Patience pays off for this Grand Prix combination.

Shelly Francis has been biding her time, waiting patiently until Dominion was ready to be competitive at Grand Prix. Sure, she had some small tour successes along the way, but she always had her eye on the bigger picture.

Francis thought she had a talented horse, but you never know until you canter down centerline in your first Grand Prix. So it was no small thrill for her to come out and place first in the Grand Prix for the Special (66.34%) and second in the Grand Prix Special (66.79%) behind Reese Koffler Stanfield and Goubergh’s Kaspar (67.66%) at the Wellington Classic Dressage Spring Challenge, held Feb. 6-8 in West Palm Beach, Fla.

“The [judges’] comments are very much that they like the quality. There’s always room for improvement, but he’s getting better and better all the time,” said Francis, Loxahatchee, Fla.

Dominion contested his first Intermediaire II in December, and Francis said she would move him up to Grand Prix later in the season. But as “Big D” continued to put in consistent performances, she decided to take the plunge.

“I did an open Grand Prix, and he got a nice score with a judge who was very good. Then I decided to bite the bullet and jump in. I wanted to ride him and make sure the big judges who do the CDIs could look at him and give me an idea of whether he should be in there or not,” said Francis.

The 11-year-old Hanoverian gelding (Donnerschwee—Wiebke) did his first CDI Grand Prix at the GCDA Opener Festival (Fla.), but Francis decided beforehand not to have that count as a qualifier.

“He was second in the Grand Prix and first in the Special. That was encouraging. This time he did a little bit better. The scores just keep getting a little better,” she said.

Francis has been in charge of Big D’s training ever since his owner, Patricia Stempel, decided he might have a bit too much engine for her.

“Dominion has quite a lot of fire in there. He looks quieter than he really feels when you’re on him,” said Francis. “There’s a lot of animal in there. When he wakes up, he’s wide awake.”

Standing 17.1 hands, Big D has presented a few challenges over the years for the diminutive Francis. “It is hard because he’s such a big horse,” she said. “In three strides he’s at the centerline already. But I’ve gotten used to it now. The biggest challenge is jogging him when he’s feisty and getting on. I’m a little on the short side. I have quite a few of those three-step stools around, and they work.”

It wasn’t that long ago that Francis didn’t know if Big D would even make a Grand Prix horse.

“It took him quite a long time to start getting the idea [of passage]. He’s only been trying it successfully for the last four or five months,” she said. “There were some moments where I thought he was just being dumb about this. I tried all kinds of different ways to help him learn to get a little lift off the ground. Then he just started doing it, and when I told him he was being good, he seemed to say, ‘Oh, that’s what you want.’ Now he’s been going at it like gangbusters. I just have to get it under control a little bit more.”

Control was one of the things Francis pointed to as a weakness in their current Grand Prix outings.

“I let him go a little bit too forward at times in the passage, and then he finds it hard to come back to the piaffe [in the test],” she said. “When I’m schooling it normally, it’s not so much of a problem. I get kind of carried away in the ring. I have it in my head that he needs to do it a little bigger, but I need to start taking it easy and realizing that less can be a lot more.”

Francis has a different plan of attack for her next show. Instead of pushing in every movement, she plans to focus on a steadier rhythm and tempo.

“I’m getting more and more of my competitive spirit back. When you don’t do it for a little while, you get more focused on the training, and you take it easy. Now I’m ready to go,” she said. “I think he’s ready. I’ve taken my time and tried to be really careful. We have some more progress to go, but we’re making progress.”

Francis is aiming Big D for the Collecting Gaits Farm/USEF Grand Prix Championship in June, and to do that, his scores will have to be among the top 12 in the nation.

“I’m really pleased that the scores are climbing a few percentage points higher each time. That means I’m on the right track,” she said. “I think he’s starting to understand the job. He’s getting more comfortable with the test.”