lives and rides in Ogden, Utah. A former jumper turned dressage rider, she competes as an adult amateur, working her way up the levels with her beloved Holsteiner, Larry. After working for the U.S. Equestrian Team in 1999-2000, fund raising for the Sydney Olympic Games, Siân decided to pursue her passion for fiction writing and earned her PhD at the University of Georgia. She now serves as a professor of English and Creative Writing at Weber State University and is the author of the novels Borrowed Horses (New Rivers Press), Scrapple (Braddock Avenue Books), the short fiction chapbook The Heart Keeps Faulty Time (Bull City Press), and, most recently, the essay collection The Sum of Her Parts (University of Georgia Press). She is thrilled to join the Utah Dressage Society team and encourages members to reach out to her at communications@utahdressagesociety.com with any news they would like to share Carrie Matteson SECRETARY Coming Soon! secretary@utahdressagesociety.com Katie Lorens DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION Katie grew up in Chicago and moved to Salt Lake in 2011. She is an athletic trainer who worked with Utah Gymnastics for 10 years before starting work with a local hand surgeon. She also runs her own business doing injury evaluations, Rehabilitation/injury prevention, strength and conditioning and bio mechanical analysis. After her 30th birthday, she decided to get back into riding after a long break. Last year, she bought her first horse, Midnight Sun “Odin”, and is excited to start showing him. She has been passionate about dressage since she began riding as a kid and is eager to get more involved and serve the Utah Dressage Community. education@utahdressagesociety.com Mindy Simmons DIRECTOR OF EVENTS Mindy has been the crazy horse girl her entire life! She started riding at 8, (that is the age riding school near my house would accept new riders or would have started earlier). She bought her first rescue horse at 14 and it has been an amazing journey ever since. She fell in love with dressage about 5 years ago and has had some amazing mentors. She is currently working up the levels with her mustang. She is hopeful she can give back to the dressage community as it has changed her life! events@utahdressagesociety.com Rules & Bylaw POLICY PROCEDURES AND RULES Revised 4/15/2022 w/ addendum BYLAWS UDS CODE OF CONDUCT Member approved 11/3/2016 Contact Us John Maznicki PRESIDENT president@utahdressagesociety.com Dana Prior TREASURER treasurer@utahdressagesociety.com Debbie Baxter DIRECTOR OF COMPETITIONS competitions@utahdressagesociety.com Sydni Cook VICE PRESIDENT vicepresident@utahdressagesociety.com Kim Judd DIRECTOR OF MEMBERSHIP membership@utahdressagesociety.com Sian Griffiths DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS communications@utahdressagesociety.com Carrie Matteson SECRETARY secretary@utahdressagesociety.com Katie Lorens DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION education@utahdressagesociety.com Mindy Simmons DIRECTOR OF EVENTS events@utahdressagesociety.com

2026-2027 Term Watch your email for ballots in the next week! Please note that only current UDS members may vote per Policies & Procedures. Also, we welcome Debbie Baxter to the board as our interim Director of Competitions! John Maznicki (Incumbent) President John has been involved with Utah Dressage for 10+ years competing, breeding, coaching and volunteering. He has come to know many of our local members through the UDS, and looks forward to getting to know more of you by being on the board as part of his service to the local community. Carrie Matteson Secretary ... Kim Judd (Incumbent) Director of Membership From the time Kim could say "horse", she has loved horses! When she was a teenager growing up in Sandy, she went down the street to a family's stables, and asked to work in exchange for riding lessons. Unfortunately they usually forgot to give her lessons, but she got very good at mucking out stalls! Kim graduated from BYU with a degree in Ballroom Dance (which was also how she met her husband: they were competition partners). After living out east for 14 years, Kim and her family moved back to Utah, and she finally realized her dream of starting to learn to ride! Dressage feels like a natural switch from ballroom dance: the partnership, the technique, the constant striving to be better, then even better! After riding for 6 years, Kim's husband asked "when are you going to do a dressage show?" Becoming part of the Utah Dressage Society and entering shows has been such an amazing experience, and Kim is excited to use her extensive secretarial skills (developed over 22 years and 5 kids!) to help support the board of the Utah Dressage Society! Mindy Simmons Director of Events Mindy has been the crazy horse girl her entire life! She started riding at 8, (that is the age riding school near my house would accept new riders or would have started earlier). She bought her first rescue horse at 14 and it has been an amazing journey ever since. She fell in love with dressage about 5 years ago and has had some amazing mentors. She is currently working up the levels with her mustang. She is hopeful she can give back to the dressage community as it has changed her life! To vote you must be a current UDS members. Please make sure you are logged into your UDS account to access the ballot webpage.

