Some athletes thrive when plans go haywire. Judging by the musical performance of Jill Giese and her longtime mare Dreamcatcher at the Spokane Sport Horse Farm’s Annual Dressage Spectacular, they are exactly that kind of competitor.

Giese and partner John Dingle, co-owners of the Dreamcatcher Meadows elite sport horse facility in the Pemberton Meadows, headed south in mid-August to compete in the dressage and breeding shows at the Spokane, Wash., facility. They and their award-winning mounts, Dreamcatcher and her stallion son Dreammaster, were seeking to earn the final qualifying scores they needed to compete in the United States Dressage Federation (USDF) dressage regional championship.

When the first Dressage Spectacular show ran on Aug. 14, Giese and Dreamcatcher won the Federation Equestre Internationale (FEI) Intermediare I category with their scores, she said, as well as topping the FEI Freestyle category while competing against Grand Prix-level horses and riders — one step above Intermediare and the highest in dressage.

Though there were fewer entries in the Spokane event than at the Dressage at DevonWood show where the Dreamcatcher riders competed in July, the level of talent was high, Giese said.

“These were the combinations that had beaten us at DevonWood,” Giese said of the other horses and riders in her category, and she didn’t expect to best them.

She and Dreamcatcher earned their wins despite a mix-up with the music for their elegant freestyle routine that caused furious improvising of the set of technical dressage movements they needed to perform.

Giese and Dingle have been trying to create a choreographed freestyle pas de deux for the tandems – Giese on Dreamcatcher, Dingle on Dreamcatcher’s son Dreammaster — and the music for that includes the pulsing beat of Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal, perfect for the young stallion Master.

Somehow, the CD for Giese’s and Dreamcatcher’s regular competitive routine was swapped for one that had a different cut of their elegant classical music, and this one would be followed right away by the hard-driving sounds of Smooth Criminal. Giese said her brain kicked into high gear, trying to perform the movements she and Dreamcatcher needed to, but to the different cut of their music, and trying to finish before Smooth Criminal blasted out.

“I’m now making up movements and winging a freestyle,” Giese laughed, describing the performance.

Toward the end of the number, with Jackson’s sounds creeping ever closer, Giese riding and Dingle on the sidelines exchanged a glance of telepathic understanding so that Dingle suddenly stopped the music about four seconds before Smooth Criminal started, and Giese drew Dreamcatcher to an abrupt halt in the middle of a complicated sideways canter movement.

“It actually looked planned; I got a really good mark for it,” the surprised and pleased Giese said. She said she was a bit surprised to find they won their categories despite all of that.

In the second Dressage Spectacular show on Aug. 15, Giese and Dreamcatcher won again, performing the freestyle routine with their correct music — and yet they received higher scores for the performance with the wrong music in the first show, Giese laughingly said.

The Spokane shows were a success overall for the Dreamcatcher Meadows riders and horses. Dreammaster earned good marks for his dressage events, and titles such as the horse most likely to be an FEI future champion and the top home-bred horse-rider combination, Giese said.

The horses also won multiple in the Sport Horse Breeders Classic show on Aug. 13 that preceded the dressage events. Dreammaster was a particular hit, as he topped multiple classes in progressing through the levels and was eventually judged the grand champion of the breeding show, and his half-sister Lady of the Dance scored high and won two titles as well.

“Everybody was blown away by Master, including the judge, and he’s one of the most senior breed judges,” Giese said.

The unexpected success — they hadn’t planned to enter the breeding show, but did so because they happened to be there for the dressage events, Giese said — means they’ll now compete at the U.S. breed show championship Friday through Sunday (Sept. 3 to 5) in Washington, as well as the dressage regional championship.