question about converting

I have a horse that I want to have as dressage but has 3 stats that are high. 

is this a foal? and are those base stats or total stats? 

it doesn’t really matter what discipline you choose first if you are planning to convert eventually. i personally tend to use western. if its a foal and you’re planning on converting stats eventually anyway, you might as well feed high stat boost treats (sugar cubes, haycubes, or peppermints) since all those stats will be shuffled into agility/intelligence when you convert anyway. 

I'm assuming this is your newborn colt, Fishin' In The Dark?

Unfortunately, he inherited those high stats from his parents.  While there is sometimes a small amount of birth stats that can transfer during a discipline conversion, it will not be enough to get rid of those high speed stats.  If you look next to your private notes, you will see a list called "Base Stats."  These are the stats that cannot be changed, even with a discipline conversion, so whatever number you see there for speed will still be there after he is converted to dressage.

The reason why he has three high stats is because his father was bred and treated for jumping, and his mother for dressage.  Jumping and dressage both share agility as a trait - otherwise your colt would have four high stats.  This is why, if you intend to show a horse that you breed, it is best to pair up two horses with the same discipline, so you don't get any high stats outside of the two associated with your desired discipline.

I am very sorry to tell you that Fishin' In The Dark will probably not do very well showing, no matter what you do with him, despite being otherwise a very beautiful horse.  Those extra speed stats will bump him up to a higher show grade, but will not help him win it.

I wasn't planning on showing him, I didn't really want to breed jumping to dressage but there was no jumping mares available last night. the mare I wanted the owner had not progressed. so I'm just going to work with what I got. I just haven't had to set a discipline then convert, so it was uncharted waters.
 

If I were you, I would save the $10,000 and just set him to dressage.  The only reason to set a discipline and then convert is to get the non-discipline stats as low as possible to make the horse a better show horse.  If you're not showing him, there is really no reason to spend the money on discipline conversion.