Dear Fellow Dressage Enthusiasts, As you may have heard, the Utah Dressage Society is going to host the L Program in 2025/2026 for those interested in earning their L Graduate certification or in deepening their dressage knowledge. To give everyone a sense of what the program will be like, we have organized the “Taste of the L Program” for the first weekend in March. This clinic, led by living dressage legends Dolly Hannon and Debbie Riehl-Rodriguez, will have a series of events designed to help enhance your understanding of equine biomechanics, rider biomechanics, the purpose of the movements on USDF tests, and the scoring of those movements.  The first day of the clinic will begin with a three-hour classroom session, in which Dolly and Debbie will educate participants on the horse’s gaits, horse and rider biomechanics, and the principles of scoring. This lecture will be followed by a lunch break (with lunch provided by the UDS), after which we will have three sessions of demo rides. Each of these sessions will include three riders, and Dolly and Debbie will critique the horse and rider’s performance and movement, connecting the theory from the morning session to actual performance. While we hope our riders learn a lot from the critique, those considering demo riding on day one are advised that this session will not be focused on their education but rather on providing a kind of case study for the participants, and we have tried to reflect this in the price difference for day one and day two. For participants who are L graduates, this day will count as eight hours of continuing education. The second day of the Taste of the L will resemble a traditional ride-a-test clinic. We hope to showcase fifteen riders who will ride the test of their choice, from intro to FEI level. Dolly and Debbie will judge each ride from two different locations in the arena, after which they will coach the rider, offering exercises and instruction designed to help them improve. Each rider should have thirty minutes with these two expert judges and coaches, packing as much education as possible into the time allowed. As with day one, we will be providing lunch for riders and participants. The cost of the program is as follows: Non-riding participants, UDS members……$100 for both days or $60 for one day Non-riding participants, non-members…….$150 for both days or $90 for one day Demo riders*, day one (preference given to UDS members)....$75 Demo riders*, day two (preference given to UDS members).....$150 Junior/young rider UDS demo riders*, day two………………….$100 *Demo riders will also have full access to all sessions on both days of the clinic. If you wish to apply to demo ride on either day, please complete the attached form  by Jan 31. Your $50 application fee will be applied to the clinic cost if you are selected and refunded if not. We are extremely excited to be hosting this event in person for the first time, giving participants more opportunities to interact with the instructors and ask questions. Dolly Hannon and Debbie Riehl-Rodriguez will also join us for the UDS banquet on the evening of March 1. We hope the day’s learning will continue in informal chats and reflections that evening, and we are pleased to offer each Taste of the L participant and demo rider a coupon for $10 off their banquet registration. If you have any questions, please contact Katie Lorens at secretary@utahdressagesociety.com Looking forward to learning with you, Your UDS Board

Member Shout Outs Buckle up! Our members have been out there, kicking booty, in any number of venues. Here are a few: Utahns Light Up Lamplight! It may sometimes feel like Utah is a long way from the dressage capitals of the world, but that hasn’t stopped Utahns from competing on the highest levels, and this year’s US Festival of Champions was just one case in point. Justin Giles rode his stunning chestnut Westphalian gelding Templeton’s Milano, in the USEF Five-Year-Old Test and the judges were clearly as impressed as any of us who have had the privilege to witness their partnership. Many of us were watching through the USEF network as the two won the reserve championship, and social media was alive with pride in this pair. We look forward to seeing what further heights they reach. Well done, Justin! Lexi Fairbanks rode her thirteen-year-old, black Holsteiner mare Casara in the Dressage Seat Medal Final 14-18. Her dressage equitation placed a jaw-dropping fifth! Well done, Lexi! You did Utah proud!  Lexi Fairbanks on Casara, photo by Merilee Fairbanks Adrian Ward’s bay Oldenberger mare Quellenperle SL was ridden by Josh Albrecht in the USEF Four-Year-Old Test–and went on to finish in 3rd place in the CDS Four Year Old Futurity in September. Former Utahn and UDS member Charell Garcia had an extremely successful outing representing Maplewood Warmbloods of New York. In the four-year old test, she won the championship on MW Verrazzano and took fourth place on MW Royalty . She also won the championship in the five-year-old test on MW Virtuous . In the six-year-old test, she took third on MW Mastermind and seventh on MW One More Dream, and she took sixth in the FEI seven-year-old test on MW Mercury.  Medal-Qualifying Rides at Millbrook The final Millbrook Show of the season was filled with accomplishments: Lori Barrett showed at the Grand Prix level and earned gold medal-qualifying scores on her chestnut gelding Lagerfeld K. Lori Barrett on Lagerfeld K, photo by Dust-Covered Cowgirl/ Bekka Chappell Fullmer Sarah Simmons earned qualifying scores for her USDF silver medal Sarah Simmons on Gamarro Font, photo by Dust-Covered Cowgirl/  Bekka Chappell Fullmer Amber Russell earned qualifying scores for her USDF silver medal after earning her bronze earlier this season–a rare double in one season!  Farrah Green and Breanne Amsler earned qualifying scores for their USDF Bronze Medals.  Well done, everyone! UDS at USDF Region 5 Championships Utah was well represented at the Region 5 Championships. I’ve listed the UDS competitors below as well as top two finishes, but this only scratches the surface of the good news. Full results are posted at Horse Show Office . Rhyan Andersen (First Level Jr/YR Reserve Champion on Wradiant), Lori Barrett, Cassie Benson (Fourth Level Open Champion on Halegro, Fourth Level Freestyle Open & JrYR Champion on Halegro), Sydni Cook (Fourth Level Open Reserve Champion on Rosa Red), Leslie Dauray Edison, Siân Griffiths, Ammie Lords, Amelia Lords, Sara Kirby, Amelia McCandless(First Level Open and Jr/YR Freestyle Reserve Champion on Swiss Exploit), Samantha McKay, Amber Russel,  Upcoming UDS Election The UDS wishes to extend a ginormous  thank you to Debbie Baxter, Jasmine Beckstead, and Mindy Simmons for serving in interim positions on the board as we come up to our next round of elections. Keep an eye out for a ballot soon! L Program Start This Month  The L Program is just around the corner, with Session A kicking things off on October 18 at Southern Belle Riding. If you haven’t reserved your spot yet, silent auditor tickets are still available here . Purchasing all three weekends is your best value, but you can also now purchase for each weekend individually as they arise. Good news! For those of you who (like me), are daunted by the number of links to click and print before the start of the L Program, the UDS printing study books for all participants. We will have them for you at the first session. We were able to award one participant and one auditor scholarship for the L Program. Carrie Matteson is unanimously selected for the L program participant scholarship due to years of service to UDS. Ashley Adams, another stalwart of the UDS, was awarded the auditor scholarship.  Thank you in advance to our generous hosts: Southern Belle Riding and Sage Creek Equestrian. Without your support, we could not make this program possible. Plans for Next Year: Expanding Clinic Opportunities The board has been eager to extend more options for clinics. In the short term, we are working on plans to bring Steffen Peters this February. This clinic will be limited to six participants, but a large number of auditors. We are currently working on nailing down the details, but we will post more on the community Facebook page as we know it. The board is also working on a plan to provide grants to support more clinic opportunities, so keep an eye out for those details as well in the coming months. End-of-Year Awards and Banquet We are in the early stages of preparation for the End-of-Year Awards and Banquet. That means it’s time to start submitting those volunteer hours you’ve been accumulating! Our volunteer hour submission form is available here . Not sure what counts? A list of possible kinds of volunteer opportunities is available on that same page, and I can always use more articles for this newsletter, so please feel free to pitch me at communications@utahdressagesociety.com   Member Article Someone Had to Lose, and Today It Was Me My Experience at a USDF Regional Championships—and Why I’m Glad I Went   Let’s be real: Driving over ten hours to ride a less-than-five-minute test is not the act of a rational person. For years, I had sat out the USDF Regional Championships, feeling like they were for other riders, better riders, riders on fancier horses. Yet knowing that my gelding and I were both getting older, I decided that this year, I would give it a shot. We earned our second level scores. Who knew when or if we would qualify again? Even in normal times, I am a fairly driven rider, making time between work and family to ride five or six times a week. Regionals added new pressure, and I found myself pushing our training, riding for more impulsion, more cadence, more bend, more collection. I dropped my weekly cocktail, limited my sugar. I wanted to look like a rider who belonged in a championship class, even if I didn’t always feel like one. The weeks leading up to the trip were stressful and sleep deprived. In my nightmares, I was called into the ring only to realize that I hadn’t braided my horse—nor saddled him—nor warmed him up. Thoughts of the drive also kept me up. I would be pulling two other horses besides my own over the Rockies in a longer trailer than I had ever pulled in the longest haul I had ever made. I found myself continually talking myself down: It would all be fine. It was just a test. It didn’t matter. No one was paying attention. No one cared about this at all. No one, that is, except me. I tried to keep my expectations low. In August, a barnmate’s mother looked up the standings on the USDF website, and I was surprised to learn I was sitting six out of the fifteen qualified Second Level Adult Amateurs in the region—better than I had expected. It had been a season of riding tests that were never quite what I thought we were capable of. We had a better ride in us, and I wanted badly to make that ride happen at Regionals. My title here is a plot spoiler: You already know how this is going to go down. Our warm up test was a train wreck. My horse Larry (“Larimer Square”) is nothing if not honest. He tries his guts out for me every time, but he also lets me know when it’s scary, which is often. My trainer put it best when she said, “I love his big feelings.” I do, too, though they don’t always help us score our best. While his bravery has grown enormously since jumping out of the arena in our first Training level test four years ago, confidence is still a work in progress, a fact that was on full display on our first day at the Colorado Horse Park. From the moment I mounted, I could feel Larry quite literally shaking under the saddle. He did his best, but he was intensely aware of the atmosphere, the unfamiliar sights and sounds and smells, the five show rings going at once, the sheer number of horses. In every stride, I felt his tension, and he struggled to find the bravery to go within three feet of the rails. Only a lot of leg and a few judicious taps of the whip kept us from performing the whole test fully on the quarter lines, and we ended up earning the worst scores since stepping up to second level. Tomorrow would be better, I told myself. On our first day there, we had schooled in the Championship arena, and over the course of that hour, he had decided that the sponsorship signs hanging fence-side were mostly non-carnivorous. Unlike the warm up test, there would be no heavy construction machines to catch Larry’s eye in the distance. Chances are, there wouldn’t even be suspicious stray women in red hats. And our warm up for the Championship class was  good. The tension was there, but Larry found moments to relax and stretch. The Grand Prix riders prepping their own tests were inspiring me with their brilliance. I was wearing my new coat. Larry was wearing his new saddle pad, a pre-regionals gift from my husband. We’d done the work. We were ready to give it our all. My nerves were fluttering, but they were not so different from any pre-test nerves. I could handle them. My trainer called me over to take my headphones when she remembered, suddenly, that I could not carry a whip in a championship. The news unsettled me—I had thought that only the FEI classes forbade the use of whips. I had needed that whip to even approach the rails yesterday and I might need it again today. I was unprepared. I should have schooled differently. And then I rallied. It wasn’t that bad. I was not reliant on the whip. We would be fine. But then another voice piped up from the rail—a person unknown to me, saying “You also need a second number on your bridle. You only have one.” My barnmate, eyes wide and locked on mine, asked where my second number was. “On his halter,” I said, “hanging by his stall.” A stall that was two full barn lengths away. She turned in a dead sprint as I circled near the entry for the warm up. My ring was empty—we were the first ride of the class—and I had no idea how much time I had. The seconds ticked away with every beat of my racing heart, but in a minor miracle, my barnmate returned minutes later. (She might have a second career as an Olympic sprinter if the dressage thing doesn’t work out.) She fitted the second number to his bridle as the judge blew the whistle for us to enter. We had avoided disqualification, but gone was our chance to have a calming trot around the ring. We were now against the clock, posting (!) a very forward trot for X to salute before our time ran out. Every doubting thought now screamed as the adrenaline of panic flooded my body. We really didn’t  belong here. We’d just proven that. We didn’t know the rules. We were kidding ourselves to think we could compete. Siân Griffiths on Larimer Square, still from video by Rhyan Andersen I did my best to remember Ted Lasso’s advice on having a goldfish memory. The forgetting of one bobble or another had gotten me through so many tests, helping us qualify for regionals in the first place, despite the occasional mid-test buck or bolt. Still, the brace in Larry’s back was undeniable, the tension jolting me. My panic had become his. I breathed deep, squeezed and released the reins, tried everything I could think of to let him know it was all ok, but every aid seemed muffled in cotton. His reactions delayed, our geometry was off. Our mediums and collected movements were indistinguishable. He threw in a flying change in our canter serpentine. He jigged in our simple change, a first for that particular mistake. I exited the ring devastated, not because of the embarrassment of my test, but because I had failed my partner when he needed me most. The technical delegate called me over, and I apologized for almost forgetting her in my fluster. It hardly seemed to matter, I thought, after the ride we had just delivered. She congratulated me on having completed my test and I admitted I was lucky to have ridden at all. “I didn’t realize I needed two numbers,” I explained. “My barnmate had to run to get it, and I almost missed my ride.” “Well, someone owes you a drink then,” she said, “because that’s not a rule. Two numbers are recommended but not required.” “You’re kidding me,” I replied, but then added truthfully, “but that’s still on me for not reading the rulebook.” That was the bald truth of it. I had not known what I did not know. I had gone to regionals under the presumption that   the rules for competing there  were the same as the rules for the rated shows that had gotten me qualified. That presumption was wrong. I would love to tell you that I took it all in stride, shrugging our disastrous test off with a professionals’ easy “Today just wasn’t our day.” The truth was, I was exhausted and emotionally fragile. When the scores came in, they would be a full two points lower than our worst, but I didn’t need to see them to know how poorly we showed. I fought tears as I pulled Larry’s braids, brushed him, fed him handfuls of German Muffins, and told him what a good boy he was. I lost the fight to tears an hour later when I called my husband. “Maybe you can try again next year,” he said, wanting to soothe me, but I had no plans to make the trip again. Larry would be eighteen. It was too much to ask, too far to go. I had decided long before that this would be our shot, and I had blown it. The irony is, I am usually the person in our barn who reads the rule book. My barnmates come to me with questions about show shirts and saddle pads, asking my opinions on whether they are show legal, and I recite my understanding and direct them to the page they need. My trainer apologized again and again for forgetting to tell me about the whip, but I wasn’t upset with her. She had spared me disqualification. In the days after, I talked to rider after rider who hadn’t known that rule until they arrived at their class. It’s not something anyone thinks about until they’re there. When Katie, my fellow Utah Dressage Society board member, suggested I write about my experience for the newsletter, my stomach initially dropped. Did I really want to recount my ineptitude and failure for the whole community to read? “The only rule I knew about was not being able to have a caller,” she wrote in her text. “I’m sure we aren’t the only two people who didn’t know about whips.” I mulled her suggestion as I watched other riders pilot their horses through tests, both successfully and not. I learned of a fellow rider whose team accidentally wrote down the wrong test time, and who was still braiding when she was supposed to be in the arena, living out my actual nightmare. I learned about another who rode a beautiful test and came out beaming only to learn she was disqualified for—you guessed it—carrying her whip. And we were the fortunate ones. I was certain there were others out there who had qualified for Regionals but whose horse developed a last-minute abscess, or whose truck broke down, or whose boss refused them the time off. I was in good company in my misery, even if we each carried our disappointments silently and alone. As I walked the grounds and watched more tests, I kept being aware of the keen sense of privilege I had to be there at the Championships. The afternoon of my own disqualification, I watched one of our local open riders in her Prix St. George championship class, her mare executing a series of nervous tempi changes during their initial canter down center line. The bobbles didn’t end there, but I wasn’t counting their mistakes. I was watching how the rider maintained her calm throughout, even smiling when the mare threw in her bonus maneuvers. The test wasn’t beautiful and it wouldn’t score high, but it was a master class in riding. The horse ended the class more confident than she had started it, and the trust her rider built shone as she halted for the final salute. The next day as I sat again in the stands, a kind voice said “Scoot over,” and I made space on the bleachers for a new friend and seasoned professional. As we watched, she talked about the different views of the judges at C and E. She said that she’d heard riders complaining about the discrepancies in the scores of those judges, but explained that they are judging different things based on their different seats. Move by move, she detailed what each judge could and couldn’t see. Again, I sat there absorbing. This is all to say that I came home from regionals having lost my class, but having gained real knowledge. Far from being sorry I went, I found myself filled with gratitude—for the trainer who prepared me, for the incredible horse that got me there, for my barn family, who didn’t shame or blame me for my feelings but who instead understood and gave me space to rally, and for my fellow dressage riders, from whom I have learned and continue to learn so much. I went to Regionals, and I lost. I put myself out there, and showed a horse I adore, and it didn’t go to plan. I learned a lot—and ribbons are nice, my friends, but the learning is always the point. Besides, I still have the thing that, for the rest of my life, no one can take from me: I rode at Regionals . And if you have the chance—the opportunity—the privilege—maybe you should too.   —Siân Griffiths